Jeb Bush plunked himself down firmly on the side of discrimination in a Christian Broadcasting Network interview Saturday. Does he think business owners should be able to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings? "Yes, absolutely, if it’s based on a religious belief."

“A big country, a tolerant country, ought to be able to figure out the difference between discriminating someone because of their sexual orientation and not forcing someone to participate in a wedding that they find goes against their moral beliefs,” he said. “This should not be that complicated. Gosh, it is right now.”

Once upon a time, it went against what a good many business owners might have called their moral beliefs to serve black people at the same lunch counters as white people. To allow black people or interracial couples or LGBT couples to get hotel rooms. It's the same basic claim—that a business owner should be able to pick and choose who's good enough to pay for the services of the business—with the frontiers shifting over time. What's consistent is that it's always about discrimination, and about the attempt to frame that discrimination as somehow righteous. These days, we're not just to see discrimination as righteous but opposition to it as itself discriminatory.

But we're not talking about the government telling people how they have to conduct themselves in their private lives. We're talking about how businesses operate. And it's not exactly unprecedented for the government to tell businesses that they can't discriminate against a given group of people. It isn't that complicated, no matter how much Jeb Bush and other Republicans try to confuse the issue.