a reminder of how it is in this great land of freedom

A lawyer posted this to a listserv I'm on:

[...]Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.[...] But, sexual orientation discrimination is absent from Title VII's list of bases upon which an employer cannot discriminate. This means that people can call homosexuals whatever they want all the day long in the workplace with impunity. Employers can also fire gay people for being gay without violating the law. (An aside: I fully acknowledge that certain states and municipalities around the country have legal protections for sex orientation minorities. But, these are painfully few. It's still accurate to say that in most places in the United States there are no legal protections for people against discrimination based upon sexual orientation.) Even as I write this, I shudder to think about all the ways one can openly and blatantly injure gay people: deprive them of property, take away their children, invalidate their relationships, just to name a few. I'm willing to argue that it is more difficult to do the same stuff to black people these days, if only because the laws of our country at least recognize the concept of defending racial minorities.