maybe it’s just his roots showing…

Race isnt immutable either, after all Bohner was born white but chose to be orange

Race isnt immutable either, after all Bohner was born white but chose to be orange

C’mon now. Being an oompa-loompa might be an immutable characteristic.

Religion isn’t immutable, but wouldn’t it be great if it was? Proselytizing would be a thing of the past. Jehovah’s Witnesses could sleep in.

Well, now I can tell my Republican-and-Mormon parents, “Hey, John Boehner thinks religion is immutable. Guess I was just born with that pesky recessive atheist gene.”

Religion is fairly immutable if you’ve been brought up never to question it. This Smith must have had a horrible childhood.

Also, what does mutability of personal characteristics have to do with protecting people? Religion is mutable, but only a wingnut (you know—the kind of people who oppose hate crimes legislation) would think it was okay to beat up someone on religious grounds. And even if you thought sexual orientation was mutable, does Smith or Boehner actually believe that if Matthew Shepherd had suddenly “chosen” to be straight and announced “Wait, I’ve decided I like girls now” when he was about to be assaulted, he would have been safe?

Boehner points out that anti-assault laws already on the books should be enough to cover these crimes, but he’s missing the point (for a change). The idea of having laws on the books isn’t revenge—they’re supposed to act as deterrents.  Anti-hate crime legislation only does this: It puts people on notice that if they decide to wail on someone, they can’t assume it’s going to be a freebie because their victim was gay, Black, Muslim, or whatever. 

If the Rs really meant this “existing laws are enough” shtick, it would be easy enough for Republican governors to each call a quick press conference and say something like “Just so we’re clear, just because we don’t like these laws on principle doesn’t mean we’re okay with assault, and anyone who thinks it’ll be okay to go after someone because of their race, religion, ethnicity or love life has another think coming. We will enforce these laws, for all our citizens.”

But you don’t actually see them doing that, do you?

If religion is an inbred trait, I’m a Sami skin drum animist and a Slavic Wotanist combined to make some sort of reindeer-herding and knife- and axe-wielding craftsman who should probably kill the Christian oppressors for trying to change me.  If those morons really want to go there, to quote their wimpy sacrificial godling: they know not what they do.

If religion is immutable, that means my wife is not Jewish?  Uh-oh ... how did my wife end up on the synagogue board then?

Of course, most of my ancestors seems to have been as whitey-white as I am: people like us would fry in the middle east before the invention of sun-screen.  Thus, I may very well not have the Jewish gene anyway (I’m certainly no good with money, and my nose is not very big).  Seconding 3letterjon, I think I should also be worshiping Wotan or something like that ... certainly I shouldn’t be bothering to wake up early on Saturdays to go to shul ...

The GOP can’t have “hate crimes” laws b/c that’s how they function: using power to intimidate entire classes of people.

If you light a bag of dog shit on fire in your neighbor’s yard and doorbell ditch them, that’s trespassing and vandalism at least.  Misdemeanors.  You were “telling” your neighbor you hate him/her and would like it if they moved.

If you light a cross on your neighbor’s yard and doorbell ditch them, THAT’S a hate crime, b/c not only are you guilty of trespassing and vandalism, but you were “telling” your neighbor that you hate him/her b/c s/he’s black/Catholic/Jewish/etc. and not only do you want him/her to move or die, but any other black/Catholic/Jew/etc. that moves in will get the same treatment.

It’s a different crime, b/c the intention is not to assault and threaten a single individual but to terrorize a whole class of individuals based not on their individual traits, but on their common race/creed/orientation.

It’s why calling the crime against Matthew Shepard a ‘robbery gone wrong’ is so fucking offensive.  It was not a robbery gone wrong.  It was a crucifixion of a homosexual for existing.  It was a terrorist statement that ALL homosexuals deserve painful deaths, and if the perpetrators were only punished/prosecuted for robbery, another true injustice would occur.

The GOP currently exists by fearmongering.  They scapegoat entire classes of people and mobilize the others through this fear to vote against their best interests.  If intimidation of classes of people is recognized as terrorism and clearly understood as evil and illegal, well, what the hell else does the GOP have but obstructionism?

