"And common sense tells me that any work I perform, whether it is physical, intellectual, or artistic, is mine to do with as I wish. Common sense tells me there's no valid reason to force me to do that work. Forcing one to work is enslavement."

If you work for someone else or a company, then your work usually belongs to them as a condition of employment. Depending upon the contract it is work for hire with the difference on whether you explicitly work for them or as an independent contractor for specific jobs.

If you work for yourself, then depending on how your business is set up determines your choice of customers.

Going back to the original post, what a doctor does is based upon the employment contract. Doctors that work for a hospital has their duties spelled out in the contract on what they have to do to stay employed. Doctors with privileges at a hospital have rights to act with patients in a hospital, but aren't required to do things that they don't want to do.

"If you work for someone else or a company, then your work usually belongs to them as a condition of employment. Depending upon the contract it is work for hire with the difference on whether you explicitly work for them or as an independent contractor for specific jobs."
This is a good point. Is it too much of a stretch to suppose that (in reality, as opposed to in ideality) in setting up a business, you are signing a contract with the government to abide by employment and service laws -- and that the government is in fact the arbiter of who may and may not produce and offer goods and services? Again, I'm asking about the situation on the ground in the United States in 2015, not in some ideal world where all is as it should be (it's patently obvious that the two are very different places).

My guess is: it depends on the good or service.

A foot doctor doesn't have to perform an abortion, and never will.

The clerk in question had one job, and that was to process legal documents. This really is a paranoid fantasy trip.

@Randomizer Yes, you are correct that if you are employed by others, you either work as they say or don't work. We were initially talking about small business owners, who work for themselves.

So yes, most doctors work for hospitals or clinics. If that hospital or clinic does not have a doctor willing to perform an abortion for ethical reasons, can the patient not make the same claim that the gay wedding cake couple made? That they are being discriminated against? They would make that claim on the hospital, and if the hospital lost the suit, it would have to provide that service. Meaning that the doctors there would have to provide it or lose their jobs.

@OutsideSmoker

Jeff Skuta brought up that point earlier and I conceded that it is a valid point. It does seem like if you set your business up as a "private club," you can be exempt from the Civil Rights Act, which is a little strange. Regardless, as you say, it appears that in the real world of 2015, for the most part you are subject to anti-discrimination laws.

For the reasons I've stated above, I think those laws are immoral and should be abolished, but they do exist in the real world. I definitely don't think this post was a genuine question, but instead an exploration of the morality of the current legal situation in the US.

"Title II specifically exempts private clubs. So all anyone needs to do is make their business a private club. You suggested yourself that the bakers in question were "lazy and ignorant" not to have done so. Again, if it's so easy to exempt yourself from the law, what's the point of the law in the first place?"

The Internal Revenue Code is chock full of different legal entities. Membership clubs are different places of public accommodation which are different from hospitals and non-profits and unions and churches and sports leagues, etc. This is not a secret.

But, laws have to refer to precedents and so Title II explicitly says what is exempt. Those who drafted the CRA had to do so because of Jim Crow. Southern racists had institutionalized discrimination by law so a law had to be passed which superseded and outlawed previous practice. Isn't that patently obvious? I'm sure the libertarian perspective is "just abolish the bad laws" but that's not how the federal government works, despite what Tenthers want to believe. States, let alone rogue county clerks, don't always do the right thing as we have seen time and again.

It is not "a little strange" for private clubs to be exempt. You seem to be getting the idea of private ownership and private membership conflated. They are separate and distinct. If you want to own a private club which caters to a private membership, go for it. If you want to own a private business which caters to the public, then cater to the entire public and don't discriminate. That's how it works. Get it yet?

The best point you have made is with respect to grandfathering in businesses (or people) which existed prior to passage of an act which requires them to legally behave in a different way. This is why the various chambers of commerce piss and moan about changes to the tax code or IRC. It costs money to become compliant with new regulations and guidelines. Like it or not, that's the cost of doing business.

If the laws change and a public servant doesn't like it, they can take it up to the SCOTUS. After that remedy is exhausted, they can resign. If they don't, then "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect from your GoFundMe campaign."

I'm not going to discuss the sophomoric hypothetical at the head of this thread. Haven't yet.

"So yes, most doctors work for hospitals or clinics. If that hospital or clinic does not have a doctor willing to perform an abortion for ethical reasons, can the patient not make the same claim that the gay wedding cake couple made? That they are being discriminated against? They would make that claim on the hospital, and if the hospital lost the suit, it would have to provide that service. Meaning that the doctors there would have to provide it or lose their jobs"

Federal law regarding procedures like abortion differentiate between two types.

All emergency cases, like to save the mother's life, are required to be done once a patient enters the emergency room. A hospital can lose all federal payments for refusing to carry out emergency medical care. That's why if you need emergency care it's better to walk in than use an ambulance if you can. Ambulances can be diverted to another hospital because the patient hasn't entered the hospital. Hopefully the patient doesn't die before reaching the next hospital.

It sounds stupid, but you can be in accident 500 feet from an emergency room and the ambulance can take you 20 miles to a different hospital. It's perfectly legal for the first hospital to claim it doesn't have space to take an emergency patient, but it does have room for admitted patients.

Elective abortions where it isn't an emergency where the mother could die if not done immediately are treated differently. There the hospital can require that a doctor admit the patient into the hospital and the doctor will be responsible for the abortion. Since it isn't time sensitive in hours, the hospital can refuse admittance to the emergency room.

So you can't enter a hospital and demand an elective abortion as in your example.

That's why most abortions are done at clinics and hospitals that specifically will do abortions. Some states have added the requirement that elective abortions must be done where hospital access is available. This means it is no longer available because the hospital refuse abortion doctors having admitting privileges to bring a woman having an abortion into the hospital.

@Leonidas
"I definitely don't think this post was a genuine question, but instead an exploration of the morality of the current legal situation in the US."
Actually, the first question WAS a genuine question of application of legal theory in the way that it was framed, to wit, is it too much of a stretch to say that setting up a business is akin or even equivalent to signing a contract with the government? I made no reference, nor did I intend to make reference, to the morality or moral implications of any possible answer. In fact, I framed it in the way that I did specifically to avoid getting bogged down in the morality side of it -- on which I, in general, agree with you. I am genuinely asking, as a matter of applying the theory and law of contracts (on which I am rather poorly read), whether setting up a business under present American conditions would entail the implicit signing of a contract with the government.

As for the second question (i.e. about whether "the government is in fact the arbiter of who may and may not produce and offer goods and services"), I think it follows naturally from the first -- or perhaps precedes the first. It is perhaps a bit rhetorical, but I'm not really sure that the answer is an absolute answer "yes." I am, however, happy to listen to explanations of one or the other sides. And again, I don't care about the morality of the matter at this point; I'm looking for how to interpret the present legal and commercial landscape. Have we a lawyer in the house?

If it a legal question, there is no earthly way this would be extrapolated as a precedent.

The clerks job was to process legal documents, documents created by a court. It is literally contempt of court to not do so. Nothing was changed in our legal system by the jailing, so there it cannot be used as any kind of precedent for any NEW legal decision.

There is no nexus for a lawyer to argue that contempt of court -- a concept that has existed as long as courts have existed -- means all people everywhere have to do what the government says.