As noted above, this particular law flies in the face of secularism as a core liberal-democratic principle. There’s no unjust part to be taken out because, from a liberal or progressive view (but perhaps not from a hard-line New Atheist view), it’s unjust through and through.
That they’re only now grudgingly talking about taking it down, as a result of well-deserved shaming when the obvious hypocrisy was pointed out, shows how rotten and bigoted the law is at its core, right from its beginning.
That’s how the law will work. Assuming it was disingenuous, they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Everyone has to follow that law, or go to court, as it should be. The Christian stuff was going way overboard. I tend to think there are at least a few involved who actually think it’s a good idea to remove all religious symbols (including Christian) from those places.
No assumption necessary. That crucifix was hanging in the legislature when they were voting on this law. I’m sure there’s video evidence.
Maybe so, but in Quebec they’re only going to get the votes to pass it by allying themselves with a much larger group of right-wing bigots. That’s a bad look for any atheist who considers himself a progressive or liberal – politician or otherwise.
This, exactly. Somebody could be packing a rosary in their pocket and get away with it whereas someone in a turban or hijab couldn’t even get the job. But that doesn’t change anything about the person. The hijab or turban wearing person might be quite progressive in their thoughts and recognize that not everyone shares or needs to share their beliefs, while pocket rosary decides to deny benefits to a single mother on the grounds of “sin”. Even if that denial isn’t valid, appeals can be confusing, lengthy and exhausting. Especially if the official finds some technicality that is almost never used to slide it under. But hey, since the symbol of their religion wasn’t visible, it’s all cool and secular, right? (That last bit is sarcastic, in case it’s not clear).
The law itself is ostensibly unbiased. There are countries with laws that overtly attack specific groups of people, and this isn’t that. In it’s literal form, I agree with it, and I get that it can be abused like any law, but as we’ve seen, people will protest its selective use.
“Ostensibly” doesn’t mean anything when there’s a religious symbol hanging on the wall of the legislature while a right-wing ruling party that openly panders to ethno-nationalist sentiment deeply entwined with said symbol is promulgating the law. If you want to play the naif in regard to the underlying intent of this rotten-from-the-start law and try to divorce it from its contexts in Quebec that’s your business, but I can’t continue to engage you seriously if you do.
Ironically, the governing party of Sphincteralia (one of those small Euro city state’s in a valley along the European ‘taint) are generally conscientious and have their citizen’s best interests at heart.
Rotten from the start law? How about religion:
Here is the problem: Many of our most revered religious texts have hundreds of verses where the deity of the story literally instructs people to abduct and rape young girls whose family members they have just murdered, kill disobedient children, kill disobedient women, commit genocide and infanticide, subdue and silence women, commit incest, oppress mass communities, force marriage on rape victims, torture people, enslave people and loot and pillage entire societies. All by the instruction of or in the name of their god.
A simple and honest study of our world’s theocracies reveals how our holy texts are used to discriminate against women, LGBTs, and foreigners. Our top three world religions’ texts are full of discrimination against these groups. In fact, it is openly used as justification for that discrimination.
Many of our religions treat women as subhuman property rather than the part of the human species that gives life to every one of us – a position that deserves respect.
Religion gives followers justification for treating others who are not like them in inhumane ways.
The Problem With Faith: 11 Ways Religion Is Destroying Humanity
It’s a long article, but I suggest you read it and consider if I’m a naif, or if the world would be a better place with less religion. I really don’t think this law (no matter what context you give it) compares to what is encouraged in those texts.
It’s not either/or.
This is a bigoted law. Your opposition to religion is noted, but this law is not made less bigoted because of the problems you find with religion. The problem with a patently unjust law is that it re-inforces people in their religions, which I’d assume is not the result you’re aiming for.
Now you actually ducked my point twice, now, about how this law’s enforcement is biased, not unbiased.
This means you can object to any cultural difference as problematic, regardless of religious belief. Which is what xenophobes are doing with the law, by design.
Separate issue, which I expressed my opinion about above. I don’t need to read an article to re-confirm it. Since you’re now trying to change the topic, I’m done discussing it with you.
