Someone please send House Minority Leader Boehner's Press Secretary a dictionary...

House Minority Leader John Boehner recently voted against our troops by voting against the defense appropriation bill.  Boehner voted against it because the bill had a rider that would add membership in the military, disability, and sexual orientation to existing federal hate crime laws that already make it a federal crime to engage in a crime of violence motivated by the victim's race, religion, or gender.

From CBS News:

In an email, Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Boehner "supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc) based on immutable characteristics."  (emphasis added)

Apparently, Kevin Smith (thanks for "Clerks," by the way), doesn't know what immutable means.

People change religion.   Or, put another way, people choose their religion, at least in this free country they do.

The other problem is that current federal hate crimes law does NOT include gender, but the provision that Boehner claims is his reason for voting against the defense appropriation bill would have actually added gender to it.  So the bill actually provides protections against groups his spokeman said he'd support being protected by hate crime legislation.

Oh, and being in the military is not also an immutable characteristic, but I guess Boehner doesn't think that someone who targets our men and women in uniform should be punished more severely, either?

Smith takes another crack at it:

"The bill, he said, "could eventually invite the prosecution of Americans for their thoughts and religious beliefs, basic provinces protected by the First Amendment."

Hate crimes are inherently about a person's acts, not thoughts.  What it adds is the motivation for a person to act in a certain criminal way.  There is no First Amendment right to kill or severly injure someone different from you.  Never has been.