Americans have the right to freely exercise their religion. Forcing neutral exercise of religion or forcing liberal exercise of religion is NOT free exercise of religion.
I’m talking real-world, not debate-society world.
re: “Americans have the right to freely exercise their religion. Forcing neutral exercise of religion or forcing liberal exercise of religion is NOT free exercise of religion.”
You are correct, but here’s the thing. The Courts have redefined “religious freedom” in the First Amendment as only applying to churches (for now). They have denied that individuals and their businesses have the right to religious freedom.
Therefore you, as an individual, may not appeal to your personal religious convictions to oppose doing business with someone who supports or represents something you disagree with for religious reasons. According to the Courts, once you do business with the general public, you have abdicated your right to religious freedom in the marketplace.
Somehow, if your business sells to the general public, you must now do business with whomever walks through the door. All of this goes back, of course to the anti-discrimination laws.
Once you give one particular group a special protected status, then there are going to be more and more of these groups added to the list. First is was about racial discrimination, then gender, and now same-sex marriage. Once the government got into defining special classes of people for protection, now we’ve got what we’ve got.
And churches are not far behind. If a church rents its buildings or facilities to anyone other than church members, they too will be open to charges of discriminating against gays if they refuse to rent to them.