Discrimination should be 100% Legal

A business owner who believes that he can"t conduct business with any person, whether natural or juridical, in defiance of the law and social norms on account of any characteristic, biological or socially constructed, cannot turn around and claim a violation of freedom of choice when he by virtue of entering into the business venture knew he would not have that freedom, given his legal obligations to abide by laws that prohibit the very illogical freedom he is purporting to want to continue to have. Again, you can"t lose a right or a distorted concept of freedom you never had and won"t have upon legally establishing your economic venture. You had a choice: either live being discriminatory or own a business. Our society deems you can"t have both. I have faith that whomever reads this debate can look past the triviality and see that I"m on the right side of history, economics, and humanity, if not by logic( people have a right, right?). You can throw the book of fallacies at me all you want. Because your fallacy is the worst of them all: the appeal to emotion. You cynically use Frederick Douglass" writings on individual freedom and why he could walk away from slavery and a slaveowner( a fallacy unto itself given that Frederick Douglass is not talking about discrimination at all, nor is he talking about business freedom) and try to equivocate it to a seriously misguided view on so many levels. You try to use Frederick Douglass" thought and writings to support something he would have been vehemently against. While I did not directly mention your religious beliefs, there is no doubt that the particular discrimination being discussed here is religious. This kind of advocacy for "freedom to discriminate" proposed by you is prevalent amongst those whom want to be able to deny individuals services based on perceived lifestyle choices that run counter to the businessman"s religious world view. And hence, your claim that the argument is a "straw man" and that "religion has nothing to do with it" are intellectual cop outs designed to woo those whom would dismiss your argumentation the moment they realized what you were really arguing or advocating. I"d like to point out that Because you don"t mention your argument completely and honestly for the community to evaluate it in its true essence, does not prevent one from exposing it. To give a better example, because a state"s rights proponent in the 1860s doesn"t make mention of slavery and racial discrimination in a debate, that doesn"t prevent a person who believes in federalism and abolition to point out that slavery and racial discrimination are what is being proposed and the reasoning proposed along with it. You know well that what you are advocating is the right for someone to deny another a service, good, or other contractual obligation on religious grounds. If that is not your argument, please do clarify what kind of discrimination you talk about. Is it racial discrimination? Is it discrimination on sex? Is discrimination on gender? Is it discrimination on creed? Is it discrimination on marital status? Is it discrimination on social status or class? Discrimination cannot be legal because it goes against the moral, economic, social, and political fabric of our society. It is in direct opposition to the social contract that our ancestors agreed to(albeit in theory first, and through struggle later in practice)that we ratify through continued sanction of the political processes we participate in and approve through the franchise. It flies in the face of the self-evident truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With those principles in mind. Businesses are not human beings. They are legal entities subject to the law. And while acting under the auspices of the law, because they exist so long as they are in good standing, they must act in accordingly. And that means not discriminating. What"s being discusses here is not just the downside to discriminating. What"s being debated here is that you are debating a point that quite frankly is moot. Business should not discriminate because they cannot discriminate. It is the law. Society views that discriminatory practices have no place in an economic transaction. The laws of economics have proved that discriminatory practices go against the intrinsic nature of businesses And a business owner when conducting his business is acting under the auspices of the state and not as an individual(despite people not understandable legal theories involved)..