Refusing To Serve Customers You Don’t Agree With Is Suddenly Not Bigotry

From The Federalist:

To the many things the Trump administration in waiting has made cool again, add private businesses refusing service to customers based on moral objections. Friday, fashion designer Sophie Theallet, who has dressed the current first lady Michelle Obama, offered a preemptive refusal to hypothetically dress the next first lady, Melania Trump, should she ask for some of her clothes— presumably not the ones available at The Gap. 

In her unsolicited letter, Theallet informed the world that a person who did not ask for any of her clothes would not be getting them. “As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” the letter reads. “The rhetoric of racism, sexism, and xenophobia unleashed by her husband’s presidential campaign are incompatible with the shared values we live by.” 

“I encourage my fellow designers to do the same,” it goes on. In refusing service to Trump, Theallet appealed to “individual freedom” and the idea of her art as an expression of the company’s “artistic and philosophical ideals.” Her announcement was called “noble,” “patriotic,” and “admirable integrity.”

I said at the time, the Christian Bakers had the right to refuse service to gay people on the basis of Artistic Expression.

I agree with the Designer here. She does have the right to refuse service to Melania on First Amendment grounds, simply because she does not want to have her artistic voice associated with the Trumps.

Fashion, Music, Wedding and Event Planning (Cake Decorating falls under this category), Journalism, Fiction writing, etc. These are artistic pursuits.

No artist should be forced to lend his artistic voice to a cause he does not believe in.

That is fine.

However, retail, food outlets, and other general public businesses can not be so choosy.

AND IT MAY NOT BE GOOD FOR BUSINESS, SHOES.COM

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