Tim Cook Speaks Out Against “Religious Freedom” Laws
Apple has come a long way from Steve Jobs’s open letters about DRM, Flash, and the firm’s environmental efforts. In a Washington Post op-ed, Apple CEO Tim Cook criticizes state laws that he says “would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors,” such as Indiana’s controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which some say opens the door to discrimination against LGBT individuals. Invoking his childhood in the South during the civil rights movement, Cook moves from noting that “America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business,” to the more humanistic “This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings.”
Of course it's discrimination and was intended to be so. The Supreme Court set the agenda when they ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby. It makes me proud to see a successful business take the lead in speaking out.
A business owner should have the right to refuse doing business with anyone. A bartender should be able to refuse to sell booze to someone who is under the influence without the threat of discrimination. The problem is the LGBT community is acting like the mafia and looking to make examples of anyone who disagrees with their beliefs, but won't make any concessions with rage business owner. The LGBT tolerance agenda is a one way street in their favor. If I was a baker or photographer and I was forced to do business because of a threat of a lawsuit, the customers would feel sorry with rh results. The cake would be awful or the photos would be poor quality. There's two ways to skin a cat.
This was basically Rand Paul's argument to Rachel Maddow in his last run for president, and he had to backpedal. It should be just as illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ as it should be to discriminate against race or ethnicity. Business owners don't work in a vacuum. They're part of a society that helps them BE in business, from beginning to end, and refusing customers because of difference bias is antithetical to that reality. You don't get to refuse service at your lunch counter to Black people.
I'm not sure which "beliefs" you're talking about, as those vary widely, but if you're talking about same-sex orientation, that is not a belief anymore than heterosexuality is a belief.
Fortunately, Tim Cook is socially aware enough to know all of that (not just re: LGBTQ), and Indiana's law won't stand much longer.
What would religious conservatives (who are often skeptical of science and other liberal touchstones) do if companies founded by liberals like Facebook, Apple, Google, Twitter, etc opted to bar the use of their services to bigots like these select Indiana citizens? What platform would they use to proselytize their snake oil?