It's a slipper gray slope, even for me, to what extent businesses can refuse to serve people for a million different reasons--dress code, cover charge, intoxication, tattoos, etc. Many of those reasons are due to prejudice and privilege, many are due to safety. Some can be construed as both. We're accustomed to it.
The "I told you so" style post going around is misdirected, in my opinion. It's equating wearing a mask to being gay. We all generally know this is different but the point is directed at people who believe otherwise so you really gotta dumb it down. So, if they say "you know what, this business is totally within their rights to deny me service for not wearing a mask cause this is ‘Merica and that's freedom and nobody has to make no cake for no gays neither!" are we good with that? Are we ok making that an even line? I'm not. Everybody should have cake. (I'll bypass the point about why you shouldn't want your beautiful cake make by a shithead in the first place. I don't have it in me to start that too.)
One point is about the safety and well-being of others and one point is about being a hateful hypocritical prick. DIFFERENT. I have other bullet points I could add here but I'll get off topic. I did in the shower.
You can't catch gay. You can catch Covid. You can't die from a random surprise of gay marriage. You can die from not wearing a seatbelt. Rules are for safety. They aren't generally based on who you ARE as a HUMAN. They are across the board. Like, if you're not tall enough then you can't ride the roller coaster...it’s not if you’re not tall enough and didn’t adopt a shelter pet. It's not based on your qualities otherwise.
You aren't refused a driver’s license if you are just an asshole, but they'll limit you if you've been unsafe. You aren't denied insurance just because you're an asshole, but the price changes based on your habits. There's nothing keeping you from doing anything that you aren't doing to yourself when rules are made about safety. A VERY small number of people have specific health and wellness problems that are made more difficult by wearing a mask. Now, if they are an asshole and don't have any friends to help them out well that sucks for them.
If the thing you're doing isn't worth a few minutes of a slight annoyance, is it actually worth doing? I mean, do you NEED to go to the Dollar Store? Really? And if you do need to, then toughen up. We need to get over ourselves. Every time we have to do something slightly annoying we should consider the people who volunteered to do it for endless hours simply because we need to have a barbecue with all the neighbors.
