Point in case - people bringing up the gay cake in mentioning of google memogate.
Is a bus company right to refuse service to protesters going to a protest? Can a train company cancel trains specifically on a day of event they don't like for some reason? Can cellphone carrier shut down service for people they don't like for some reason? Can gas station refuse selling gas to skinheads on a roadtrip? What if they're just going to work on a regular workday?
1. Protected classes are defined by a history of prejudicial treatment and blocked access to essential services, and they exist as a class of people defined by biological markers. So you can control being black or being gay, and you can’t access any bus service or use the same water fountain anywhere. This is very different than holding an opinion, and not being serviced by an add-on provider. 2. There are great differences between being denied a voice and being denied an amplification platform for that voice. We never mandated that newspapers print every letter to the editor, or even provide equal time to classes of opinions (although that did happen in a natural way).
If you tried to get a cake plastered with swastikas, that would not be protected free speech and could be denied service. You have to go find a Nazi baker or append the speech yourself. This is very different from being black and you can not get any cake from any baker, and they’ll know too, because you can’t exactly hide the fact that you’re black.
Christians have enough of hard time for their believes in quite a few places. Why are they less protected than gays? Why is their freedom of speech is worth less than gays?
One could argue that gay cake is not biologically defined marker. For example, by christian believe, marriage is to make babies. Gays can't make babies. Thus gay marriage is not biologically even possible.
Then we step into another issue. Frequently "protected class" is taken as free pass to do anything rather than being protected for their specific attribute. For example, people being called racists for rightfully calling out black person for his bad behaviour.
No, that's totally wrong. Religion is a protected class in many cases.
We see this in the offline world, ADA compliance can be expensive, but is a cost of doing business. Providing services to someone you find morally repugnant can be emotionally expensive, but you may not be able to legally refuse them service, while servicing others. It's not clear to me why it's ok to pick and choose customers because of their (terrible) political beliefs, offline or online. If their content is illegal, let a court decide that and issue an order requiring it to be taken down. The domain registration, and associated NS records are unlikely to be illegal.
I’ve heard “freedom of speech” defined as a natural right, but this idea is the most unnatural way for people to act.