In a perfect world, business owners would be free to legally boot customers from their premises whom they don’t want to serve. In a perfect world, we would be free to exercise our beliefs and provide service only to people with whom we want to do business. In a perfect world, our property, including the services we provide, would be ours to do with as we please, and we would be free to face the consequences of our boneheaded decisions.

Don’t want to bake a cake for a gay person or a black person? Get ready for an avalanche of shitty reviews online, a deluge of new businesses popping up in your area that would pick up those customers with a smile, and those who think you’re an asshole, including those gay and black people you refuse to serve, taking their business elsewhere until you are left with nothing but a few drooling bigots who think it’s perfectly OK to discriminate against people patronizing your failing establishment.

That would be my perfect world.

The government wouldn’t get involved in private transactions between customer and business owner. It wouldn’t dictate with whom you can and cannot do business. The government wouldn’t have to destroy your livelihood with onerous, unevenly applied rules and regulations; you will have done so yourself by putting your ignorance and bigotry on display for the world to see and losing business because of it.

We should have every right to be an asshole. We should also face the consequences of our assholery (it’s a word now – I proclaim it) in the form of lost business, reputational damage, and eventual demise.

The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits:

…discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. Places of “public accommodation” include hotels, restaurants, theaters, banks, health clubs and stores.

Discrimination against the disabled is also illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and many states have already implemented protections that prohibit discrimination against homosexuals.

Recently, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Lexington restaurant where she was dining with her family, because the owner believed that Sanders worked for an “inhumane and unethical” administration. In other words, Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, VA, didn’t like Sanders’ boss, didn’t like his policies, and didn’t like Sanders defending her boss’s policies to the media. She didn’t want to do business with Sanders. She didn’t discriminate against Sanders based on race, color, religion or national origin; she discriminated against Sanders based on her values and morals, and she was willing to take the financial hit for it.

.@PressSec got kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va tonight. Apparently the owner didn’t want to serve her and her party out of moral conviction. pic.twitter.com/jr3bfiY3XY

— Brennan Gilmore (@brennanmgilmore) June 23, 2018

Yes, I think Wilkinson is a jerk. Yes, I believe she’s a narrow-minded, intolerant bigot who cannot permit those who hold political views with which she disagrees to have a meal in peace at her establishment.

But I also think this is her right.

Just like I support the right of Colorado baker Jack Phillips to refuse to lend his talent to an event with which he disagreed.

Except in the case of Masterpiece Cake shop, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that Phillips must make said cake for said event, even if it went against his religious principles.

Meanwhile, I’m fairly sure Wilkinson won’t face legal action for tossing Sanders out of her restaurant.

For her part, Sanders was nothing but class.

Sanders’s response was immediate, Wilkinson said: “‘That’s fine. I’ll go.’”

Sanders went back to the table, picked up her things and walked out. The others at her table had been welcome to stay, Wilkinson said. But they didn’t, so the servers cleared away the cheese plates and glasses.

“They offered to pay,” Wilkinson said. “I said, ‘No. It’s on the house.’”

Gee, how magnanimous! When you eject a customer out of your restaurant because you simply don’t like her boss’s policies, she offers to pay and abides by your “request” (because, what kind of imbecile would want to eat food in a place where she is obviously not welcome?), the least you can do is not force them to pay for the discriminatory humiliation you just heaped upon them!

Later, Sanders tweeted about the experience, showing yet more class than Wilkinson and the restaurant staff who were apparently “concerned” about having to provide service to someone with whom they disagreed.

Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) June 23, 2018

Good for Sanders! She stood head and shoulders above the bigots who worked and owned that restaurant, and frankly, her money is best spent elsewhere. The last thing you want to do is force someone who hates you to serve you food. I’ve worked in a restaurant, and I’ve seen what the staff does to food of patrons they consider assholes. No thanks! I’m on extra good behavior to everyone when I walk into an establishment that prepares my food!

In a perfect world, we would be allowed to be as petty, narrow-minded, bigoted, reactionary, and unhinged as we want. We would be allowed to turn away anyone we want for any reason with impunity except for the consequences brought on by the free market.

Because it’s our business, our property, and our talent (whether art, cake-decorating, preparing a delicious meal, or making a flower arrangement), and we should be able to engage in a business transaction with anyone we deem suitable or not.

The Red Hen currently sports a Facebook rating of 2.6 stars, with 29,000 one-star ratings, and similar reviews have rolled in on Yelp. Yelp is now “cleaning up” the ratings on this restaurant, because it made news in a not so positive light. In a perfect world, we would be allowed to leave a poor review, not based on the food, but based on the fact that this restaurant’s staff would refuse service to someone based on political beliefs – just a step above skin color.

The very same leftard proglodytes who stand and applaud Wilkinson for booting out a paying customer who only wanted to have a meal in peace because said customer doesn’t toe their ideological line because PRINCIPLES, are shrieking like wounded gargoyles because someone dares refuse to cater a gay wedding because of their religious principles.

In a perfect world, standards would be applied equally.

In the social justice-dominated apocalypse where we currently reside, an author can be disinvited from a convention based on the hysterical shrieks of social justice zealots who don’t like said author’s views. In this dystopia, literary awards are given to authors who practice only the right kind of thinking and write the right kind of characters. In this world, a restaurant owner can kick out a customer based on political views, and a gym owner can rudely get in the face of the President’s daughter with impunity, because it’s woke and en vogue to hate Trump.

In a perfect world, both sets of bigots would face free market consequences.

In this world, “right thinking” groups are protected, while “wrongthinkers” are punished via government force.

Don’t believe me? Talk to Jack Phillips.