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
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?
Are you born a white-supremacist bigot? Sources point to no, as in, it's a choice.
I think that's the main distinction when it comes to discrimination.
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?
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.
+Not in every state
I could be mistaken.