Patrick Stewart, a pro-gay actor, has sided with a bakery that was spanked for refusing to bake a cake in celebration of a same-sex wedding. Typical Libertarian bullshit (though I am told he is a socialist?), spinning this as some kind of individual-rights issue.

It's not.

The reason it doesn't work that way is that in many cases, people can not simply take their business elsewhere. That is why the government (or in this case, that government) has measures in place to protect minorities. If business owners felt emboldened to deny service to people they dislike or with whom they disagree, or to deny service when they decide that their service is somehow in support of a cause that goes against their grain, what's to stop them from denying food, housing, governmental services and things more important than cakes?

Take your business elsewhere is very easy for rich people to say, and also easy (though less easy) for any white person, any man, or any other reasonably socially empowered person to say. It's not so easy for someone living in an area in which they're surrounded by bigots who want nothing to do with them, people with no money, people of color.

Really disappointed that he felt the need to throw his weight behind the wrong side on this. But of course, that's his right. He has spoken passionately and in ways that I agree on other subjects. I just disagree with him passionately here.

And as a postscript, to stave off the inevitable whining about misplaced outrage and priorities and condemning our own supporters: It's okay to respectfully and firmly disagree with people who are otherwise on your own side, and we all have plenty of time and energy to have opinions on a myriad of subjects of varying degrees of importance.