It's strange that you would make a slippery slope argument in this context, because a slippery slope is the situation we're already in. If there are going to be circumstances in which a company refuses service, I'd rather they be a) decided on democratically and b) visible to everyone in the RSA, rather than behind an opaque corporate structure. The current situation is much worse.

morality is relevant, rarely people that is doing something that we think immoral see their acts as immoral too.

"Shouldn't a company, regardless of the service they provide, be free to establish their own conditions under which they will act or not act?"

like a restaurant in south refusing to serve blacks? with restaurant you have at least some options, but with businesses with monopoly finding an alternative is very hard or expensive.

>like a restaurant in south refusing to serve blacks?

Which would be illegal as race is a legally protected status.

Isn't sexual identity / orientation protected as well? These companies are banning clients for simply talking about sex.

That seems like a grey area but it's treading pretty close to discrimination in my mind.

Then again, should Google be forced to put adsense ads on a porn site? Really murky territory.

> Isn't sexual identity / orientation protected as well?

Nope. As I understand it, sexual orientation is not officially a protected class[0]. Seems like it should be, but it isn't.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

> Isn't sexual identity / orientation protected as well?

It is not protected under federal public accommodation law like race is.

Gender identity and sexual orientation are each protected under minority of state laws (overlapping but not identical minorities, IIRC.)

> That seems like a grey area but it's treading pretty close to discrimination in my mind.

It's absolutely discrimination. The question is whether it is or should be illegal discrimination.

Yes. It is now.

Legislation to make it illegal was an act of society deciding that an otherwise-legal business decision was so unpalatable it must be prevented. -- That's what makes it such a good hypothetical. You can ask yourself "if such business decisions were legal, should they be prevented or discouraged? And what mechanisms would be appropriate?"

So I don't understand your point. Yes, it's illegal now.

Are you arguing for companies to always operate as they see fit, as long as it's legal, and regardless of moral opinions of anyone other than themselves?

Are you arguing that there shouldn't be any moral-based laws to stop discrimination like this one?

Are you making a point that companies should be stopped from making immoral decisions with the force of law beyond the current limitations?

Are you making a point that the current set of groups legislation gives legal protection perfectly overlaps with the set of groups that that morally should have protection from otherwise-legal business decisions?

Are you simply being a pedant about the current boundaries of law without meaningful contribution to clean up the hypothetical or clarify the questions raised by the conversation at hand?

It was legal when they were doing it! Legal != ethical

Race, being an immutable characteristic of a human being, is quite different from restrictions on the nature of created content.

What about religion? Religion is, strictly speaking, mutable. But, for me at least, saying "no Muslims" or "no Sikhs" is the same level of badness as saying "no blacks".

Religion is a tricky one.... It is mutable, but most people (a) don't change their religion in their lifetime and (b) use religion as a proxy signal for social identity, including many things that aren't mutable.

In practice: I'd take the bet that a white person of Muslim faith could get around a "no Muslims" rule most of the time. "No Muslims", then, can be a proxy for "no middle-Eastern looking folks".

Until your private education or health services starts turning people away based on race/religion/political affiliation

There are already laws against discrimination by protected status (race/religion count), and laws about access to health services.

To my (admittedly weak) understanding, those laws affect employment, government agencies, and the ability to get any sort of government funding/aid. Are there laws that actually require organizations to allow membership in or provide services for all people? That doesn't seem workable.

Not only is this workable, but there was a whole movement around these issues in the 1960s called the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is one of the results of that movement, and this law makes it illegal for a store to refuse service on the basis of race, for example. This is why you don't see signs saying "No Coloreds" in stores any more.

Other laws, like the ADA and FHA, have expanded on this, and individual states have broader protections. Look at the case of Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Oregon, which was fined for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple.

For emergency care, look up the EMTLA. There are many other regulations centered on discrimination and health care, that's just one of them.

Which gets really complicated really quickly. There are plenty of cases of benign exclusivity, and plenty of cases of less than benign exclusivity, even in those areas you specifically pointed out.

The horse has LONG left that barn since the "public accommodation" doctrine of the Civil Rights Act. Should Christian bakers be able to refuse catering a gay wedding?

We've got specific exceptions written into law for the things society deems appropriate.

Thats a lot different than 'allow everything with no judgement'

At which point you have the government making the decision what to mandate.

If the service is important enough that it has to be mandated in some cases then why shouldn't it be mandated in all cases? If it isn't that important, why should it be mandated in any case?

I'm a big fan of "allow everything with no judgement" to be honest. The principles and morals of some will always offend the sensibilities of others. What gives us the right to codify into law which reasons are just and which are not?

Obviously, but that doesn't really mean anything other than reiterating the OP's point.

Didn't the Supreme Court already decide this? Something along the lines of "prioritize the law, not morals"?

How about refusing to sell someone a cake?

That's not how the US presently works -- see things like the ADA or discrimination laws, which regulate how a business may deny service and what accommodations for customers they must provide.

It's not absurd that an essential civil service -- payment processing -- should be regulated to uphold our collective standards of freedom, and not use their privileged position to impose their private moral standards on society.