Freedom To Discriminate, Ctd.

Drum draws a line in the sand:

Laws guaranteeing religious freedom are fine as long as they cover actual religious practice.  But once they start covering bog ordinary commercial establishments that don't have even a tenuous connection to a church and want to discriminate merely because they don't like gays well, that's a line that gets pretty hard to draw pretty fast.   What's worse, in some places it's a line that would essentially take over entire towns.  If a caterer can refuse to sell me a wedding cake just because I'm gay despite state law that would normally outlaw such discrimination can a landlord refuse to rent me and my newly married partner an apartment despite fair housing laws saying he has to?

I haven't thought this through in a lot of detail, but I'm uncomfortable extending these "religious freedom" exemptions beyond actual religious establishments.  I'm all for compromise that turns down the volume on the culture wars, but once these laws are in place they run the risk of cementing bigoted practices in place for years or decades longer than they'd otherwise survive.  Count me as a skeptic that, in the long run, this is workable.