In fact, most so-called "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" isn't. It's discrimination on the basis of sex.

Looking at the issue of same-sex marriage clearly displays the issue. A woman and I decide that we want to bind ourselves in legal marriage. There are two cases. In case A, I happen to be male. We are legally allowed to be married. In case B, I happen to be female. We are not legally allowed to be married. The only distinction between the two cases is my sex; therefore, the only discrimination that can be happening is discrimination on the basis of sex. However, courts often argue that this is not the case, that the discrimination is on the basis of sexual orientation. This argument is easily defeated by changing the hypothetical slightly. Let's say that in case A, I happen to be a homosexual male, rather than a male of unspecified sexual orientation (presumably heterosexual). In case A, I am still allowed to get married. Therefore, this cannot be discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. It must be discrimination on the basis of sex.

This principle runs deeper than just same-sex marriage, however. Most workplace discrimination that is classified as "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" is in fact discrimination on the basis of sex. In Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, the U.S. Supreme Court held that discrimination on the basis of nonconformity with expected gender roles is prohibited under Title VII's prohibition against "discrimination on the basis of sex." In that case, it was held that a firm could not discriminate against a female employee who was seen as too masculine. Given that, it's important next to consider what sexuality means in society. One of the most fundamental gender roles in our society is who you are allowed to love. Men are expected to fall in love with women, and women with men. In our society, anything other than strict heterosexuality is seen as a violation of gender norms. Therefore, discrimination because one is not heterosexual, or even perceived to be not heterosexual, is a form of discrimination on the basis of nonconformity with expected gender roles. As the Supreme Court tells us, that is discrimination on the basis of sex.

This is more than just an academic word game. It explains why men who don't live up to the masculine "ideal" are perceived as gay, and why women who don't live up to the feminine "ideal" are perceived as lesbians. It also plays a part in understanding the fascination with "lipstick lesbians" - it seems as though once you've flouted that fundamental gender role, people expect you to flout all of them.

It also means that in any legal analysis, "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" by the government needs to be held against the same level of scrutiny as discrimination on the basis of sex. Bans against same-sex marriage are unconstitutional - any judge who would rule otherwise is doing so out of their own bigotry, not out of a rational legal analysis. It means that "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" is already illegal, and the courts can dismiss the tortured reasoning that says that discrimination on the basis of sex is acceptable, so long as you refer to the target as a homosexual while you do it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/magazine...
What if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?

When Brian Sullivan — the baby who would before age 2 become Bonnie Sullivan and 36 years later become Cheryl Chase — was born in New Jersey on Aug. 14, 1956, doctors kept his mother, a Catholic housewife, sedated for three days until they could decide what to tell her. Sullivan was born with ambiguous genitals, or as Chase now describes them, with genitals that looked “like a little parkerhouse roll with a cleft in the middle and a little nubbin forward.” Sullivan lived as a boy for 18 months, until doctors at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan performed exploratory surgery, found a uterus and ovotestes (gonads containing both ovarian and testicular tissue) and told the Sullivans they’d made a mistake: Brian, a true hermaphrodite in the medical terminology of the day, was actually a girl. Brian was renamed Bonnie, her “nubbin” (which was either a small penis or a large clitoris) was entirely removed and doctors counseled the family to throw away all pictures of Brian, move to a new town and get on with their lives. The Sullivans did that as best they could. They eventually relocated, had three more children and didn’t speak of the circumstances around their eldest child’s birth for many years. As Chase told me recently, “The doctors promised my parents if they did that” — shielded her from her medical history — “that I’d grow up normal, happy, heterosexual and give them grandchildren.”

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I'm curious what people think on this topic. Here's my reaction (so you should probably read the article before reading this):

This article is another way of demonstrating the root of injustices that many young people face: rather than being treated as people, they are seen in the law and in society as property of their parents, to do with as the parents see fit. This is most clearly demonstrated at the end of the article:

Over coffee, Sandberg told Chase that he, too, could not yet join her in taking the position that cosmetic genital surgery on infants is always wrong, and Chase was trying hard to understand why.

“But is there ever a good reason for reducing the size of a clitoris?” Chase pressed Sandberg.

“If the parent cannot tolerate it,” Sandberg replied.

In other words, there is no medical reason for the procedure. Only social reasons. In such a case, shouldn't the person in question have a say in the matter? Why does what the parents can "tolerate" matter at all? The infant is a person. The parents have an obligation to care for and nurture them. Nowhere in that obligation is a right to change the child to match what the parents can and cannot "tolerate."

Let me be clear. Infants cannot consent to operations, so it is obvious that the parents must act in the child's best interest and give consent to medically necessary operations. However, extending this right to taking drastic, irreversible steps to force the identity of a child into a preconceived notion of who they should be is a perversion of morality. I condemn the religious brainwashing many conservative parents subject their children to, but at least that has a chance of being undone. When you start mutilating your child's genitals because they don't fit into your narrow-minded view of how the world should be, you've permanently and irreparably harmed them.

If we, as a society, believed that children were people with the same fundamental rights as adults, there is no possible way that such behavior would be tolerated. Can you imagine an adult being treated in such a way? Western society rightfully condemns forced female genital mutilation as cruel, barbaric, and immoral. Intersex genital mutilation of infants is no better. I ask, what are the possible relevant differences that would justify destroying a part of someone, likely causing them lasting harm, just so that their caretakers will "tolerate" them?