Originally Posted by Frownland

the state was asked "are you going to allow businesses to deny rights to customers on the basis of sexual orientation?" Once it reached the courts, the state then had to make a firm stance in the form of law. They said "lemme check the current laws aight" and found that allowing for rights to be denied is the same as directly denying them based on longstanding precedent. They're not allowed to do that, so disallowing discrimination was the obvious choice.