Help needed to protect anti-discrimination law

[david_feuer]

Last year, Montgomery County, Maryland passed a law banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity in housing, employment, public accommodations, and taxi and cable service. Unfortunately, some people with poor moral sense apparently managed to hoodwink enough people into signing a petition to put implementation of the law on hold, and

Comments

[neopergoss]

I kinda feel like there should just be a general clause on these kinds of things. Like instead of having to say "You can't discriminate based on gender, age, sexual orientation, etc." it should just be something like "You can't discriminate based on things that aren't relevant to the situation." But maybe it has to be specific for it to work. I don't know.

[david_feuer]

One big problem with that route is that morally indefensible discrimination often makes a great deal of sense to the one discriminating. For example, if you own a business, and your customers tend to be racist white people, you might well do better if you hire only white employees for positions that involve dealing with customers. The same goes for most anything that a customer might notice--sex/gender identity/gender expression, disability, sexual orientation, religious clothing/emblems. Then, of course, there is the question of relations among employees. It wouldn't be terribly cool to accept discrimination if it's done on the basis that a ____ employee wouldn't fit well into a ____ist environment.