Majority of Americans support gay rights over religious freedom bills

[Hatshepsut]

It may also help you to know the law also deals with breach-of-contract issues...However, the "religious freedom" bill makes the baker, photographer, whatever, untouchable if they back out at the last minute if they can cite a religious objection.

I was ill-informed here. Breach of contract shouldn't be excused. And part of why I don't care for this whole genre of law: It's complicated.

Perhaps I need further explanation here because I don't see how your "lanky" and "speaks with a drawl" examples apply.

Because anti-discrimination laws don't actually prohibit discrimination. They apply only to members of the protected groups they specify. At the federal level the category areas include race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, military veteran status, and presence of a disability. Within each category, only groups the law perceives to have suffered oppression are afforded legal relief. Meaning, if you're white you can't file a claim for discrimination on racial grounds. If you're under 40, you can't claim discrimination by age. We did agree that a business reason negates a claim, as in your acting example. But if you're a boss who doesn't like Star Trek fans, you're free to have at it, business reason or not. Or any number of other personal factors unrelated to ability to do the job.

In my view, we should replace the current anti-discrimination regime with a universal requirement to show a business reason for employment and promotion decisions. Small businesses might be exempt due to the burden this will impose and because they rarely monopolize availability of work. There's really no other way to do it fairly. I had a hard time getting jobs because of my speech pattern, yet didn't fall into a speech-disabled class because I can make myself understood even if the other party believes me a retard. Without a general doctrine, we're going to have dozens or hundreds of protected groups instead, with people still falling through the cracks between them. Yet reality is squeaky wheels get greased and only groups which can organize and agitate have any hope– then their finite resources also force them to advocate selfishly; no group can help any other.

I need more elaboration here. As I can see, no one is asking for special privileges.... 

Yet privileges inevitably become involved. For instance, married persons can get health insurance through their spouse's employer if their own job doesn't offer benefits, or if they're unemployed. Single persons don't have that option. Many companies and city governments are now treating unmarried domestic partnership the same as marriage for purposes of health and life insurance benefits. Singles who don't gain from these policies nonetheless must help pay for them, via taxes or higher prices on goods.

I support gay marriage per se despite this particular unfairness, since I think the needs of inheritance rights and rights to or for children which marriage protects are important enough to trump objections. Yet again I feel we need to decouple health care from employment and marriage altogether, rather than add more coupling situations and groups as we're now doing. Employers and cities don't need to be in the insurance business: They can pay salary and the worker can decide where to buy health care plans.

G'Kar from Babylon 5 once put it so profoundly when he said the scripted line, "Our thoughts form the universe. They always matter."

Somehow I thought my thoughts barely made it far enough to reach the electroencephalograph leads on my scalp, but....