Free will to murder someone woot woot. Wait hang on...maybe free will doesn't always take precedent.

Oh **** I just broke the new rule. Sorry.

That violates the NAP

Holds about as much weight for me as saying it violates Harry Potter's Constitution.

If you're in business, you're not working against your will during business hours for any paying customer abiding by any reasonable standards. Nobody's forcing you to operate a business that makes money, you can close down and get out of the business, or you can serve everybody. There's really no gray area when it comes to operating a business that's legitimate and in compliance with US regulations.

Gender and sex rights are basic human civil liberties. Now, in order to put these "human" liberties ahead of gender/persuasion liberties you have to either be naive and not realize the weight of your beliefs, or you have to be pretty damn ignorant. Considering you admittedly support discrimination over protections, it seems to be the latter.

If you're worried about tyranny, I can assure you that Hitler wasn't aided by protections of gays and jews, or checks and balances to businesses power to refuse service to said minority groups. Actually, if it's liberty you're after, the founders of this nation, while of varying backgrounds, agreed on checks and balances to power.

Jesus Christ, do you honestly not understand the difference between banning someone from your store because they've stolen merchandise which costs you money and banning someone because they're black or gay? I call bull****.

They don't have to condone it, and they don't have to run a business, but if they want to run a business they've gotta follow the rules. That should make a decent amount of sense, but for some reason I think it may be lost on you.

Another thing is that calling this ruling fascism shows a limited understanding of what fascism is. Fascism limits the freedom of an individual. This ruling was meant to preserve the freedom of individuals. Allowing people to deny those freedoms to others because of their religious beliefs would be holding an institution (religion) above the individual and isn't fascism either, but it's a tiny bit closer.

He hasn’t moved the goal post around. He’s given various hypotheticals in defense of a consistent position: People shouldn’t be forced by the government to do things they don’t believe in. People are up in arms because he’s putting economic liberty in front of social reform to prevent discrimination. The Libertarian position is that if you’re not actively trespassing on others the government should not intervene.

My thoughts:
Even if you take the position that eliminating discrimination is more important than the liberty to run your own business as you see fit everyone should be able to see there’s a social cost either way. The government enforces laws by force. As an anarchist, I want the government to exert no force but less force is better than more force. That’s why I have some sympathy for Merit’s position. I also have issues with it but I see where he’s coming from.

Let me give what I think is a fair equivalency. Let’s say I’m, not surprisingly, a free speech absolutist.

In today’s world, walking around with a sign that advocates genocide against African Americans would be offensive but I support your right to say it.

100 years ago it would have been more offensive to most people to advocate for interracial gay sex. A free speech absolutist would have supported your right to say that as well. It’s not about the position but the right to speak freely.

It’s not exactly the same but the Libertarian perspective of no or very limited workplace interference is also a position that can be rooted in a desire for maximum freedom not as a means to support discrimination. Discrimination, like hate speech, is an unfortunate side effect in a world that isn’t perfect.

Now, I’m not a Libertarian because I don’t believe in private property and money. None-the-less I think you’re unfairly maligning the philosophy.

That’s too bad, because drawing a line at real aggression is a cornerstone to personal freedom.

While I'm trying to keep it generally constructive, I malign Merit's opinions because he's a ridiculous incarnation of libertarianism, much like I've argued with ridiculous arguments from liberals on here who I've agreed with to an extent.

As far as your comment I thought it was well written and agree to an extent. Would you say that in the modern day that businesses more closely represent governments than individuals? I would. That's why I'm more comfortable with putting limitations on how they can operate in terms of how they treat their customers: because they're put in a position of power and any chance to abuse that will be sprung on. That's all within reason though because too much regulation can choke out everybody except for corporations, but this isn't one of those cases.

Like I said, it's a good place to start but it's not absolute.

Governments. In America today business is the strongest “branch” of government. So... yeah, in the real world, not the world of the rare mom and pop exception, or the world of hypotheticals, you have the better argument and correct position. However, vision is also important, and the vision of society functioning with as little government as possible is an important one. The Libertarian vision is becoming more and more irrelevant (see universal basic income thread) but still, I wish people could at least explain it without peppering it with bigotry and hatred.