>And Google and Go-Daddy have a right to deny service to anyone they like
People keep saying this but I don't think it is true at all. Not trying to be inflammatory, but that wasn't too popular of an opinion when it was the bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple
Sexual orientation is (or at least should be) protected so it cannot be used as the basis for discrimination, neither can race or religion. Being an inflammatory racist is not (and should not be) protected.
It's not in the Constitution, but it is in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At least it is for discrimination against race and religion. Sexual orientation has some coverage, but the refusing to serve gays scenario is not currently accepted to be covered by the Civil Rights Act.
Laws -- including constitutions -- are in some sense arbitrary.
But actually the distinction between political belief and sexual orientation makes a ton of sense and is not arbitrary.
Avoiding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is super easy and clear-cut.
But it's very hard for me to imagine a world where political belief is a protected class. The category is just way too broad and encompasses basically every legitimate reason you might want to fire someone or turn down a customer.
Every restriction I can think of (e.g., party affiliation) is weak to the point of basically being pointless ("I fired/refused to serve you because you support abortion and because you support theft of my money via taxation, not because you're a democrat").
So although I really do believe that 99.9% of people should not be fired for political beliefs (as long as those beliefs don't interfere with the work place), and that 99.9% of financial transactions should proceed regardless of political beliefs, I still don't think it's workable to make political belief -- writ large -- a protected class.
If we're going to outlaw firing people for political opinions, it might be much easier to just end at-will employment all-together. And if we're going to outlaw discriminating against customers on the basis of political belief, we might as well just force businesses to accept every non-fraudulent client. I don't really think anything less than this -- but which still achieves "no discrimination based on political belief" -- is practically implementable.
So, in my mind, that's the major non-arbitrary distinction. Discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation has a clear bright line. Political discrimination not so much.
And all of the bright line problems aside, there actually is a pretty big non-arbitrary distinction between being gay and being a Nazi. So we can talk about whether that distinction should be codified in non-discrimination law. Or even, in the case of Germany, in criminal law. But the distinction is pretty fucking non-arbitrary...
> Not in the US Constitution either.
Which is why it's legal for bakeries and others to discriminate against LGBT customers in over half of the 50 states. What's your point?
Right, it should be. So GoDaddy et al would get more than just bad press if they suddenly decided to unlist gay rights websites.
Which brings me to my point. Protected classes are arbitrary and discriminatory in themselves. Did you know that it is not possible to discriminate against someone under 40 based on their age? Only people over 40 are a protected class for age discrimination. Why should the protections of the law only apply to those deemed worthy of protection?
It's interesting - it's perfectly fine legally to discriminate against someone for being ugly. Isn't this terrible? Why is it worse to discriminate on the basis of race or sex?
You're right! Which is why such a case is going to the United States Supreme Court, because it's not a settled question.
But let's say, refusing to bake a cake for a black couple?
There exist groups in the United States we consider protected classes, and the state or federal government passes laws to protect these classes, or court precedent protects them from discrimination.
That bakery was not forced to do anything they didn't want to (sexual orientation is protected from discrimination in some contexts but is not a fully recognized protected class). That decent people think that they're assholes for their decision to deny service is orthogonal to whether they had a right to deny service. And, in turn, Nazi symps and merchants of false equivalency can think Google and GoDaddy are assholes for refusing service to Nazis.
IANAL, but my understanding is that there are venues of business and association where sexual orientation is protected (housing, employment, etc.) but that it is not a protected class in the same sense as race.
People keep saying this but I don't think it is true at all. Not trying to be inflammatory, but that wasn't too popular of an opinion when it was the bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay couple