[GI_Josh]

I'm no expert, but I suspect this is just referring to work "at will" states, where you can be fired without being given a reason. Thus, it could actually be for anything: Your orientation, your work performance, that ugly shirt you wore yesterday. Doesn't matter.

[Spooky23]

Close, but no.

Sexual orientation isn't a protected class under Federal law. (See: http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/ )

State Human Rights Law in some states expands to incorporate other protected classes, including sexual orientation and transgendered status.

[chrisBob]

The issue is that there are specific protections for things like age, race and religion, but not sexual orientation. I consider orientation, like race, to be something that you are born with that deserves the same protections.

[logfromblammo]

In an "at will" arrangement, you will never be fired for "protected" traits. With "at will" employment, you can be fired for no reason at all, so no reason will ever be given that could possibly trigger legal liability.

It makes all those "protections" completely toothless.

In order to win a case, you would need to provide extensive documentation, probably collected via clandestine recordings, that would be able to convince a jury by preponderance of the evidence that you were fired for a protected reason, and not simply because the company no longer wanted to pay you for your work.

Besides that, one of the selling points of "at will" was that making it easier to fire people would make it easier to hire people. Anecdotally, I have not found this to be the case. Companies simply find it easier to discriminate based on things like race, gender, perceived sexual orientation, weight, religion (or lack thereof), disabilities, appearance, or age, because it is easier for them to deny that those are the factors that they consider in hiring and firing.

As Apple execs engaged in collusion with other companies to weaken workers as a class via an anti-poaching cartel, Tim Cook is hardly able to take a non-hypocritical position about sexuality discrimination in the workplace. When all workers are weakened, the ones that are most often discriminated against often suffer the most, because they are the marginal hires in more places.

[Cthulhu_]

Even if it's not, everyone should be free to do and be who they are - it should only influence one's employment if it actually affects said employment, like (for example) alcoholism or explosive flatulism (fire hazard)

[wtbob]

Of course, there's a huge difference between orientation and behaviour. One can't help how one's born, but one can help how one behaves.

[mkr-hn]

There's no good reason for an employer to require me to be celibate and single for life.

[courtf]

There are certainly contexts where this is a valuable sentiment, but separating sexual orientation from sexual behavior at such a gross level (ie, all not engaging in same-sex behavior at all) is simply crude and unnecessary. To each their own, but your statement seems to imply that gays should struggle against what is ultimately a harmless and very human attraction.