The Slate article you featured touches on something I've thought for a long time - the fixation on whether gay is "a choice" is interesting but irrelevant. A person's religion is more of a choice than the person's sexuality, and yet we don't allow discrimination based on religion. I'm not allowed to put up a "Catholics need not apply" sign on my business because I don't approve of their choice. "Choice" is a red herring. The question is purely about discrimination.

Scott Long adds:

What if our model for defending LGBT people’s rights were not race, but religion? What if we claimed our identities were not something impossible to change, but a decision so profoundly a part of one’s elected and constructed selfhood that one should never be forced to change it?

That's why excluding gays from hate crimes laws is so wack - because religion is protected category. Of course, I don't actually experience my faith as a choice, in the usual sense of the word. It feels as deep a part of me as my orientation. Zack Ford makes an important distinction: