To the editor:

As the passions of the extreme right and left become more inflamed, several tech companies (like Paypal, Facebook, Go-Daddy) and some major credit card companies have decided to no longer provide services for groups that they find abhorrent or whose views they deem so. They may have done so out of moral outrage, public pressure or an eye to their bottom line, but is that legal?

Court rulings have said that businesses open to the public cannot deny services to people regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Can we now deny services based on one’s ideology?

If this is legal, who, then, is the Grand Arbitrator of what is accepted and what is not: the whim of the mob today, the tone of the political arena at any given time, or the need for survival of the corporate standing?

Our rights to free speech and the freedom to assemble without fear are fundamental to our existence as a nation. There are those who would see this as a means to silence and dissolve those that they passionately disagree with, but it is a vicious sword that can destroy the underpinnings of our democracy. Freedom of speech, the right to associate and the right to assemble are easily lost but very difficult to reclaim.