One Republican lawmaker is so trusting of the free market that he doesn’t see a problem if businesses choose, based on their beliefs, to deny service to certain customers, Talking Points Memo reports.
South Dakota Sen. Phil Jensen, who is a self-proclaimed "free market absolutist," believes that these decisions are between business owners and the market.
"If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery, for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them," Jensen told the Rapid City Journal.
Jensen has even sponsored and stood by bills that back up his view of the free market. This session he offered up a bill that would permit business owners to deny customers service based on sexual orientation without the fear of a lawsuit, TPM notes. A committee eventually killed it, with another GOP legislator calling it "a mean, nasty, hateful, vindictive bill.”
However, Jensen saw it a bit differently.
"It's a bill that protects the constitutional right to free association, the right to free speech and private property rights," he told the Journal.
Read more at Talking Points Memo.