The puppet master urges calm.
Well, I think enough time has passed that it’s not “rushing to judge” Harper himself.
What a goof.
You’ve told me I need to see it in context, but suggest that religion dictating behavior is a separate issue. That is the context. Religions are intolerant of eachother to the point that they would hide their own symbols to make others do the same, and that might be for the best.
The historical context is, those symbols represent ideas that are rapey, intolerant, encouraging of child abuse, misogynist, bigoted. Things that shouldn’t be represented in schools, by the police, or judges.
The same people who say we should be tolerant of religions, also protest genital mutilation, misogyny and child brides. Tolerance means accepting the things you don’t like, not just the crosses and attire.
Thanks for the chat. Have a nice day.
I’m sorry but having some degree of religious tolerance doesn’t mean having an infinite degree of religious tolerance.
That’s not a slippery slope, that’s a slippery cliff.
Letting a Sikh person wear their turban doesn’t mean you’re condoning ritualistic baby-eating.
Please stop embarrassing your fellow atheists.
This is the way it is with New Atheist fundies (especially white male ones, and especially ones whose arguments are so hollow they have to resort to lame and transparent whataboutism): sooner or later, no matter how progressive they think they are, they’ll always find themselves in bed with conservative bigots like the CAQ. For example, Hitchens (of all people) found himself allying with the Cheney Regency as the shameful coda to his career and life. Even Dawkins has stepped in it from time to time.
And their calls for “zero tolerance” always have convenient holes and exceptions that they don’t want to provide anyone else.
That wedding ring example was good for that. They were started in the Western tradition as a support of dowry wife buying, and then also as a public expression of a belief in a specific religious romantic partnership. There’s absolutely no question that 1. They were used as a symbol of systemic sexism, and 2. They were used as a public symbol of religious belief, and also 3. Their meanings also evolved multiple times, and that not everyone wearing wedding rings were devoutly religious or committed to gender chauvinism, or even the Western tradition.
They’ll agree to all those things but if you apply the same model to how women dress, or turbans, or anything of “the other”, that’s when the intolerance rears up. Double standards, or, “Toleration for me, but not for Thee.”
Oh stop.
The fact that you and I believe that “meaning” exists puts lie to the idea that we are scientific creatures.
Science makes it clear: we’re simply collections of atoms in various configurations and no one order has any more significance than any other order because there is no such thing as significance.
True belief in science is the ultimate nihilism.
So let’s not try to make our lack of religious belief into some sort of weird status game. It’s unbecoming, and it makes us look like insecure high-school students desperate to prove were better than that person over there.
If for some reason we need to be “better than them”, then lets look at the individual actions of individuals, and judge individuals based on that. And on that basis, I haven’t found religious beliefs to correlate either positively or negatively.
I will say, however, that like any form of bigotry, it’s pretty easy to see objectively bad actions in one individual with a visible characteristic and create a false correlation with all such individuals. Our brains are evolved to make us bigots. Let’s not give in to such obvious mis-programming.
(And why mis- programming? Because I believe in my own myths of ‘good’ and ‘consideration’ and ‘sanctity of life’, etc. The fact that my myths aren’t enshrined in a church doesn’t make them less myths in the eyes of science.)
“Goof” is too weak of a word for that toxic shitheel.
Tolerance means accepting the things you don’t like, not just the crosses and attire.
And neither of us is qualified to decide what should be appropriate within other religions because we have our own biases. That’s what the colonists did.
If there are some things we can’t agree on about each other’s religions (homophobia, child brides, genital mutilation, etc), it might be better to ask people to “leave religion at the door” under certain circumstances (in this case, while you are working 4 types of government job).
It’s not even pretending to be fair if there’s a giant Catholic cross hanging on the wall in the courtroom. Is it any better if the judge is wearing one?
I think the real concern is, “is this person compartmentalizing their politics/religion from this job where it is important to do so?”. Of course, all have some bias, but if you can’t remove your religious apparatus when you sit down as a judge than how can anyone trust you are trying to be impartial?
I can’t take off this religious item, but I’m still able to make decisions that fly in the face of my religion.
