Canada's election, in which Justin Trudeau's chickens come home to roost

boing
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I just want to make it clear, my chastisement was based not on your argument about religious symbols, but when you descended to mockery.

With respect to your opinion here, I disagree, but I can understand your concern. However, a multicultural society must accept that religion and culture get pretty thoroughly mixed in many, if not most, societies.

For many, religious symbols are a cultural connection, not a particularly religious one. If, as a society, we are not expecting people to give up their culture (in contrast to the American melting pot), then it’s pretty hard to justify asking them to give up their clothing choices.

And whether their clothing choice is motivated by religious belief or by culture or by that’s-what-they-had-in-their-closet-this-morning is none my business. If their actions indicate their religious beliefs cause them to act in ways incompatible with their responsibilities, then that is ground for action.

And while I do accept that we restrict freedoms simply because of the discomfort it causes others (sorry, naturists, no defender here), such restrictions have to be weighed heavily against the cost (in terms of numbers and depth of loss) of enforcing those restrictions.

Otherwise why should I not be protected against the vague discomfort about my colleague who insists on always wearing a bow-tie? Surely that is far greater grounds for… No, no, the bow-tie is fine. My colleague is the picture of normality, honest!

In this case, I feel the vague discomfort of many is not outweighed by the fairly severe loss of freedom for a significant portion of the population. That this population is concentrated is non-visible minorities only makes those costs even higher. This is a bad law even if the majority are in favour.

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This law is only for new hires for 4 government jobs to not wear religious symbols in jobs where you are specifically expected to act against your religion sometimes.

Here is something similar:

Do you see the problem? It’s not right to have some religions represented by government, but not others. I applaud the Satanists for what they did, knowing they would meet opposition. The point was… if you can’t represent everyone, you should represent no one:

This isn’t intolerance of Christianity, but many Christians see it that way.

Possibly even more important to defendants than what’s on the lawn, is what the judge herself is wearing. If you represent the state, you should not promote one religion over another. That is secularism, not intolerance. Between the judge and the defendant, only one chose to be there, the judge was free to choose another career, or to remove symbols. In that situation, one person has power of the state and significant freedom, while the other has none. Even after asking the judge to appear secular, they still have all the power and much more freedom.

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It’s discriminatory.

It’s written as being plausibly equal, but it’s equal in the sense that all religions are disallowed head coverings, when Christians usually don’t have head coverings. Christian symbols are disallowed, meaning what? A necklace? Saying that Christians are also disallowed from wearing a Sikh turban is not going to convince anyone it’s “equal”.

This has nothing to do with your opposition to religions overall.

You’re defending a law that is designed to impact minorities far far far more than white people, and you’re saying, “Good, at least some religious people are limited.”

Supporting this kind of law is turning a blind eye to bigotry.

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Bigotry is a huge problem and a rather large source of it, in my opinion, is religion. Where we disagree is that I believe not enacting secular laws like this is turning a blind eye to bigotry.

Can we agree that religion is a source of bigotry?

In my opinion, most religions are mostly imaginary, which, if true, means a large source of bigotry is imaginary. This is why I think the laws that reduce religion in our government and justice system will reduce bigotry in the long run. We’ve already seen it backfire against those who thought it would be one sided.

There are so many issues with religion-based discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community it makes me think you should have to renounce your religion entirely when you become a judge, let alone show a token of your impartiality.

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Like this? So, you mean the ones that more often fuck over minorities?

If we also agree that laws that target and impact minorities are a source of bigotry.

People’s racist and xenophobic complaints are also often built on imaginary premises.

If you’re okay with how this law was enacted, it’s because you’re okay with bigotry, no matter how else you feel about religion.

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How could they have enacted a law to remove all religious symbols that would be equally fair to all? This isn’t rhetorical. I think any new law is going to affect some people more than others, but I’d like to hear what you think.

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How would I enact a utopic-minded zero tolerance law?

I don’t think a complete ban is possible. There is no way to ban “religious symbols” as a class, without definition or written limit. That’s clear from the way you can’t answer what would happen if people claimed their wedding rings were religious, or what would happen if they said they weren’t.

The government has said that this one wouldn’t go after Rastafarian dreadlocks, but that’s not written in the law and it’s an arbitrary exception not offered to Sikh people. You seem to want an “absolute” ban. Would you cut off people’s religious dreadlocks? If someone told you they “weren’t” religious, would you shrug and move on to someone else?

For political “symbols” there are already protections, say if someone flaunts a MAGA hat in court. These protections already directly apply if the judge starts throwing Holy Water on people at trial. They are mechanisms that react to abuse, not a blanket, selectively enforced ban that sets up unequal systems of justice.

