Want to know how to blow up an issue? Just add (increasingly bipartisan) politics. That’s what happened when a homeowner said they would prefer to sell to someone who wasn’t a Trump supporter. Political alignment is not covered under the US Fair Housing Act, but this condition is said to be illegal and even unconstitutional as it supposedly violates the First Amendment.
In this case, we have to ask: Whose First Amendment rights are more important: those of the buyer or those of the seller? I don’t know all the intricacies of home sale vs. other types of sales, but, if I recall correctly, private businesses and institutions may (barring other forms of regulation) refuse service to anyone for any reason. The only thing I do know is that the Fair Housing Act prevents discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or the presence of children.
Now, what makes politics different from that? I can easily that people don’t choose their sex, race, color, national origin, or disability. In some cases, some people don’t even choose to have children. Religion blurs the line a little, but it is different from politics in that it mainly deals with the individual’s purpose and beliefs rather than what should be done with the government. This is not the same as the whole gay cake debacle that should have died as soon as the fuss was made, but it seems to be fairly similar in nature.
Speaking of the gay cake debacle, we should approach refusal of sale situations with logical consistency and sensitivity to both parties. Under the right to refuse service or sale, barring other home sale discrimination laws besides the Fair Housing Act, the homeowner had as much of a right to state a political preference for non-Trump supporters as much as the shop owner had the right to refuse baking a wedding cake for a gay couple. If one party wants to benefit from a certain line of logic, they should not complain when the other party benefits from that logic.
Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire Editor in Chief, asked if reactions would be the same if the situation were reversed. I think it would receive more buzz in mainstream news outlets and thus people, but the reactions would be similar overall. They would just come from different people. Jeremy Frankel, the author, wrote that the left has no standards. In this day and age, it would seem that no one has any standards. At the end of the day, people have their rights to do certain things and those rights and privileges extend to everyone, not just people we agree with.
If these refusals were occurring on a large scale and across the US, I'd be more inclined to say that the left is up to something. As a single event, however, this is a fairly unique refusal of sale incident due to the nature of what is being sold (a home). As a result, the same refusal of sale rights may not apply to the homeowner.
