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It's more complex than that but does work with the parent's comment. The official policy of the Catholic Church is that abortion is a terrible sin. Many other (but obviously not all) Christian churches have the same views. That does not mean that individual Catholics or their Christian brothers and sisters agree with the views of their churches on abortion or don't always agree that their religious views should be imposed on all of society. Abortion, while an important issue, is just one of thousands that church dogma preaches and there is no party that matches up to any of them completely. Some members of the church simply see the balance of other issues as being greater than the issue of abortion.


So, you are saying that when one social group you belong to (the church) has an inconsistent belief system with another social group you belong to (loose party affiliation), you pick the one that suits your personal opinion on other issues.

This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

I feel that the answer to this question is 'The world is a little bit more complicated than the parent poster claims.' These claims have little predictive, or explanatory power, given this rather prominent counter-example.


People pick and choose both. What I have seen is that people generally start with what their parents taught them, but it's not that uncommon for them to end up completely different. And it changes over time. I was very much a "D" voter when I was young (as my parents were) but mostly vote "R" now. I've never been religous though (neither were my parents).


> This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

Well, in a multiparty democracy (which was where the study happened; if you didn't know that going in to the article, the reference to multiple center-right parties should be a pretty big giveaway) if you dissent from a party on an issue of any salience, there's a pretty good chance there is another party available that is just like that one, except for it's view on the issue you dissent on. So, if the party fails to convince you when it changes, you stop being a party member rather than become a dissenter on the one issue.

That's less true for religions (especially religions with certain features: you aren't going to find a Church like the Roman Catholic Church including it's view of the papacy and it's historical descent, but differing on the moral parameters of abortion.)

It's also less true of parties in a system which isn't a robust multiparty democracy, which is why both major parties in the US system are big tent parties with stark internal divisions that sometimes try to paper over them to present a united front.


Probably because most people don't pick what church they belong to; their parents do that for them. While people do convert between religions, most will stay with what they grew up with and try to make things work within that framework. Sometimes that's not possible so they pick one or the other of their religion or their political ideology. Religion doesn't always lose out and my gut instinct is that it wins out more than politics does but that's more difficult to see since membership and public interaction for religion works differently than it does for political parties.


> This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?

Interesting possibility: Religion is a protected class, politics isn't. So people fear viewpoint discrimination (i.e. getting canceled) for diverging from the dominant political party, because that isn't protected, but not for diverging from any given religious doctrine, because that is protected.

Maybe we just need to declare the political parties to be religions. In a way they are. And it's in the same way that caused religions to be protected to begin with, isn't it?


California has some pieces of political affiliation carved out as a protected class.

It feels risky to me. Coupled to the protection of freedom of religion in the US is both the interpretation of the First Amendment and the political custom that there be a "high wall" between religion and politics. In practice, this isn't always true, but the principle serves as a counterweight to people's faith not being formally, structurally questionable.

For obvious reasons, no such high wall can exist between people's politics and politics, so making political affiliation a protected class risks giving protection of the law to things that society will greatly suffer under if they are protected (imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman).


> For obvious reasons, no such high wall can exist between people's politics and politics

I don't know if I buy it, because the purpose of the wall is to constrain people from being punished for their beliefs, which you could do just as well with politics. That isn't the same as having their beliefs questioned in a public debate -- which we already do with religion. Questioning isn't punishment. Getting fired is punishment.

> imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman

The strongest objection to a Klansman is that they commit acts of violence. But violence isn't protected speech. If they're committing acts of violence, fire them.

Whereas if your only objection is that they go home and give sermons against interracial marriage while wearing a stupid hat, isn't that kind of the point?

How is it any different than Planned Parenthood can't fire a Catholic for opposing abortion outside of work?


The larger concern is they use SPLC's money to pay for venues for those sermons, or direct SPLC's resources away from SPLC's goals because those goals are counter to the individual's politics.

Companies ought to have the right to fire people acting counter to their goals.


It's not "SPLC's money" once they've paid it to someone else for labor, any more than it was Planned Parenthood's money when a Catholic donates it to a church that gives sermons against abortion.




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