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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

Ah, but gender (and by extension, sexual orientation according to SCOTUS) is a protected class under the Civil Rights Act. Political affiliation is not a protected class.

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And the reason for this is that we now believe that gender and sexual orientation are not subject to conscious thought but are “hard coded” into a person. Whereas political affiliation (and politically motivated acts of violence) are still thought to be choices that can be freely made or changed.

I’m not sure this argument holds in general.

For example, you could change your religion and it would still be illegal to discriminate on that basis.

I think the argument holds for religion too.

I can decide to not say offensive things in a store so as to not be kicked out. But I can't decide to change my faith to be allowed entry to the store, because faith doesn't work like that. You can't force religious belief. At most, I could pretend to change my professed religion. But my faith remains unchanged and unchangeable.

I don’t think it holds in general for all civil rights, but I do think this change in mindset underpins the increased protection of gender and sexual orientation vs 20 or 30 years ago. Even the typical verbiage has changed, from sexual preference to orientation.

> political affiliation (and politically motivated acts of violence) are still thought to be choices that can be freely made or changed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4038932/#:~:tex....

I definitely agree that the growing body of knowledge about the brain and how personalities develop will be a huge challenge to our notions of free will and responsibility under the law.

There are some other examples of protected classes that don't fit this profile. Religion/creed for one. But also the speech of labor organizers in the workplace is protected, but being a labor organizer is not "hard coded".

You can change gender. And of course you can change sexual orientation, it's just preference.

Look I think you’ve got the spirit but in practice it’s not as simple as that. If transgender people could simply choose not to be their lives would be instantly markedly improved. Nobody signs up to be part of a class of people met with disgust, mockery, routine violence, sexual assault, job discrimination, losing their friends and families, crippling loneliness, and huge medical and therapy bills. They do it because they literally cannot live as their assigned gender.

"Nobody signs up to be part of a class of people met with disgust, mockery, routine violence, sexual assault, job discrimination, losing their friends and families, crippling loneliness"

To me it sounds like you could just as well be describing conservatives.

This is one of the best comments I've read here LOL!

They literally described what it's like to be a left coast conservative.

I belive you mean Bostock v Clayton Co, which was decided this summer and extended Title VII protections to LBGT individuals. Obergefell extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Yes, thank you. I edited my post.

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