Refusing to Serve

Sarah Sanders

Yesterday, Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a small restaurant where she had just stared to dine. The owner explained to Sanders "that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation".

The decision was the owner's taken after consulting with her staff, which, it is worth noting, had served her as it would any other customer.  
  

As the WaPo reported: "Cole [who represented the gay couple who sued the owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado for refusing to make their wedding cake because of his beliefs about same-sex marriage] disagreed [that the situations were comparable].  'When people say the gay couple in Masterpiece Cakeshop could simply go down the street to another baker, that ‘it’s no big deal,’ that could also be said for Sarah Sanders. But it is a huge indignity to be turned away from a place that is open to the public.' "

A couple of points in rebuttal:

1. The couple turned away by the Masterpiece Cakeshop were equally the subject of an indignity in a public place (even if the shop were empty at the time).  
2. Indignity is something that Sanders routinely inflicts on the White House press corp, and indirectly on thinking people everywhere.
3. As a public figure, she cannot expect the anonymity.

It is also perhaps worth considering that there may be a n economic rationale; the restaurant is in a Democratic district in a Republican state, and having Sanders as a client might have caused her local clientelle to stay away.