Chick-fil-A has been catching flak from a number of people who are upset over comments made by its CEO regarding marriage. In response to the CEO’s opposition to gay marriage, several politicians, at least in Chicago and Boston, have said, more or less, that they will not allow the restaurant chain to open any new locations in their cities. This is of course morally repugnant, that one man has the power, or at least claims the power, to prevent individuals and businesses from engaging in voluntary trade, as Laurence Vance noted on the LRC blog yesterday.
Interestingly enough, the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe published editorials defending Chick-fil-A, arguing that only if there were restaurant locations refusing service to gays would there be any cause for legal sanctions. While this is legally true, since we live in a time and place where there is no such thing as genuine rights to private property, it’s certainly not morally right. Chick-fil-A, and any other business, should be free to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Of course they’d be in the position of alienating a large segment of the market, thereby limiting the pool of potential customers and likely sending them to competing restaurants, but that’s how freedom works.
