I have some honest good faith questions for you as Marines.

If you are aware that the reality is that some percentage of your fellow Marines are gay, and you are trained to and I presume do in fact trust each other with your very lives, how do you feel about fighting for the perpetuation of the idea that the person you trust with your life, isn't entitled to the same rights and privileges in society that you are?

How do you feel about fighting for the perpetuation of the idea that if that man/woman is honest about who he/she is, they can be terminated/precluded from his/her chosen occupation of military service to their nation?

Presuming you aren't gay and have never been subjected to any unprofessional, undisciplined, or uninvited sexual advances from a fellow Marine, what does that say about the myth that gay/lesbian Marines aren't capable of carrying out their duties professionally independent of their sexual orientation?

Again the numbers establish that the only real problem is a statistically significant incidence of unprofessional/undisciplined heterosexual conduct in the military.

How would you feel if that was the world someone you loved, say a son/daughter or brother/sister, had to live in?

And back on the other topic yeah, I'm well aware of the meaning of "immutable". Are you aware of the meaning of the word "generally"?

Religion of course is not immutable, but enjoys the same "protection" for reasons I find both valid and invalid. That's a discussion for another time.

Are you actually suggesting sexual orientation isn't "largely" immutable? If you are you are I feel you're misinformed. While human sexuality and its attendant behaviors fall on a broad spectrum, one's natural orientation, whereever it falls, is largely immutable. It is only a "choice" in the sense one could choose to act against one's natural orientation for one reason or another. Those reasons usually having nothing to do with someone's natural orientation and almost always to do with fear of exposure and attendant cultural intolerance which can lead some to choose to go against one's nature.

If you think the concept of bigotry should extend to occupational status, I think the consequences of such an idea would yield obvious absurdities. But you are entitled to your opinion.

Fair enough that you want to stick up for a fellow Marine. I don't recall my initial posts being critical of that status until he/she and others started in on mine, accusing me of inappropriately of bigotry for being intolerant of intolerance, and whining that I was threatening others when the idea is absurd given the medium and the remarks themselves.

Here's the biggest weakness with the idea I was threatening anyone and one that would need to be proven legally--did anyone I responded to actually apprehend some imminent ability, on my part, to actually carry out my supposed "threat"? Think about that for a second. Anonymous people in cyberspace being able to anonymously "threaten" each other without real world spatial proximity or awareness of identity or physical location of another.

@ didus . . . try harder.

Please purchase a dictionary and look up the definition of bigot and bigotry.

Here I'll help you. bigot: a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance . . .

Let's just flesh this out. If accusing someone of bigotry was merely a function of "intolerance of others opinions" or simply a function of "my hurling condescending rhetoric based on another's occupation", then the word would lose all meaning.

For example: If you said, "I loathe human beings who are black or Muslim because I believe, better yet know, them to be subhumans who are dirty, lazy, inclined to criminality and violence, genetically less smart than caucasians, and not entitled to vote, eat in a restaurant where I eat, or marry a caucasian woman" and I was both intolerant of that "belief/claimed knowledge/opinion" and/or "condescended to that person in some way", but nevertheless that person was allowed to claim appropriate use of the English language in labeling me "the bigot" then the word would lose all meaning and would draw a false equivalency between "two qualitatively dissimilar types of bigotry". That's assuming that the label could be argued to be appropriately and accurately applied to my intolerance of the substance of another's opinion.

By the same measure if you say, "as a Marine I hold X opinion about the law" and I respond "as a lawyer I can unequivocally say you are full of shit and don't know what you are talking about", you may be able to rightly label me a condescending prick who is intolerant of the "substance of that opinion" or the person who holds it on the basis of his occupation, but it is not an accurate usage of the English language to label me a bigot.

The word generally only has meaning in the context of "immutable class characteristics" i.e. gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and it should logically to sexual orientation as well though that is not the current state of the law because an actual state of invidious cultural/religious bigotry.

But certainly many people in the world have a vested interest in degrading or diluting the meaning and power of words to the point of meaning nothing. That's how invidious ugly ideas, opinions, and words achieve a sense of legitimacy when none is deserved based on the actual meaning, import, and consequences that would necessarily flow from them.

Kudos for contributing to the degradation of the word bigotry by attempting to draw a false equivalency. Only way you could have done a better job is to have cloaked your argument in your religious worldview. That's the most effective way to legitimize actual bigotry--base it in ones religious beliefs or faith.