Much has been spoken about a liberal reporter's rhetorical question to a pizzeria about catering to a gay wedding (the pizzeria doesn't cater anyway, gay or straight). Supposing that a gay couple had in fact actually wanted them to cater to a wedding, and supposing that the pizzeria in question did in fact cater at all, the question remains: should it be legal to turn down business?
This is a fundamental question regarding business and individual rights. The idea that a business is a public entity subject to public management (beyond the basics such as tax assessment, safety regulations, health codes, etc) is essentially a left wing one, a core component of socialism. Socialism is the belief that business and all other activity are in fact subject to the state, and have a much wider (all encompassing, really) view of what constitutes harmful behavior that must be regulated and policed. Opposing this is the idea more prevalent in America (until somewhat recently) and other capitalist republics that the state's fundamental purpose is only to protect its citizens from basic fraud and violence, rather than proactively trying to direct all behavior.
Since most of the most savage attacks against Christian businesses involve hypothetical situations (like the tempest in a teapot over a pizzeria), let's imagine that all of them are fact and not fanciful rhetoric and hyperbole. Should a pizzeria owner be able to reject catering to a gay wedding? If you said no, then I would ask you if they (the owner) be allowed to reject catering to a Neo Nazi wedding. After all, many Nazis would (and in fact, do) claim that they deserve to be free from "discrimination" as well. What about if a strongly pro-homosexual business doesn't want to bake a cake with Bible quotes regarding homosexuality?
You can take it even further: suppose a grocery store doesn't want to sell food to Blacks (this in fact did occur in the Jim Crow south, among other things). How about if an airline doesn't want to fly Arabs (or, more often, Indian Sikhs being confused with Muslim Arabs)? How about a hospital that doesn't want to provide emergency care for a baby with Downs Syndrome? Few would argue that those examples are just, moral, or reasonable. So what's the difference?
The difference is of course necessity and service provided. The extreme examples in the paragraph above reflect basic threats to survival. Denial of emergency care is never legitimate to the overwhelming majority of political ideologies and religions (both of which are intimately related, as they are two sides of the same coin of "worldview"). What about denial of sale of food, though? How about flying? Those are different in that neither represents an emergency. While one might be tempted to say that food is a necessity and not an option (and this is quite true), the reality is that it is rare in the extreme that you will find a situation where one cannot even eat because of discrimination.
Remember Jim Crow? How did the Blacks survive then? The answer is because there is always someone willing to take your money. If there existed a town in which a group had literally nowhere to shop for food, I would immediately scrounge every penny I owned and all I could borrow to open a grocery store. I wouldn't have to even provide a superior product or service. I would simply sit back and enjoy the guaranteed customer flow. Still sounds like a harsh deal? Well don't worry. At some point someone will come along and realize that by providing a higher standard and/or at lower cost my guaranteed income will become theirs instead. I would have to respond with raising quality or lowering costs. Maybe both! What then have I just described? A product that was in demand was catered to with no significant government intervention. Capitalism has just corrected a social injustice, and the cost was born entirely by private persons and entities. It is certainly never that seamless or smooth in practice of course, but the overall principle (and outcome) remains roughly the same in application as in theory.
There are more historical examples of this than there is space in this essay, so I will limit myself to mentioning the bus industry in Montgomery, Alabama in the Civil Rights era. The Blacks of that city boycotted the buses in retaliation for their anger over segregated seating. The courts and legal system at this point had done nothing. Yet the buses caved very quickly to the economic pressure and changed their policies. Without spending a tax dollar they (the activists) had brought the racist policies of that industry to its knees and reversed. Thus when there is legitimate discrimination in regards to business practice, the financial power of the people is still the more effective (and cheaper for the taxpayers) option.
However, under the liberal-socialist mindset, business is not a private thing but a public one, and government is seen as the club for views deemed harmful. Instead of policy and product being the end result of interaction between market demand and business supply, in which the market punishes the inefficient or backward, it is seen as the governments responsibility to intervene and direct business. This naturally results in a worse condition for minorities and unpopular groups, since the inefficiency inherent in government direction tends to create lower quality goods at higher prices and in quantities out of proportion to demand. The quintessential example of this is the Soviet Union in the 80's, where central planners simply could not handle the vast Soviet economy and the inefficiency of the system finally accumulated a critical mass that helped precipitate the collapse of the entire economy and political order.
The mindset of business as public is troubling not only because of its inefficiency and damage, but also because of the power and control it asserts over the individual by the state. If you, as the business owner, decide that your business will adhere to certain tenets and standards (providing they are not criminal in the form of being violent, fraudulent, dishonest, illegal etc), and that you prefer to refuse money than participate in certain private events, then that is illegal and wrong to the leftist. If that mentality prevails, then why not force you to provide services to a group devoted to hatred of your ethnic/religious/political group? If you are a homosexual black Jewish bakery owner, should you be forced to bake me a cake celebrating Adolf Hitler? Complete with slurs against said groups?
Once you have crossed that line, what exactly is preventing the PC police from setting their sights on forcing you to buy from what they deem underpriviliged business? If you are a Christian do you have the right to refuse to buy from Apple? What about a homosexual's right to refuse to buy Chik Fil-A? To "progressives" this is no abstract question. Apple donates heavily in money (and now even in editorial pieces) to Democratic causes, so surely they must be the more enlightened and progressive company? Surely giving your money to others indicates that you're a backward bigot? Do not suppose that I am merely attacking a strawman. To the Left, change and revolution are a constant thing. There is no truly set or well defined future or end point, just a crusade for sometimes wildly changing notions of a Nicer world that depends on endless purging of those Mean conservatives (defined as anyone who disagrees, and after they are gone, anyone who is merely lukewarm, and so on).
Thus the evidence seems overwhelming: if you support the notion of limited government and individual rights, the answer is no, business (aside from emergency rooms) should not be forced to provide business to those they feel they should decline. If you tend to favor a more proactive and involved government (which is what liberals prefer to speak of rather than "big government"), I would still tell you to support that position on the basis of better economic efficiency for you and for minority groups (whom liberals claim to represent above all). I would also point that that under the capitalist system your right to organize boycotts and put economic pressure (which are very much legal and legitimate in a free market system, the customer has the right to choose too) is far more effective in bringing about desired change. If this is truly the land of the free, then let us all be free to buy and sell - and refuse to do so - from any we choose.
