"Interesting", you said...

Yes, the way you keep flipping back and forth between social and economic interpretations of my answers is "interesting" -- not to mention "indicative" -- but the rest of our lurking audience is left to form their own opinions about that.

For example: that statement of mine that you quote in your opening paragraph is lifted from my response to the question about judicial authority, not Federal/governmental. Is it not transparent enough for you to understand that my immediate topic within that context was social legislation, such as the so-called "sodomy laws" and the efforts now underway to deny equal protection under the law on the basis of sexual orientation? (I should also admit to having the attempts at an anti-flag-burning amendment in mind, as dead as it is).

Even so, you raise a point that ought to be discussed: Is contractual behavior public or private? I am not versed sufficiently in the law to make a definitive statement. Of the examples you give, the first is a matter with which I am generally familiar . . . and yes, it legal to hire someone for less than minimum wage, if you are a resterateur hiring wait-staff, where the law allows tips to make up the difference between statutory minimum wage and the hourly wage of the server -- whether or not they actually do, the tacit but legal understanding is that they do, and the server pays taxes on the aggregate, regardless of amount.

Speaking as someone who has worked for minimum wage, I can tell you from the moths flying out of my wallet (see hundreds of cartoons for the metaphor) that "minimum wage" is a far cry from "living wage". But I can, nonetheless, envision an arrangement other than the food service industry where an employee might agree to work for less than statutory minimum: a retiree attempting to earn a little extra. Such an arrangement would, by necessity, be made "under the table" -- and I have no intrinsic objection to such an underground economy. In fact, I wish it were bigger.

In other words, my realistic answer to that part of your question is "it depends on the circumstances". Whether or not it harms others should be based on whether the person being hired has other dependents.

"Three people coming to a business deal" seems to me to have no bearing on what we've talked about up to now. That's contract law, about which I know next to nothing. You'll have to elaborate, so that I understand where you think government steps in and/or interferes.

Does Constitutional protection of choice only matter when we're talking about fetuses and sexual orientation?

You're combining the implicit Constitutional right to personal privacy codified in Roe v Wade and popularly phrased as "choice" -- as in "a woman's right to choose what happens to (and within) her own body" -- with a phemonenon about which there is no choice. Sexuality, or "sexual preference" if you will, is not a choice. One is either heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. The personal discovery of one's "orientation" appears more or less simultaneously with the physical ability to act upon it. The only choice available to individuals regarding their sexuality is whether or not to act upon it.

The current Constitutional issue surrounding "sexual orientation" is a matter of "equal protection under the law", wherein a class of citizens are being denied the same rights to make their partnerships as legal, and as permanent, as another class, including all of the responsibilities (as well as the benefits) which adhere thereto.

In other words: Neither has any bearing on the economic issues you raise in the earlier part of your post.

There is a yawning mental chasm that seems to separate economic behavior from other kinds . . .

Yes, I noticed. There are times when it is relevant: such as, when chosing examples to cite in one's argument.