Immutable Characteristics: A Footnote

I can always count on Andrew Sullivan and his readers. This one's a sidebar, actually, a reader's response to this post:

I'm against hate crime laws - every single one of them. I also understand and respect the argument for them, even as I strongly disagree. But what you cannot coherently hold is that there should be hate crime protections for people of faith and no hate crime protections for gays. Even if you believe, erroneously, that homoesxuality is a choice, so, obviously, is religion. The GOP's current position - against hate crime laws only when they apply to gays (even with strong guarantees of freedom of speech and religion) - is pure animus. It's bigotry - and it's coming from the very top.

The "top" he's referring to is John Boehner, Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. We've already done Boehner's boner, and I've lit into Sullivan enough about his position on hate crimes laws.

The reader opines thus:

In a recent post, you wrote that "Even if you believe, erroneously, that homosexuality is a choice, so, obviously, is religion." I've heard that from a number of people recently, and I'm curious as to whether this is actually true. I certainly don't remember choosing to be an Atheist--as far back as I can trace, it simply fit in with what I believed and how I perceived the world around me. At what age did I choose to be an Atheist? What were my range of choices? Does the fact that both my parents were atheists decrease my choice?

I'm curious as to when you chose to be a Catholic. When you write about your belief and faith, I don't recall getting the sense of you weighing multiple options and choosing the best answer. Often, faith can be very, very difficult.

But, that misses the point of Boehner's statement, and misses any sensible reading of the issue: Boehner was repeating the anti-gay mantra that being gay is a choice, in the face of all evidence. (Or perhaps we're dealing with a little Thomist sophistry here: if you choose to be honest about being gay, and try to make a life as a gay person, then you've made a choice to be gay. You see the problem? It's condemning the "choice" to act on an intrinsic part of your personality. OK -- I don't want to go any farther into this -- my head will explode from the logical disconnects.)

If one is to believe recent findings from psychologists and geneticists, there may be a genetic component to the tendency toward belief. That's a very general category. Boehner's statement implies that there is a Baptist gene, and, as might be expected, there's no support for that one at all. As for this reader, the fact that both his parents were atheists may imply a predisposition toward non-belief, which seems a reasonable obverse to the idea of a genetic basis for belief.

The point is, of course, that safeguards for religious belief, and hate-crimes laws that increase penalties for violent crimes stemming from bias against another's beliefs, are not based on an immutable characteristic, simply because the choice of which faith to follow is a choice. It's a choice that's guaranteed in our Constitution. (It's worth noting here that none of the rights protected in the Bill of Rights are based on immutable characteristics.) It's not a rational choice, necessarily. In fact it's probably not at all rational, which is where I think Sullivan and his reader miss the boat: religious sentiment is an emotional experience. I was raised a Christian -- well, they tried, although it didn't stick very well. I came to Paganism because it felt like coming home. That's the key phrase -- "felt like." I knew a little bit about it -- I have a number of Pagan friends -- but it was after -- call it my "epiphany" -- that I began the serious study of the beliefs and traditions of my new faith. (It was never a question of whether the gods exist. It was a question of how I conceive of them. And there's an element of choice in those two statements. In addition to its other virtues, Paganism gives me some room to maneuver. I'm probably the Pagan equivalent of a Deist.) (Note: Let me also add a bit about how the story of the Lord's self-sacrifice at Samhain, when he willingly gives himself to slaughter and enters the Underworld, affects me more deeply than the story of the Crucifixion ever did. I don't know why -- it's essentially the same story, but there's an emotional load to the Pagan version that hits me right in the gut.)

Any guesses on whether John Boehner wants to protect my "choice" to become a Witch? How about if I call it "my immutable Witchhood"?