You can have a uniform, and you can police it, but if it systematically precludes minority judges and teachers, it doesn’t matter what your intentions were, you’re abetting a system of white supremacy. (A system of white supremacy is even less likely to lead to an atheistic paradise, by the way, so please don’t respond how you’d only be doing it for the atheism.)

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“Can we agree that religion is a source of bigotry?”

i would argue that religion is a codification of how to live. Many of the rules are practical. And they worked when people were all the same.

But when the world got smaller, or people moved away, that’s when religions clashed. Suddenly people not like yourself.

My great, great, great grandfather from Scotland seemed religious, the times made for that, yet he coukd step out of that and “live in sin”, ie no marriage. Indeed, he and Sarah both stepped out of their culture to meet somewhere in between. They lived together for 44 years until he died, leaving her takej care of in his will (though they did marry in 1824, about 12 years after their married in her culture).

I’ve seen where Mourning Dove says my famiky wasn’t happy when Sarah moved away, something shared by all parents. But nothing is recorded that they objected to the marriage.

That says so much about tolerance, something people today coukd learn from. It’s no surprise that out west Muslim and Sikh groups have gotten together with natives, partly as acknowledgement but also because of a shared experience of bigotry.

I know so little that I don’t know if Sarah’s upbringing was cultural or religious. Someone definitely said that it wasn’t religion as Europeans saw religion,not a surprise since peoole came over and generally tried to squeeze what they saw into the template of how they saw the world.

To get back to the topic, Chief Phillips in BC endirsed tge NDP, and his wife ran for the party in Kelowna. I’d already realized that he could speak for me. But in Vancouver yesterday, with Greta in some steps speaking, there was Joan beside her, and maybe Chief Phillios behind. Almost distant family, since they are Syilx, though I have no idea how close or distant they are.

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I answered this above: If it’s commonly interpreted as a religious symbol, it should be removed. It almost doesn’t matter whether it’s a religious symbol or not if it’s showing allegiance to an outside entity. If I’m adjudicating a debate between Sheer and May, I wouldn’t wear a Greenpeace sweater because it symbolizes my bias.

This is not arbitrary: If it’s something you can remove for your work day and replace when you’re done, you should remove it as a token to show us you can be impartial as a judge.

Religions have convinced many cruel people (of various races) that they are superior. Some religion based laws would have you imprisoned, or killed for homosexual acts. Imagine being a defendant in front of a judge who’s broadcasting a religion that would see them killed just for being gay. :frowning:

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Is this like Devin Nunes’ cow?

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And yet, religion has done good. Buddhist monks perpetually drumming and chanting for peace. The Berrigan brothers doing civil disobedience against war. I met Philip Berrigan once, he was facing a long prison sentence but was concerned about my well being, which gave me an idea of how he could face doing time. Churches were also shared spaces, certainly in North America they went up before other share spaces. So they could be used for schools, or jail, or to hold meetings, and later to do good, like Meals on Wheels. As churches disappear, we lose that space.

There’s a difference between not believing and demonizing religion. I barely went to church, only a few times when I was ten, my sisters wanting to go. But even before that I wouldn’t sing hymns in grade 1 (after that, they disappeared from my school). So I never believed and never had fo change my mind. But when older I did meet deeply religious people like those monks, who had no interest in trying to convert a flakey guy like myself, but who showed me it mattere to them and that was good enough for them. But in recent years, I do see a lack of acceptance of religion. They see religion as evil, rather than seeing some behaviour as evil. There’s intolerance in their reaction to intolerance.

Lots of damage has been done in the name of religion… It’s complicated because until recent times religion was very integrated into everyday life. But does that make religion wrong?

The only reason I take this view is because I keep seeing comments against religion, rather than against specific issues.

I spent more time in churches in 1982 walking to New York city, potlucks and sometimes sleeping there, than I ever spent at religious ceremonies.

Residential schools were evil, but I don’t think tge damage was just due to religion. Society was racist, and since Thomas Scott hated us, it’s easy to see that native people, including Metis, were in the way. If churches hadn’t run the schools, I think someone else would have. That’s not approval, but I lately see too much blame focused on institutions but overlooking individuals.

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So you think wedding rings should be removed, check. It might cause people to wonder if you had a church wedding, and are then incapable of being impartial.

What caused you to feel superior?

To repeat, there are already mechanisms for when a judge “broadcasts” a bias. This law is only adding and empowering an additional racist bias. You don’t want to address that, it’s clearly not of concern or importance to you, which makes you a helper of white supremacy, whatever your intentions. Would you be okay with a law that shut down 90% of Black churches and only 10% of White churches?

Somehow you’ve decided that more people will see the logic of atheism if you have the help of the police to convince them. That makes you an authoritarian, not an enlightened thinker. You’re hurting the aim you care about.

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