Quick take: SCOTUS and the problem of religious liberty

 The ruling on providing wedding services to gay couples was as predictable as everything else, but if you think through these rulings, it was really the only troubling one on moral or constitutional grounds.  Here is the problem.  There is a clear conflict of values.  On one hand, business owners should have some right to determine how they run their businesses.  On the other, we have seen what happens when you take that to the furthest extreme with no checks on discrimination, and the result was the Civil Rights Act because there is something important that we value, as a society, in having individuals be allowed to go to a business and not be treated like that.  If we are all honest, these are conflicting values, and it is just that most of us sided with the Civil Rights Act.  Gay marriage and associated issues have brought into the mix the issue of religious liberty, hence the first amendment.  The trouble, of course, is that plenty of old-fashioned, unreconstructed, KKK-style racists derived their beliefs from... religion.  Hence, there is really no way to say race but not sexual orientation, hence the fears for Loving v. Virginia.  Right now, there isn't enough racial animus in the country to go that way, but on logic, the Court cannot really split that hair.  This one was both moral and constitutional bullshit.