Right-wing Aspies?

Q: First, let me say how glad I am you have this website. My 4-year old son is an Aspie. Anyway, if you had to guess, do you think most Aspies would fall into any particular religious or political camp? I know that's a tough question unless some kind of survey has been done. I ask because it seems that due to the "rage for order" many ASD people have, they might tend to lean towards the right in both religion and politics. I hope I am wrong about this, though. I'm proud to have an Aspie for a son, but a Republican would be hard to accept... ;)

Sharon

A: Congratulations, you win today's "Fun Question of the Day" award ^_^
All three of our panelists wanted to answer your question, so here are
all three answers:

From Brian:
Oh ho ho, you have opened one heck of a can of worms! We've talked about
this question quite a bit at club meetings. I'll try to keep my answer short
so that other panelists can add to it.
First, I know Aspies who fall in a number of places on the religious and
political spectrums (not to mention the autistic one). There is a certain
degree to which the "rage for order" does impact both religion and politics.
But the fact is that "order" doesn't have to mean authoritarianism; it can
just mean coherence. Fundamentalism is coherent. So is atheism. So are a
number of points in between. (I'm not a Catholic, but I get quite annoyed
when Catholics do something the Pope, rest his soul, has told them not to do
-- not because I love the Pope, but because it makes them seem incoherent!)
The plurality of the Aspies I know, however, don't believe in a conventional
God, or have no opinion on the matter (though they are without exception
kind and moral people). There are also those that do.
Similarly with politics. The Republicans may be the control freaks of our
political spectrum, but the Democrats are no less ardent in pursuing their
own brand of social justice. Meanwhile, I'm a Libertarian. (Now *there*'s a
coherent philosophy -- government's function is to protect its citizens'
life, liberty, and property, and that's about it!) My shot-in-the-dark
limited-sample-size anecdotal-evidence-based guess is that Aspies tend to be
more liberal than conservative, partly because it's the liberals who are
less likely to throw rocks at us (or try to exorcise the evil demons
possessing us, as I understand one Aspie's mother did). On the other hand, I
know Republicans who are wonderful, tolerant people. It takes all kinds.
--Brian

From Wiley:
I would bet you could find an Aspie for every possible political or
religious belief. But I have noticed a couple of trends:
1) There are a lot of Aspie libertarians. (I'm deliberately using a
small 'L' there, plenty of them have issues with the actual Libertarian
party.) It's basically a grown-up version of the Aspie childhood
rejection of "Because I said so" arguments by adults.
2) There are a lot of Aspie hard-core liberals. I put myself in this
catagory. Aspies tend to have a very strong sense of fairness, and if
they don't take the libertarian path of constanly defending their own
rights, they often wind up working towards defending the rights of
other people. And they tend to find concepts like racism and
homophobia to be illogical, which they are.
3) There are a lot of Aspies who reject organized religion. They may
have personal spiritual beliefs, but reject the idea that you should
hold something as a religious belief because a book or a person told
you to. Again, this is a catagory I put myself in. I had to describe
my religious beliefs in a single sentence the other day and came up
with "What you get when you combine a neopagan, an atheist, and Baruch
Spinoza." A lot of these Aspies who feel this way about orthodox (in
the origional meaning of the word) religions but still want the social
structure of a Church become Unitarian Universalists.
4) There are a lot of Aspies who like the automatic social structure
provided by religions like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of
Latter-Day Saints, or the Church of Scientology where believers
automatically spend the majority of their time in a structured Church
environment. These sorts of churches provide social contact with other
people, but in a nice predictable manner in which everyone has a
clearly defined job.

So there are a number of extremes that Aspies tend to gravitate to.
But there are also a lot of possibilities in between, and if your
family is relatively liberal, I don't think you need to worry too much
about winding up with a blind follower of George Bush. And if you do,
I've heard that with the latest ABA techniques they're getting close to
curing Republican Syndrome ^_^

Wiley

From Lynn:
I would just like to add this to what the other panelists have said. I was
talking to my brother's girlfriend about how you choose a religious path,
and she said I must have chosen Catholicism because I like firm rules to
obey. I wish I had thought to say this to her, but I actually resisted
converting for a long time because I like rules so much (my family isn't
anything in particular, and I attended various Protestant churches
previously). I know that what I like isn't always a good indicator of what
is good for me, and indeed a lot of stuff about Catholicism (particularly
the attempt at sensory overload at Mass - rich music, brighly colored
sanctuaries, incense) makes me very uncomfortable, even shaky. I try to
enjoy the parts I can, and assume the rest to be spinach - something I hated
as a child but eat regularly for pleasure as an adult.
-Lynn