crimination was never even mentioned and that forbidding discrimination based on sex was not intended as a primary purpose of Title VII. Rather, the category of sex was added to the amendment by its principal opponent, Rep. Howard Smith, just two days before the House sent the bill to the Senate. It had become evident to Rep. Smith that the measure was going to pass the House and so he added what he believed was a "poison pill" to kill the measure in the Senate. Joking that every woman should have a right to a "husband of her own," Smith voted against the amended Title VII, which was approved by a vote of 168 to 133 in the House, anyway (Kanowitz, 1968, pp. 310-311).
Despite the New Republic calling the sex discrimination provision of Title VII a "mischievous joke perpetrated on the floor of the House of Representatives," the U.S. Senate had little difficulty in swallowing Smith's poison pill. Opponents to the measure in the Senate argued that sex discrimination is an altogether different category of discrimination and that it should be treated separately rather than as part of Title VII. A majority of the Senate promptly disagreed and approved the measure into federal law with relatively little floor debate.
The silence of congressional records as to what Congress intended by keeping the sex category in Title VII has served as the basis for unequal application of the law. Both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the federal courts have found that, because Congress never discussed sexual orientation in its debates, the sex discrimination clause of Title VII is limited to traditional notions of sex. After reading what one court called the "plain meaning" of Title VII, the court concluded that "Congress had only traditional notions of 'sex' in mind" (Holloway v. Andersen, 1977, pp. 661-662). Subsequent court rulings have firmly established that employment decisions and practices which discriminate on the basis of sexu...