This is the real false dichotomy, and why civil rights law as written is total garbage. Creating "protected groups", which by definition are artificially defined and socially polarizing gives certain people more rights than others. This is incredibly counterproductive and entirely wrongheaded. Those who argue that the existance of "protected classes" in law are a rationale for discrimination, rather than defending the logic and morality of "protected classes" themselves are missing the point.
Virtually all reasonable, fair-minded people want a society where everyone is equal and everyone enjoys the same civil liberties. Its irrelevant that various Civil Rights Acts were intended to protect "vulnerable" groups - intentions never matter. What matters are the actual, tangible results of the law. Ignoring this fact and pretending that intentions are what matters is what leads us to where we are today. The truth is that it wouldn't be difficult to word a Civil Rights Act that used neutral language to prevent the violation of anyone's civil rights, by any party, for any reason. This has already been done, most recently in Iceland. The people of Iceland were concerned about the continuing wage gap between men and woman, and so they passed a law that mandated equal pay for all people working the same jobs. They didn't slice and dice the population into artificially created catagories, or specify anything about men, women, "theys", or 25 different genders and races. They simply said that a company has to pay the same salary for the same job, no matter who the person was.
At the end of the day, we need to move to a place where we all view each other as equals (though not the same). Laws that artificially divide us and codify those divisions into law will just continue to ensure that we never move toward a society where this is the case.