This is a very important point, and one all too frequently overlooked by commentators who complain that laws prohibting discrimination based on sexual orientation threaten religious liberty. If a Christian innkeeper’s religious freedom is harmed by being forced to accommodate a same-sex couple, then a Muslim innkeeper would have an equally strong claim that his freedom is harmed by being forced to accommodate unmarried women, or women who don’t cover their heads, for example. Is a shopkeeper who believes that graven images are blasphemous have a right to refuse service to a Catholic who wears a crucifix? There are endless examples, and they all point to the reasons why we don’t allow religious exemptions simply because a businessperson has strongly held religous views.

In the case of discrimination laws, there’s also an added element of inquiring into the actor’s motive that does not exist in the relevant criminal contexts – if you’re bringing someone up on a drug charge, you don’t need to prove that they had a bad reason for having the drugs, just that they knowingly possessed the drugs; on the other hand, if you’re going to file a discrimination suit against someone, you need to be able to show not only a prima facie case of discrimination, but also that their proffered, non-discriminatory reasons for discriminating are merely pretexts. In the case of a religious organization arguing that they refused to marry a couple not because they hate gays but because gay marriage is against their religious doctrine, there’s no way for a court (which is an institution of the State) to reach a decision on whether that rationale is pretextual without engaging in a rigorous inquiry into the legitimacy of the church’s doctrine.

There is arguably a distinction to be made where you’re dealing with an employer who happens to be a member of the church rather than the church qua church on the grounds that an employee’s private activities are not conceivably relevant to the performance of his job. In other words, it’s intrinsically true that part of the job description of a Catholic priest or a Baptist minister or a Muslim imam or a Jewish Rabbi is being a good Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, or Jew; however, in most forms of lay employment, being a good Catholic, Baptist, Muslim, or Jew is probably not relevant to one’s job description.

I think that the government, of course, ought to not have a lock on permits for restaurants, of course. If the Baptists want to open a restaurant, the government should pretty much rubber-stamp their application. I oppose the very idea of making things really easy for Methodists to open a diner but to put roadblocks in front of Baptists…

But I’m one of those evil people who think that the Methodist Diner should be allowed to have a smoking section too, if the owner is inclined to allow smoking on his property. They can put a sign in the window:
“Cigarettes YES! Bapists NO!”

And if you don’t want to eat at the diner, you don’t have to. You can go to the Baptist diner down the road. They don’t smoke, or drink, or chew, or date the girls who do. It’s a much nicer environment to get a cuppa and a slice of pie. No cigarette smoke or nothing.