I’ve never been denied goods or services from a vendor or company. Luckily, I’ve been privileged enough to not have someone tell me that I’m not wanted, but I would imagine it would feel insulting as a customer and as a person. However, this is a very poor business strategy.

Hobby Lobby, a national craft store, owned by (you guessed it) Republican billionaire Steve Green announced Wednesday Hobby Lobby will not sell Hanukkah items because of Green’s “Christian values.”

Let’s talk business for a second. This is incredibly stupid, and a very important rule for business is that “the customer’s always right.” I don’t understand why this is a problem but if you want to sell things, but only sell them to or for a certain group of people, find a different career.

Now let’s talk religion: I am not a fan of this excuse. Denying people something because it’s against your religion to be gay or Jewish or Muslim is not Christian — it’s bigoted. It makes no sense to do that for Christian values because those aren’t Christian values, and I take offense to anyone who hides behind a religious notion to deny anyone’s rights.

Jesus, the Christian deity, healed all who asked, be the Jews or Gentiles. He served the Lord, not the religion. Even criminals, people who didn’t believe in the Holy Lord, such as whores and vagabonds, he blessed and saved everyone. Even up until he was crucified, he begged his father to forgive them, for they knew not what they done.

This is what Christianity is based off of, the worship of Jesus, the son of God, dying for our sins. He didn’t die for Christians’ sins, he didn’t die for straight people’s sins, and he did it for “our” sins; he died for everyone’s! Christians worship this “King of the Jews” because he helped everyone, whether they were his equal or not.

But if you want to base your business practice after Christian values, let it be based on the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them unto you.”

So let’s all be an example for Steve Green. If he doesn’t want to sell certain items that aren’t for his values, that means he probably wants us all to refuse to buy anything at his store since that’s against our values. So once he starts wondering why his sales are going down and he’s losing so much money, he really can say it’s because of “Christian values.”