A pal at work showed me a social media post of her friend, who is a realtor and farmer. The man sells beef and poultry that he raises and had posted in disbelief a screenshot of a text he received from a prospective customer. The stranger had inquired about his beef and also wanted to know which party he votes for. My friend and I were amazed by this. We agreed that we don’t care which party a farmer favors. We would buy the meat regardless, as long as it was raised in a happy and healthy way.
Evidently, his political leanings mattered a LOT to the customer and to many of the people who commented on the post. This situation reminded us of the news story about the bakery that refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in Colorado. But instead of the proprietor discriminating against customers, these meat shoppers are acting in a discriminating way toward the farmer. If word gets out that this farmer voted for Trump, he may lose potential liberal customers even if he‘s excellent at raising animals and wakes up every day at the buttcrack of dawn to lovingly tend to them.
If we all decided to patronize shops based on the party affiliation of the shop owner, this would drastically reduce the variety of things available for us to buy and remove some of the competitive aspect of the economy. Sounds a little bit like a Communist society. Forcing sellers to take a political litmus test before we buy their goods is petty and punishes them for exercising their freedom of political choice.
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