An immutable characteristic is any physical attribute perceived as unchangeable, entrenched and innate. The term is often used to describe segments of the population that share such attributes and are contrasted with others by those attributes, and is used in human rights law to classify protected groups of people who should be protected from civil or criminal actions directed against those immutable characteristics.
For example, a legal debate about sexual orientation concerns whether it is a mutable or immutable characteristic. [1] If it is immutable, then homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, heterosexuality, etc., are all immutable characteristics that naturally occur and cannot be changed. If it is mutable, then those characteristics can be changed.
Nomic is a game created in 1982 by philosopher Peter Suber, the rules of which include mechanisms for changing those rules, usually beginning by way of democratic voting. The game demonstrates that in any system where rule changes are possible, a situation may arise in which the resulting laws are contradictory or insufficient to determine what is in fact legal.
Sexual orientation is an enduring personal pattern of romantic attraction or sexual attraction towards persons of specific sexes or genders and the degree to which a person feels sexual or romantic attraction. Patterns are generally categorized under heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, while asexuality is sometimes identified as the fourth category.
In object-oriented (OO) and functional programming, an immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created. This is in contrast to a mutable object, which can be modified after it is created. In some cases, an object is considered immutable even if some internally used attributes change, but the object's state appears unchanging from an external point of view. For example, an object that uses memoization to cache the results of expensive computations could still be considered an immutable object.
The Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called strong behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1987 conference keynote address titled Data abstraction and hierarchy. It is based on the concept of "substitutability" – a principle in object-oriented programming stating that an object may be replaced by a sub-object without breaking the program. It is a semantic rather than merely syntactic relation, because it intends to guarantee semantic interoperability of types in a hierarchy, object types in particular. Barbara Liskov and Jeannette Wing described the principle succinctly in a 1994 paper as follows:
Subtype Requirement: Let be a property provable about objects of type T. Then should be true for objects of type S where S is a subtype of T.
In some programming languages, const is a type qualifier that indicates that the data is read-only. While this can be used to declare constants, const in the C family of languages differs from similar constructs in other languages in that it is part of the type, and thus has complicated behavior when combined with pointers, references, composite data types, and type-checking. In other languages, the data is not in a single memory location, but copied at compile time on each use. Languages which use it include C, C++, D, JavaScript, Julia, and Rust.
In process theology, dipolar theism is the position that to conceive a perfect God, one must conceive him as embodying the "good" in sometimes-opposing characteristics; therefore, such a deity cannot be understood to embody only one set of characteristics.
Anti-discrimination law or non-discrimination law refers to legislation designed to prevent discrimination against particular groups of people; these groups are often referred to as protected groups or protected classes. Anti-discrimination laws vary by jurisdiction with regard to the types of discrimination that are prohibited, and also the groups that are protected by that legislation. Commonly, these types of legislation are designed to prevent discrimination in employment, housing, education, and other areas of social life, such as public accommodations. Anti-discrimination law may include protections for groups based on sex, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, mental illness or ability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity/expression, sex characteristics, religion, creed, or individual political opinions.
The attributes of God are specific characteristics of God discussed in Christian theology.
In object-oriented programming, a wrapper class is a class that encapsulates types, so that those types can be used to create object instances and methods in another class that needs those types. So a primitive wrapper class is a wrapper class that encapsulates, hides or wraps data types from the eight primitive data types, so that these can be used to create instantiated objects with methods in another class or in other classes. The primitive wrapper classes are found in the Java API.
In computer science, a value object is a small object that represents a simple entity whose equality is not based on identity: i.e. two value objects are equal when they have the same value, not necessarily being the same object.
The Immutability or Unchangeability of God is an attribute that "God is unchanging in his character, will, and covenant promises."
In law, sex characteristic refers to an attribute defined for the purposes of protecting individuals from discrimination due to their sexual features. The attribute of sex characteristics was first defined in national law in Malta in 2015. The legal term has since been adopted by United Nations, European, and Asia-Pacific institutions, and in a 2017 update to the Yogyakarta Principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.
The Equality Act 2010, often erroneously called the Equalities Act 2010, is an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed during the Brown ministry with the primary purpose of consolidating, updating and supplementing the numerous prior Acts and Regulations, that formed the basis of anti-discrimination law in mostly England, Scotland and Wales; some sections also apply to Northern Ireland. These consisted, primarily, of the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and three major statutory instruments protecting discrimination in employment on grounds of religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.
A protected group, protected class (US), or prohibited ground (Canada) is a category by which people qualified for special protection by a law, policy, or similar authority. In Canada and the United States, the term is frequently used in connection with employees and employment and housing. Where illegal discrimination on the basis of protected group status is concerned, a single act of discrimination may be based on more than one protected class. For example, discrimination based on antisemitism may relate to religion, ethnicity, national origin, or any combination of the three; discrimination against a pregnant woman might be based on sex, marital status, or both.
Sexual fluidity is one or more changes in sexuality or sexual identity. Sexual orientation is stable and unchanging for majority of people, but some research indicates that some people may experience change in their sexual orientation, and this is slightly more likely for women than for men. There is no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy. Sexual identity can change throughout an individual's life, and does not have to align with biological sex, sexual behavior, or actual sexual orientation.
In computer programming, a constant is a value that is not altered by the program during normal execution. When associated with an identifier, a constant is said to be "named," although the terms "constant" and "named constant" are often used interchangeably. This is contrasted with a variable, which is an identifier with a value that can be changed during normal execution. To simplify, constants' values remains, while the values of variables varies, both hence their names.
Gender essentialism is a theory which attributes distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men. Based in essentialism, it holds that there are certain universal, innate, biologically based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women. In Western civilization, it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece. With the advent of Christianity, the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes, male and female, created by God, and that individuals are immutably one or the other. This view remained largely unchanged until the middle of the 19th century. This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology, in Sandra Bem's words, "from God's grand creation [to] its scientific equivalent: evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed.
In object-oriented programming, "immutable interface" is a pattern for designing an immutable object. The immutable interface pattern involves defining a type which does not provide any methods which mutate state. Objects which are referenced by that type are not seen to have any mutable state, and appear immutable.
In computer science, a U-form is an abstract data type comprising a collection of attribute–value pairs associated with a universally-unique identifier (UUID). A U-form essentially comprises an associative array augmented with a UUID and with keys limited to strings.
Particular social group (PSG) is one of five categories that may be used to claim refugee status according to two key United Nations documents: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. The other four categories are race, religion, nationality, and political opinion. As the most ambiguous and open-ended of the categories, the PSG category has been the subject of considerable debate and controversy in refugee law. Note that just as with the other four categories, membership in a PSG is not sufficient grounds for being granted refugee status. Rather, to be granted refugee status, one must both demonstrate membership in one of the five categories and a nexus between that membership and persecution one is facing or risks facing.