They have to say completely stupid shit like “Christianity is in the genes” b/c it makes it easier to other people.  Admitting that threatening or fearmongering entire classes of people is wrong would put them out of business.

“Hate crime” is a bit of a misnomer, and it gets idiot responses like “all crimes are motivated by hate” or “they want to make thinking illegal!!1!” but it does label the difference: it’s not just a crime motivated by greed or want; it’s hatred against an entire class of people.  And, yeah, lots of us want to make it illegal to act on illogical hatred of entire classes of people.

We could change the name to ‘terrorism’ straight up, if we were able to admit that “real Amurkins” were capable of terrorism.

Of course, Boehner wants religion not to be a choice, but a requirement…

If religion is immutable, then proselytizing is a waste and Christians can all spend the money that once supported missionaries on something else.

Next time the JWs or LDS kids come to the door, I’m gonna tell them, “Religion is immutable. You’re wasting your time.”

I would like some crackpot to make the argument that being gay is the natural state of man, and that we choose to be heterosexual.

It makes one wonder, though, about what would happen to religions if they were inheritable.  I mean, children usually some kind of mixing of genes from both parents.  How would Shintoism and Voodoo look mixed?

I mean, children usually some kind of mixing of genes from both parents. How would Shintoism and Voodoo look mixed?

Horns and a tail, just like any other non-Christian mix.

Silly. Obviously, Fundamentalist Christianity is a dominant gene and overrides everything else. As for mixes of anything else, well, all heathens pretty much look alike.

I would like some crackpot to make the argument that being gay is the natural state of man, and that we choose to be heterosexual.

I think you could probably make a better Biblical case that heterosexuality is God’s curse on Adam and Eve for that whole forbidden fruit thing. After all, there was no mention of children or childbirth until they got pitched out of the Garden.

If religion is an inbred trait, I’m a Sami skin drum animist and a Slavic Wotanist combined to make some sort of reindeer-herding and knife- and axe-wielding craftsman who should probably kill the Christian oppressors for trying to change me.

I call bullshit on 3letterjohn: he’s never at the meetings.

How would Shintoism and Voodoo look mixed?

Probably something like this, unfortunately:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65EShYbK5ww

Lymis’ voodoo/shinto comment was faster and better.

I would like some crackpot to make the argument that being gay is the natural state of man, and that we choose to be heterosexual.

You know they all secretly think this, right?  And they’re terrified of it.  They hate women, and can’t stand to be around them.  The archetypical ‘guy’ wants to spend his time drinking and watching sports with other men.  Maybe playing some football or basketball or some other manly sport involving lots of physical contact with other sweaty men.  His wife is called the ‘ball and chain’ or some other indication that she’s some horrible punishment that keeps him from spending all his time male-only pursuits.  He brags about his sexual ‘conquests’ and he needs his wife to produce children who look like him so that he has physical evidence that he fucks a woman, to justify all his ‘male-bonding’ activities without anybody questioning whether or not he’s actually gay.  All because his social conditioning just won’t allow him to accept that it might just be ok.

Religion isn’t immutable, but wouldn’t it be great if it was?

No, because that would mean every person born to parents of a faith they find oppressive would be stuck with it.  Every GLBT child of Mormons, every feminist born to misogynist churches . . . anyone with breast cancer or male pattern baldness can tell you that an immutable characteristic isn’t a guarantee of your being happy with it.

To make everybody born to such a faith all fulfilled and unoppressed by the social mores and beliefs thereof would be to interfere with our sentience.

(And probably the fundamentalists would have dropped the “convert-or-” from “convert-or-die” in their sweep across the globe and committed mass genocide over . . . well, everybody they conquered and everybody they in THIS world were later persuaded to leave alone.)

Religious freedom is a concession to personal happiness centuries ahead of its time: it is ours not because faith is immutable, but because faith is significant in one’s life; it can cause happiness or destroy it, depending on its fit to someone’s personality and soul.  So perhaps the immutable quality is what sort of faith one is *comfortable* with, or fulfilled by, and this makes it similar to sexual orientation in that most people can *perform* another orientation, just as a devout Pagan could sit in church with her parents and pretend to be a devout Catholic or a devout Baptist, but in neither case can pretending to be the wrong thing provide happiness.

If religion is immutable, that means my wife is not Jewish?  Uh-oh ... how did my wife end up on the synagogue board then?

