[Strangler Lewis]

As I understood him previously, GD's disagreement extended beyond abusing the "privacy" of a public figure to the wisdom of labels in general. On this point, I agree with SM that such labels--be they labels of religion, sexuality or political affiliation--can be useful to broadly generalize about a person's viewpoints and sympathies.

I also think in Butler's case there's the point that refusing to be labeled suggests that there's something to apologize for or be embarrassed about. My dad used to tell the story about how during WWII training, some other soldier asked if he was a Jew. To which my dad replied, "Yeah," and went about what he was doing. The other guy said that my dad was the first Jew that he got a straight answer from without a lengthy history and endless qualifications.

This is not to say that the guy's question was appropriate, or that my father ever had much use for his religion.