Charles: “If those three categories (race, sex, religion) are protected from the application of the 1st amendment’s association right, how would we argue against including private sexual preferences in that ‘exception’ to our right of free association?”
To be consistent, Charles, would you want to include the “sexual orientation” of being attracted to minor children as a qualifier for special protected class status? (Its practitioners call it “intergenerational intimacy,” say they were born that way, and claim it’s a violation of their “civil rights” not to be allowed to fully express themselves with a consenting 12 year old.
Absurd? Of course, but if you grant one group “protected class” status based on its private sexual behavior, on what basis do you deny such status to others?
As to your broader question, I’m not a Catholic, but the Vatican committed an entire letter to bishops to that very subject, authored by the current pope and signed by the previous Pope John Paul II. Makes sense even to me, a Baptist:
http://www.ewtn.com:80/library/CURIA/CDFHOMOL.HTM
Your example of pedophilia is still widely recognized as harmful to one of the parties, and therefore I could justify prohibiting it even under the a libertarian view of our freedom to live our lives anyway we want.
If it’s prohibited, it would hardly be covered under any claim of rights.
The broader issue is a hard question. It’s easy if you draw some absolutes like that everybody has the right to hire based on their own preferences, without regard to anything the government would dictate.
But that is not practically where we are now — we are in a world where your right to hire the person you want is restricted by government (in ways that don’t seem constitutional to me, but which learned judicial members have claimed are covered under the interstate commerce clause or other nebulous constitutional protections).
If we decide to accept that current state of affairs, it’s hard to say that other legal, consensual activity people engage in in private (or worse, simply their personal DESIRE for certain types of consensual activity regardless of whether they actually practice that desire) shouldn’t also be “protected”.
Under what clear constitutional principle can we argue that a company has no right to fire someone for refusing to work on Sunday because it’s the sabboth, but they have a right to fire a guy who is attracted to other men?
I could argue that a company has a right to not hire EITHER of them, or has an obligation not to discriminate against EITHER of them (I guess), but I don’t see a rational argument to support one and oppose the other (from a constitutional position).