Now that a Tennessee florist has refused to serve Republicans , can we eagerly await the New York Times editorial saying the florists should be punished for the refusal?

Will any liberal media outlet even raise an eyebrow?

Fox News reports today that “a flower shop near Nashville refused to provide decorations for a GOP event featuring former President Donald Trump, and urged other businesses to deny future services to the Republican Party in a call for stricter gun laws.” The shop owners also “encouraged ‘others in the Nashville event industry to say no to taking money or jobs from the Republican Party.’” Just providing flowers for a Republican fundraiser, they explained, would be “beyond our comfort level.”

In the real world, there are plenty of other flower shops. Republicans surely will just go elsewhere. Their civil rights are no more being violated than are those of people turned away from a boutique for failing to meet a decree of “no shirt, no shoes, no service.”

Yet when Christian specialized artisans such as cake creators and photographers decline to use their creativity for specialized events that the artisans’ faith will not support, they are subjected to fines or other penalties, even if those artisans would serve the same customers for other events aside from the ceremonies that violate their beliefs. Again and again, overzealous officials try to crack down on such Christian artisans, and again and again, the liberal media support the crackdown rather than the religious or expressive liberty of the vendors.

Take the New York Times and the case of Jack Phillips, the cake artist who gladly serves homosexuals but won’t produce specialized cakes for same-sex weddings. The editorial of the leftist daily back in 2017 put it this way: “It’s about discrimination in the public square. Put simply, you can’t offer business services to the general public and then pick and choose your customers because of who they are.” Also, wrote the New York Times, government must protect against "the humiliation, frustration and embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he is told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public.”

Well, shouldn’t these pompous editorialists be consistent and apply that standard to florists when the customers are Republicans? Isn’t it awful for Republicans to be denied service because of “who they are?”

Granted, Republicans in Tennessee aren’t a “protected class” the way homosexual couples are in Colorado. On the other hand, the florists near Nashville can’t claim they are refusing service because it would violate their faith. They can’t claim any First Amendment religious expression concern the way Phillips could.

Absent a true public accommodation such as services involving food or lodging, and absent invidious discrimination based on an immutable characteristic such as race or a bedrock foundation of free society such as faith, businesses should be free to choose whom to do commerce with. If these florists don’t want to serve Republicans, that should be just fine.

And if an art videographer will gladly film a same-sex couple sharing a glass of wine but not the same couple exchanging vows, that should also be fine.

But don’t expect the leftist media hypocrites to acknowledge as much.