Anybody who refers to the United States as a free enterprise, free market, or capitalist economy is wrong. Real liberty and freedom mean that individuals, including business owners, may choose to associate with whomever they wish based on whatever criteria they wish. This is not the case in the United States.

The Oregon-based Sweet Cakes bakery has been ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple for their ceremony. The couple had filed a complaint with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries in 2013 after the bakery refused them, and legal proceedings ensued.

In December of 2017, the Oregon State Court of Appeals upheld the decision to force the bakery to pay the couple for damages. According to Brad Avakian, Oregon’s labor commissioner, “Today’s ruling sends a strong signal that Oregon remains open to all. …Within Oregon’s public accommodations law is the basic principles of human decency that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, has the freedom to fully participate in society.”

Far from ensuring freedom in America, this ruling is a direct blow to liberty.

Far from ensuring freedom in America, this ruling is a direct blow to liberty. The Christian bakery owners believe that marriage should only exist between a man and woman, which is their religious conviction. Many other people might believe these bakers’ approach to religion is ridiculous or evil. However, what these bakery owners did was run their own business according to their own convictions.

The argument against them is that if they are open for business, they should serve everyone. But why should the lesbian couple — or anyone else — have a right to purchase the labor of these bakery owners?

A legitimate function of government is to protect and enforce contracts and property rights. The problem with the Oregon case is that it was never the couples’ right to purchase the private property (i.e., cake) of the bakers. Nobody owes anybody anything other than what two or more parties agree upon in a voluntary contract.

Big Government Must Allow Business Owners to Make Their Own Decisions

The same would not be true if a business was receiving taxpayer subsidies: all types of people are forced to pay taxes to the government, and those business subsidies are ultimately being extracted from taxpayers.

Furthermore, it would be against the free market philosophy if the government prevented a certain group from engaging in commercial transactions or if the government ordered business owners to discriminate against certain groups.

Throughout American history, we have had immoral government laws that enforced segregation. Even the most close-minded, intolerant, prejudiced person who claims to believe in liberty and freedom would have to be against those laws, even if the laws personally benefited them or discriminated against people they hated. The difference is that the government enforced the discrimination. The true supporter of liberty and freedom believes decisions regarding business and association should not be mandated by a government.

So if the government prevented a lesbian couple from opening a bakery, then a supporter of liberty, even a Christian supporter of liberty who regarded homosexual behavior as sinful, would have to be against that — because now it would be the government interfering in the market.

Nothing is free, including discrimination. The free market system would admittedly allow private businesses to discriminate, but this would come at a cost; lost business. Nothing is free, including discrimination. For instance, I personally would not patronize a business that had racist policies or other policies that personally offend me. Any store that had such policies would lose me as a customer. But that should be my choice, rather than a government-enforced choice.

In other words, those who believe in liberty believe we should let the market — individuals’ voluntary buying and abstinence from buying — support or punish businesses that discriminate.

When an individual supports free markets and liberty, and thus supports the right of bakery owners to decide what weddings to sell cakes for, this does not mean the believer in liberty is mean-spirited or “intolerant.” What it does mean is that the supporter of liberty believes the government should be a referee and not a player in the game, and that liberty belongs to all individuals, including business owners.

Reprinted from Learn Liberty.