Take a private boys school that publicly adheres to Christian teaching. The school is within its rights to prohibit its teachers from outwardly displaying a lifestyle that clashes with its moral teaching. If the teacher gets drunk publicly or regularly shows disrespect for clergy, its legitimate for the school to fire him especially if these standards were made clear before hiring. (Schools run by churches would be exempt from ENDA, but many religious schools are independent from churches and would be covered.)
Some standards will relate to sexuality. Having a live-in girlfriend would clash with Christian teaching, and a school might not want a teacher who divorced and remarried without a Church-granted annulment of the first marriage.
In the same vein, the Catholic Church doesn't recognize same-sex marriages (and President Obama has repeatedly promised he wouldn't try to force the Church to do so). So does Congress have the right to bar an independent private school, publicly professing the Catholic faith, from firing a teacher for marrying someone of the same sex?
This hypothetical is a distinct issue from hiring or firing simply on the basis of sexual preference its hiring and firing on the basis of public lifestyle. But its tied up enough with sexual preference that ENDA would affect it, thus impinging on legitimate practices by private employers.
Similarly, the bill bans discrimination based on gender identity. The idea is to protect people who suffer from what psychiatrists call gender dysmorphia the sense that your inner gender is somehow different from your biological gender. But what if your store clerk starts dressing like a woman simply out of anti-social rebellion? Has he now entered a protected class under ENDA?
