Public Accommodations and Private Discrimination
Civil-rights statutes are limited to specific situations. The religious-freedom laws in Indiana and Arkansas were not.
Garrett Epps
Apr 14 2015, 6:00 AM ET
The Reverend William Barclay had been a Baptist minister for nearly half a century before he bested Caesar in mortal combat.
Barclay operated the All Faiths Wedding Chapel in Wichita, Kansas. For a fee, he performed religious weddings for couples—whether or not they were members of his church. “I don’t marry ‘em if they’ve been drinking, and I don’t marry them if they don’t have the right attitude,” he told one reporter. He also didn’t marry them if they were of different races. Scripture had convinced Barclay that he should not offer his services to interracial couples. God didn’t want the races to mix, he said. He would allow other ministers to marry those couples in his chapel, but he wouldn’t do it himself.
A local prosecutor filed a criminal information against Barclay, alleging that his religious policy violated a state statute that required providers of “personal or professional services” to serve all willing customers, regardless of “race, color, ancestry, national origin or religion.” Barclay was briefly jailed before a court order freed him.
In 1985, when Barclay’s case reached the Kansas Supreme Court, the justices said to the prosecutor, in essence: “What are you, stupid?”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/public-accommodations-and-private-discrimination/390435/