Fox's Shannon Bream Asks Why Business Owners Shouldn't Be Allowed To Discriminate Against Gays
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the February 27 edition of Fox News' The Kelly File:
Transcript begins at 1:25:
BERNARD GOLDBERG: And my take was that I understand the concern of social conservatives, religious people. I understand that. But if you open a shop on Main Street, open to the general public, Then you have to really serve the general public. And you can't say, “Well, I'm not going to serve these people, but I will serve those people.” And a lot of the people commenting on this --
BREAM: Why not? Why not? I mean, this is America. We all have freedoms. I mean, why would you want to do business with somebody, no matter what your personal issue was that they had with you, why would you want to force them to do business with you? Why not just go down the street and say, “I'm going to spend my money to somebody who supports me and is kind to me and wants to help me and provide these services for me.”
GOLDBERG: OK. Let's take that argument to its logical conclusion. Let's say it's not a social conservative Christian who opens the shop but a devout Muslim who opens up a restaurant in your town, wherever your town is. And the woman goes in for lunch, and he says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't come into this restaurant. You need to be here with a man. Those are my deeply-held religious beliefs. OK?”
BREAM: I probably wouldn't want to eat there.
GOLDBERG: And by the way -- but -- well, that's up to you to not want to eat there, but you know, would you have made this argument in 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, when four black college students went to Woolworth and sat at the lunch counter where they were not wanted and said, “I want lunch.” They are American heroes, because they didn't get up and say, “I'm not wanted here. I'll go someplace else.”
BREAM: Absolutely.
GOLDBERG: What happened was, within a day, a few more people came in. Then a few more; then a few more. And that turned the civil rights movement around, in large part.
BREAM: OK. Let me ask you about this, because there are several people --
GOLDBERG: That's why you shouldn't just go to another place.
BREAM: There are many people who lived through the civil rights movement. I cannot speak to that, obviously, that not being my personal experience. They -- many of them held a press conference this week, African-American pastors and others, who said we lived through that. We felt the pain of that, and for us we do not appreciate this particular fight being equated to our civil rights fight. I mean, some of them find that objectionable.
GOLDBERG: Well, that's their call, I happen to disagree with them. In the 1960s, the argument was state's rights. “We don't have to serve anybody we don't want to serve. I opened the business with my money. I'm taking all the risks. If I don't want to serve people I don't have to.” The only thing that's new --
BREAM: I'm sorry. I hate to leave it there. But we're out of time.
Previously:
Fox's Shannon Bream Suggests Businesses Have A Right To Discriminate Against Gay People
Fox's Tucker Carlson: It's “Fascism” For Businesses To Have To Treat Gay Customers Equally