dam 1and6, thank you! Selecting the "hide" option for "battlelog in-game" corrected the hard coding issue I had with "button 7" on my joystick. I can now bind that to something else and it actually works! I hope people who experience joystick problems will continue to add to this thread however. I still have the issue where my joystick throttle (labeled as trigger one and trigger two) will rapidly cycle forward or backward through the soldier classes everytime I die. If the joystick throttle happens to be perfectly centered, I can choose my class with a mouse click without a problem. But if it isn't centered, then I have to fiddle with the throttle before I can choose my class and respawn.
It's also still stupid that the labels for my joystick are simply wrong when binding keys. My joystick has a throttle, a hatswitch, two triggers and 10 buttons. The in game labels when I bind keys should reflect these exact designations. There shouldn' t be a "pad left" and a "pad right". The throttle should not be "trigger one" and trigger two". I hope if enough people complain, that DICE might actually fix this.
Thanks again.