It is usually weird religious minorities like atheists that benefit most from laws prohibiting religious discrimination.
As for the country club question, I certainly feel a desire to punish this person for views I find repugnant but that isn't a very good grounds for not hiring him. As long as his membership isn't going to interfere with his ability to do the job I'd like to think I would hire him. To do otherwise seems like ineffective business practice.
This is a tangent, but I'm interested in understanding better what beliefs are seen as "repugnant" in that they evoke the psychology of disgust and contamination, and what beliefs are merely seen as untrue and/or dangerous.
Let's say you are interviewing a candidate for a job. In casual conversation, the candidate mentions that he is a member of a rather old and prestigious country club. You've never heard the name of the club before.
You look up the country club afterwards, and are surprised by what you read. The club refuses membership to homosexuals. It revokes the membership of couples who use birth control. Leadership positions are reserved to unmarried males.
The candidate is otherwise competent. Under what conditions would you hire him? Would you want a law passed banning hiring discrimination based on country club membership?
(The country club is analogous to a nicer version of the Catholic church. I left out a couple bad things.)
Religious discrimination is illegal in many parts of the world, and I think that's probably a good thing. Still, keeping this at the object level (no meta-rules or veils of ignorance) it seems to me that discriminating against religious people is fine. I'm curious what other people think.