South Dakota Republican State Senator: Businesses Should Be Free to Turn Away Blacks, Gays

Republican South Dakota state senator Phil Jensen — a man who voted for mandatory drug testing of welfare recipients and to legalize the murder of abortion doctors — recently explained to South Dakota Public Radio that businesses should be allowed to turn away gay and African-American customers if they so choose: 

"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 patronise them."

Jensen is obliquely alluding to the bakeries in Indianapolis, Colorado and Oregon that refused to bake cake for same-sex wedding ceremonies.

Late last year, a Colorado judge found that one of the aforementioned bakeries “unlawfully discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to sell them a wedding cake.” But in Jensen’s capitalist vision, all bigoted businesses would quickly find themselves shut down by free-market consumers — riiiiiiiight.

It bears mentioning that Jensen also supported a now-dead bill that would have enabled state businesses to safely discriminate against LGBT customers and applicants — a bill similar to ones also considered in Mississippi, Missouri and Kansas.

He said, "As a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm commanded to love, to love everyone. That doesn't mean I must condone the lifestyle choices that someone chooses.”