I was discussing with someone the other day how best to tackle private employment discrimination. There has been a suggestion that sexual orientation could be protected by the "basis of sex" clauses of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This actually could work to some extent, because sexual orientation discrimination is discimination on the basis of the sex of the person's associations (or their associations' associations, etc.), which is analogous to miscegenation in the workplace. Where it fails is when the employer says they aren't even considering the person's orientation or relationships, but merely their politics. For instance, if they can fire a heterosexual who displays a Human Rights Watch bumper sticker on their vehicle, then they can fire a homosexual for the same thing. It's the "I don't care if you're gay -- just don't throw your politics in my face" attitude.

That is a tricky issue. I know I wouldn't want to lose the right to fire someone for politically associating with Neo-Nazis. If it's my business, it's my business. But at the same time, it isn't currently possible for a gay person to disassociate their politics from their sexual orientation. So firing someone for their politics seems all too handy an excuse for firing someone who also oh-so-coincidentally just happens to be gay.

This is why (as I think you argued similarly elsewhere) it isn't always possible to simply generalize the solution. Generalizing in this case would take away too many personal freedoms of business owners. Sometimes protections have to be tailored to specific groups in order to protect even the very people who despise them.