Discrimination - pros and cons

Let's talk about discrimination. Discrimination is

the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment; and
the treatment or consideration based on category, such as race, gender, religion or opinion.
Many politicians and (mainstream) media claim that discrimination in the latter sense is always wrong and evil; and therefore in many countries anti-discrimination laws have been passed.

I think and hope that we all agree that governments, public entities, companies and organizations should not discriminate against people based on superficial attributes like skin color, sex or national origin. Such discrimination would be highly immoral.

But what about discrimination of opinions like

gender identity (in contrast to facts like sex (male / female))
extremist political opinions (if vociferously advocated), e.g. socialism
fundamentalist religion (e.g. Salafism, Wahhabism)
how to present oneself appropriately in public?
Why should a hiring company be forbidden by law to discriminate against a socialist (whose opinion disallows free entrepreneurship) or a sales rep with blue hair, nose ring and face tattoos?

Discrimination is the crux of business success. Businesses have to discriminate between employees with good and bad opinions (dependent on knowledge and skills). If they choose employees with good opinions, they thrive. Otherwise probably not. If businesses discriminate based on shallow, irrelevant features like skin color or country of origin, they'll fail to get the best employees.

If we protect opinions and behavior patterns from discrimination, where does it stop?
Do I have to accept people with ridiculous opinions like the flat earth theory or "modern" blood libels?

And the core problem if we would prevent discrimination of opinions, is the following:

If we prevent discrimination of opinions, we rob ourselves of the means to discover truth and we go back to pre-Enlightenment. The core of discovering truth is making creative conjectures, followed by rigorous criticism, where bold, imaginative ideas are proposed and then tested against reality via empirical evidence and logical scrutiny. Incorrect assumptions/opinions are eliminated.
A government that prevents discrimination of opinions or of people with certain opinions (or even tries to), is effectively dictating that a selection of opinions is equally valuable. That is inherently fascist and totalitarian.

_{Posted using SteemX}