The bakery and restaurant examples are nothing alike.
The baker denied service for the custom message cake but offered to sell any of the premade cakes.
The restaurant didn't want to serve that specific person, and it wasn't because he asked for a dish not in the menu.
I still don't understand why the baker was at fault, honestly. You need to do some mental gymnastics to equate it to homophobia or anything like that, really.
They are alike in the basic sense in that they are both ultimately a denial of service on moral grounds. the comparison was made though not so much in the sense that they were exactly alike, but rather how the two cases might be viewed.
Just to go back to my original post on this:
It seems a lot of people in this thread agree with the principle of denying service. In fact a number of them, including the OP would like to see it happen more and more. That's interesting.
The point I was making was that, if it was a denial of service for someone with views more aligned with them, they would lose their shit over it. And in terms of that baker, I imagine a number of them would have said, "good!". Yet here they are gloating over it. Wishing pretty much that everyone continues to deny her service.
I used that specific case because it can be argued that discrimination based on gender, race, or sexuality wasn't really the driving factor. I was preempting that argument. It was purely a moral decision, like the denial of Sarah Sanders was a moral decision. If you accept that in principle everyone should have the right to deny a service, then you don't have any basis to argue that people who you think have been unjustly treated shouldn't have that treatment also. You have to be at least consistent in your argument and defend the principle. You can't have it both ways in other words.
I actually do think business owners should have the right to deny service, just as long as there is an alternative that can be provided. If there is one food shop in a small town, then things become dicey.