Let them eat cake? Contextualizing support for religious right to discriminate laws

Abstract

Should businesses be allowed to deny services based on their strongly held religious beliefs? Despite the recent Supreme Court Case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, this question of the right to discriminate remains unanswered. Given the currently ambiguous legal area, it is important to understand whether the public supports these laws. The current study examines both general support for the law and under what conditions people support it. The service provided and the religion of the service provider were both manipulated while religiosity and system justification were examined as potential moderators. Service type was the only significant experimental predictor of support, with participants less supportive of the law when reading about a marriage certificate being denied due to religious reasons than a wedding cake and a wedding ceremony being denied. Religiosity, but not system justification, moderated the relationship between service type and support for the law.