My point is, what if this was not the case?

And what if when a racoon takes a shiy rainbows flew out of it's ass with a bucket of gold at the end could we harness the mass moving at the speed of light to bootstrap caramels into orbit?

Answer: There is no fucking answer, the question doesn't address reality. Ditto for your "what if" statement. "What if we were legally obligated to patronize all businesses rqually" well then I guess we'd better patronize all businesses rqually. Or more likely overturn such a shitty law in the first five nanoseconds of its existence.

You, whether as a customer or as a business, cannot choose to discriminate based on a customer's membership in a protected class. You can discriminate them for being a dick, for not paying, for wearing purple, for being too fat, for being too thin, for saying something you don't like, for having red/black/green hair, even because of no reason at all.

But as soon as you say "I'm not serving that person because they are [a member of a protected class] you are engaging in illegal discriminatory practices.

Now, you drunkenly stumbled into this conversation a bit late. Maybe you missed the issue in question. That someone argued that a cashier should be able to refuse service to someone based on the customer's religion/ethnicity. The law in SC is an issue of blanket recusation and is not in contention here. Hell, the SC law is almost clever, in a rules lawyer way.

And no, I'll repeatedly point out your usage of false equivalency. Your blatant usage of wholly constructed strawmen, based on a " what if" moving of the legal goalposts. If you really, really think people won't call you out on your shit I suggest you stay away from people in general.