It's apparent in this ruling that freedom of speech supercedes any law that would protect a person from discrimination based on homosexual orientation
I guess this is the part that confuses me about the ruling. The way I see it, performing a service for someone else doesn't reflect your own speech, nor is it generally interpreted as doing so. For example, I know a man who is Jewish and owns a print shop. He has been approached a few times from neo-nazi and even blatantly anti-semitic organizations asking him to print stuff for them. I don't know if they're itching for a fight, or trying to stir up controversy or even setting up a lawsuit....but the printer simply prints the material and says no more about it. According to him, his job is putting ink on paper, and his agreement isn't required for him to do his job.
His way of looking at it, he's more than happy to perform the work he set out to do, and take the money of anyone who asks him for the service to support his family. He sometimes may charge more to some groups due to rampant misspellings and other grammatical corrections he'd have to make, and he often makes generous donations to the ACLU and various Jewish anti-defamation groups, so he's grateful for the additional revenue that allows him to do that.
So, I guess I don't really see performing a service for someone else as an expression of your own free speech. My plumber's personal political views (whatever they may be) have nothing to do with his fixing my broken toilet, frankly.
But hey, the ruling is the ruling, and that's how things are. I guess another thing that confuses me is how some people can applaud and even celebrate being able to limit who they perform services for based on their personal disagreement with that customer's views or lifestyle, but at the same time, are unwilling to be up front about it.
Go figure.
-- A2SG, guess I'm confused by a lot of stuff here.....