To folks in my neck of the woods, many of whom know gay people, and know they know them, and many of whom are gay people, and identify as such, with no untoward consequences for any of us, it seems strange and not a little sad that the government to which we all pay our dues, refuses to offer us all the same protection against work-place discrimination. 

And while the House has managed to finally pass federal legislation that does so, it is not likely to get past the Senate, especially in the lead-up to elections. 

While those in favor of protections managed a comfortable majority on the vote, the minority was far from insignificant.  Their arguments against legislation were, as always, based on fear and trembling of the Gay Agenda, none more eloquently rendered on the House floor than Representative Mark Souder's, Republican of Indiana, who, according to the Globe,

argued that, because of the bill, "religious rights will now be trumped by sexual rights." Calling the bill a disaster for religious bookstores, which could be required to hire gay workers, he said the measure invited litigation and set "precedents that we will regret."

Because the religious bookstore industry is the engine of the American economy, it is important to protect it against the final onslaught of gays and lesbians who are champing at the bit to work as religious bookstore clerks, but who, if they get their evil way, will surely transform religious bookstores into porn emporiums quicker than you can say, "Jesus had a ding-dong."

A disaster for religious bookstores?  Forced by the anti-discrimination Gestapo to hire gay workers?  Can Souder be serious?

We have only to look at the sad state of religious bookstores since passage of legislation banning discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age, to see what it has done to the religious bookstore workforce, which is now made up entirely of elderly disabled Zoroastrian people of color from Canada. 

Indeed, a grave situation for religious bookstores is about to be made irrevocably worse. 

But chin up.  There's always Amazon.