Interesting lesson in that first one...

The argument that someone acting in such a prejudice manner toward a protected class is "only hurting themselves" and "their business will fail". To that I reply: http://kdvr.com/...es-service-to-gay-couple/

In other words, such bias is so alive and well today that it can actually improve your business. Just as refusing to allow blacks to enter your premise in the south used to attract more business from like-minded whites.

Incidentally, both of those cases are still working their way through the legal process (appeals) and are not yet fully resolved.

It is great that we're sorting through this. It will take time. But anyone who chooses to ignore how an individual decision is related to a societal construct is being willfully ignorant. Racism in the South isn't about a single person's exercise of belief, it is about the resulting systematic inequality in society that results from the aggregate of those individual actions. You cannot agree with eliminating racism yet at the same time argue that every individual's racist actions must be protected. It doesn't work.