Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Note: I know that this article may seem a little dated, since most of the incidents that are mentioned in it are at least seven months old. I had written this article several months ago, but it kept getting pushed to the back every time something new happened. Still, I believe that while the incidents in the article may seem dated, the concept of Freedom of Association will remain timeless.

About seven months ago, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service at a restaurant called The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. Apparently, the owner couldn’t stomach serving somebody who worked for an administration that was “inhumane” and “unethical” as she put it. I want to point out that the owner was well within her rights to refuse service to anyone that she felt was unfit. I whole heartedly believe in the concept of Freedom of Association, where you can pick and choose who you want to do business with. Nobody has a right to your goods or your services and if they did, it would create a form of involuntary servitude that the Thirteenth Amendment specifically prohibits. Though what the owner failed to understand was that Freedom of Association is a concept that works both ways.

Not too long after the incident at the Red Hen had been publicized, the restaurant experienced backlash from Trump Supporters who held protests and called for boycotts. The owner hoping that she could wait out the firestorm, decided to close the family eatery down for a month. Unfortunately, the blowback has not only cost the Red Hen serious revenue, but the entire town which relies on revenue from tourism, had to dip into its emergency funds because of the fiasco that was created by the Red Hen’s owner. As I have said before, Freedom of Association is a two-way street. Owners are free to refuse service to anyone they want, but at the same time their patrons have a right to take their money elsewhere. It’s just too bad that whole town had to suffer because of the self-righteous bigotry of one restaurant owner.

It reminds me of another incident that involved a restaurant owner who not only used social media to advertise her new restaurant, but to show her utter distain for anyone who happens to own an AR-15. She said that all AR-15 owners should stay clear of her restaurant. This led to a bunch of angry gun owners calling for a boycott, which forced her to take down her posts about refusing service to AR-15 owners. As I have said before, it’s a two-way street.

In those two particular cases, while the owners certainly had a right to refuse service to cliental that they didn’t like, I don’t believe that it made good business sense. Now, there are times when refusing service did make sense, such as the case of a Starbucks shop that refused to allow non-paying customers (an oxymoron if I heard one) to use their restroom. Unfortunately for the manger who was responsible for enforcing this policy, she would later get thrown under the bus, when these same freeloaders went crying to their race-baiting community activists about how they were discriminated against. Never mind that there are several shops, gas stations and restaurants who have the exact same policy about only allowing paying customers to use their facilities. I know that those men had given same lame excuse about how they were waiting for a friend to join them so that they could complete some sort of business transaction, (while wearing gym apparel), but that still doesn’t put them in the right. The purpose of Starbucks is to sell coffee, not to provide a meeting place for your friends. If they didn’t want to order their coffee right away, they could have bought bottled water or a pastry, until their friend arrived. Instead one of these entitled freeloaders believed that the rules of the shop didn’t apply to him. On top of that they showed a blatant disregard for the concept of private property by refusing to leave, even when the police came to drag them off the grounds. Sadly, the corporate stooges who run Starbucks decided that they cared more about appearing progressive than they did about the sanctity of their rules. They not only fired the manager who enforced the restroom policy, but they decided to close down their shops so that they could dedicate an entire day to “diversity training.” Of course, the downside to this extreme form of virtual signaling is that it has led to many instances of homeless people and drug addicts using Starbucks restrooms as their new campgrounds because they now know that the employees of these shops are going to be too scared to tell these people to take a hike. This is where I think Freedom of Association does make perfect business sense.

Whenever I talk about Freedom of Association I always have people whine about how we will end up going back to the days of Jim Crowe, if we allow this freedom to become absolute. Really? Do you really think a business who openly discriminates against minorities in 2019 is actually going to last more than a month before it goes under? Also, if you do any research on the subject, most businesses during the Jim Crowe era were forced by state and local governments to discriminate against their patrons. Why? Because there were businesses that cared more about the color of money than they did about the color of somebody’s skin, so they would take the business that their competitors rejected. The segregationists knew about this, so they not only passed laws that forced businesses to become segregated, but they created inspectors to make sure that laws were being followed.

Libertarian YouTuber Shane Killian once said that he would rather see businesses show their bigotry upfront, to make it easier for him to decide whether or not to give them his patronage. I couldn’t agree more. I can definitely say that I would never consider giving my business to the Red Hen or any other restaurant run by a self-righteous political bigot, who makes people with opposing viewpoints feel unwelcomed. That is why I never thought it made any practical sense for a gay couple to force a Christian baker to make them a wedding cake. Why would you want to give your business to someone that doesn’t make you feel welcomed? Also, people may not realize it, but there is a certain cost for a business that engages in discriminatory practices. The pickier one is about his cliental, the less money he will find in his pocket. That’s what the Red Hen had to learn the hard way.