Sans any laws to the contrary, the common law was that you could serve or refuse anyone for any reason or no reason at all.

The exceptions to this are statutory and the bases for them is an entire long discussion.

The bulk of the cases involving so-called “gay persons” involve people who have purposely revealed and in a number of cases specifically selected individuals known to have strong religious beliefs.

This offends most Americans’ sense of fair play and is leading to a backlash which appears to be taking shape in a movement for the exemption of small family-owned businesses like bakeries with some form of “conscientious objection”.