[DaTruth]

Originally Posted by brianwspencer

Forever I will never understand the conflation of "free speech" with "speech without consequences" that conservatives love SO much.

The "free speech" portion of this discussion ended when Cathy said what he said. That's what free speech is -- his right to say what he did.

Not his right to avoid a boycott, be called out for his views, or lose business over it if that's what happened. That's not an issue of free speech -- ironically enough, it's an issue of a free market economy and people wanting go vote with their dollars. But when it comes to hating gays, all logic goes out the window.

This is hardly an issue of free speech. Nobody censored Cathy or denied him his right to say what he did. That's the only portion of this that had anything to do with "free speech" and the First Amendment, and the First Amendment worked just fine in this case.

Same thing happened with the Mormon lady in Cali whose restaurant got boycotted after it was found out that she donated to the effort to repeal gay marriage in California. All the gay-hating conservatives got all worked up about her right to free speech, pretending that her restaurant being boycotted for what she said and did had ANYTHING at all to do with the First Amendment.

What a bunch of disingenuous hacks.

You are absolutely correct that freedom of speech is not involved when consumers vote with their feet and pocketbooks in response to a company's position. However, the issue leaves the marketplace of ideas and enters the arena of First Amendment rights when you have local elected officials use their position of power to make implicit threats against the company because of the its President's beliefs. For example, the mayor of Boston wrote, "I urge you to back out of your plans to locate in Boston." I don't know how things are done where you live, but it is fairly easy in many cities to harass a potential business with byzantine zoning regulations and enforcement of various codes that involve a lot of discretion.