As far as anti-discrimination laws go (as opposed to one’s First Amendment and “no religious test” rights spelled out in the Constitution), the law was primarily written to cover Jews, who (as I’m sure you know) were subject to some pretty serious discrimination prior to the 1960s.  We’ve pretty well forgotten that as a culture, but see 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement.  Hell, it was still considered a big deal in the 1990s that Jerry Seinfeld didn’t Anglicize his name and even put it right in the title of his TV show.

That’s where Boehner gets the “immutable characteristic” thing from—since people are born Jews and (in his mind) stay Jews even if they convert to another religion, that makes being Jewish ... er, being religious an immutable characteristic.  People like your wife aren’t really Jewish because they weren’t born that way.

I so wish I were kidding about this, but I’m not.  For religious right wackos, this is really what they mean.

But if religion (or lack thereof) is genetic, why do they oppose birth control, abortion, etc. for us heathens? If we are prevented from breeding, then sooner or later our undesirable genes will die out, and the entire human race will be devoted to Jesus from birth!

Oooh, but that would be evolution.

Religion is fairly immutable if you’ve been brought up never to question it.

Then bible-thumping missionaries must be enduring the biggest case of cognitive dissonance on record, given how evangelical the Xian religion is.  “I can change your faith, you heathen—but you can’t change my immutable trait, nyah nyah!”

Then bible-thumping missionaries must be enduring the biggest case of cognitive dissonance on record

I doubt it. You cannot have cognitive dissonance about things you don’t think about in the first place. Without that, you just have shallow, herdlike acceptance of what you get told.

Heck, these are people who do the Leviticus shuffle, where homosexuality is anathema purely and irrevocably because Leviticus says so, and yet all the other prohibitions that are even more clearly stated simply don’t apply because “we’ve outgrown that” or “that just doesn’t apply any more.”

For that matter, I’ll lay odds that if you actually could find someone who tried to claim that religion is inborn and immutable, they would happily justify evangelism on the basis of “well, no human can change something inborn by their own power, but with Jesus all things are possible, and if you ask for a miracle, He will make you Christian.”

That’s the answer to any scientific proof of a biological basis for sexual orientation, after all. Pray the gay away. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Did you see the lovely little pic on Andrew Sullivan, with the anti-gay protestor proudly showing his tattoo which had the anti-gay quote from Leviticus, completely oblivious to the fact that Leviticus also prohibits tattooing?  Beautiful.

But if religion (or lack thereof) is genetic, why do they oppose birth control, abortion, etc. for us heathens? If we are prevented from breeding, then sooner or later our undesirable genes will die out, and the entire human race will be devoted to Jesus from birth!

Oooh, but that would be evolution.

This is actually what I wish I’d have said when a wingnut whose blog I used to follow (before I got banned from comments) posted a “joke” about how Christians should support abortion because then the non-believers would die out. I’d have phrased it very particularly - “So you think that X belief is more conducive to having children? So X belief is more likely to be passed on?” etc.

One of the more sensible foundations of traditional Christian belief (as opposed to crazy stuff like virgin birth and a god-man) is that one must make a free choice to follow God. Otherwise there’s little to the concepts of sin and redemption. You choose out of the free will that belongs to you as a rational creature.

If they’re saying that faith is genetic now, that’s just more confirmation that what these people espouse isn’t really Christianity anymore, in any form worthy of the name. Or it’s not Christianity as western culture has known it for better and (so very often) for worse.

Our time is as getting to be as weird as it is stupid.

Don’t we protect people on the basis of veteran status? That’s a choice, but I imagine the wingnuts want to keep that.

Whenever someone claims sexual orientation is a choice, it makes me wonder when they decided to be straight.  I know that I never chose to be straight; that’s just how I have always been.  It seems like things would work out so much better for everyone if these people could just be honest with themselves.

Of course, Boehner wants religion </i>not</i> to be a choice, but a requirement…

Ding ding ding!  We have a winner.  I’m sure this is what he meant.

Whenever someone claims sexual orientation is a choice, it makes me wonder when they decided to be straight. 

Catgirl - A lot of ‘em have—sort of. They just don’t get the difference between choosing to be straight and choosing to be closeted.