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Subject: Interesting question Author: JeffF [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 07:03:37 08/09/01 Thu In reply to: Mark7 's message, "Religious State and the Law" on 22:07:59 08/08/01 Wed This one is thought provoking, Mark, and not easy to answer, but I'll try. "Many Americans feel the secular state is somewhat of a threat to their lifestyle and values." True, but there are things they can do without taking anybody else's rights away. Every major religion in this country has parochial schools available. Ultrareligious parents who feel the public schools don't reflect their values are free to send their kids to private schools within their religion rather than trying to force a religious agenda on the Public schools. "You hear cries to get the Bible in school, the 10 commandments in the Courthouse" The problem with putting the Bible or the 10 commandments in school is that it's a slippery slope. If religious activists win here,they'll push for more- the return of prayer in school for example. Posting the 10 commandments may not be dangerous in itself, but it starts a worrisome trend. Besides that, what if somebody mentions that they have a different religion or no religion. The chances are that this student will be persecuted or shunned by their fellow students if the majority all have the same religion. "Atheists have taken the scapegoat place Jews used to have as the menace and root of all evil in society." Sadly, I think immigrants have done this. Most of the prejudicial comments you hear today are usually directed against immigrants, who tend to be made the scapegoat for all of America's problems. As for Atheists, there has always been a lot of discrimination against anybody who claims not to believe in God. It would be interesting to speculate on what would happen if an incoming President refused to say "So help Me God" by claiming that it violated the seperation of church and state. I think I know where you're going, though. I too have sometimes heard that Atheism is responsible for the lack of school discipline or the rise of drug use. There is one poster on IS who seriously suggests that all moral problems in this country are the result of the Supreme Court decision that outlawed prayer in the schools. I am obviously not an atheist but this is all very silly. I think some of it started with a confusion of atheist with communist. Back in the cold war days, too many people thought all Atheists were communists and confused the two terms and I'm not sure we've ever recovered from that. "Could a non-secular state claim it offers equal protection under law to all it's citizens?" This one is such a good question that I've changed my mind several times in attempting to answer it. First of all, a nation can make any claim it wants, but that doesn't make it true. For example, Iran says that the Moslem laws in the country only apply to Moslems, but that doesn't mean that in reality, Jews, Christian, Atheists, Bahais and others aren't viewed with suspicion and kept from some jobs. I think a lot of constitutions with state religions guarantee protection of minority citizens in the constitution, but this doesn't mean it happens in reality. One of the problems in a country where the whole leadership is the same religion and the constitution is religious based is that leadership changes may effect how much rights minorities have. One King may be benevolent, but the next may be intolerant of those who don't have the same religion as him. Even in countries claiming to be democracies, if the people elected have to be from a majority religion, the rights of the minority are not well protected. There are countries where parlaiments have to have a certain amount of Christians or where only candidates who subscribe to a certain religion are even allowed to run. In some places, loyalty to a particular religion is a condition for holding office. Here, in the US, in the early 1800s, there were states where only Protestants were allowed to hold office. Even being a Christain wasn't good enough, since Catholics were excluded. By the same token, in public schools in the US in the 1800s where there were Bible readings, Catholic versions of the Bible were forbidden. I would say the answer to your question is that it would be very difficult to offer truly equal protection to all of a countries citizens in any country where one religion is considered automatically superior to others, because even if you as the leader wanted to, the citizens might have been trained to be automatically suspicious of other people. So, a country can claim to offer equal protection, it can even write it into the law, but if the Constitution and particularly in places where there is state controlled media, the press favors one religion over another or over those with none, it is very hard to get truly equal rights. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> [> Subject: Re: Interesting question Author: Dana [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 09:15:10 08/09/01 Thu Could a non-secular state claim it offers equal protection under law to all it's citizens? I'd have to say no to this question for the same reasons that Jeff gave above. I'm a firm believer that we should have a total separation between church and state. Since total inclussion on an equitable basis has not worked, total exclussion appears to be the best solution we have at this time. Our school district ran into a problem with this a few years ago. Traditionally, the major school holidays have coincided with the Christian calendar. The district's students are 50% Christian, 40% Jewish, and 10% "Other". Christmas break changed to Winter Break, even though it occurs at the same time each year. Spring Break is a flexibly scheduled holiday and is carefully planned to not coincide with Easter. Good Friday was still a holiday, but it was called Spring Vacation Day. These name changes appeased people for a few years, but then people started questioning the intent. Since Good Friday was a holiday, it was requested that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur also become school holidays. Our district reviews absenteeism records, and can add a school holiday for any day in which the absenteeism rate is over 15% every year. Both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were well over the 15% rate, so both were added as school holidays. Then things got really messy. The Islamic community approached the school board and requested that they receive 2 Religious school holidays. The request was turned down, and the school used the absenteeism rates on those dates as the reason. The ACLU was hired, and they sued the school district for failure to separate church and state. The school district capitulated, and removed Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Good Friday as scheduled school holidays. As a result, each child is allowed an excused absence for "personal days of religious importance". It seems like the best solution for now. While it isn't a total separation of chuch and state, it does allow for a measure of equality. ~Dana

[> [> [> Subject: I like your post Author: Mark7 [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 00:57:10 08/11/01 Sat I'm impressed by your school district. Here is an article for you from abcnews.com: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ucrr/20010809/cm/american_babel_it_works_fine_1.html Thursday August 09 08:13 PM EDT AMERICAN BABEL: IT WORKS FINE By Richard Reeves LOS ANGELES -- Census figures released this week indicate that a language other than English is spoken by families in 40 percent of the homes in this sprawling county on the Pacific Ocean. Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Armenian, dozens more -- all spoken here. In Chicago last Monday, the first of a series of editorials in the Chicago Tribune on immigration reform began: "Stop by one of the houses going up all over Chicago and listen to the work crews. ... When the foundation is being dug you might hear Russian. That might become Polish when it's time for the bricklaying. The carpenters might speak English -- but with a singsong Irish brogue. When the Mexican drywall crews arrive, the language might change to Spanish. Finally, a SWAT team of Guatemalan, or perhaps Honduran, landscapers will zoom by to plant the sod. ... Chicago will have another house built in good measure by illegal immigrant labor." In New York, in the cabs, candy stores and little markets where you once heard Yiddish or Italian, now it is Urdu and Korean. More and more on the streets you hear the clicking sounds of African languages. American Babel. And it is not only in big cities. I came to Chicago and Los Angeles from Sag Harbor, N.Y., a village of little more than 2,000 people on the far eastern edge of the country, and you can hear most of the same languages as the construction crews, gardeners, maids, dishwashers and waiters arrive each day. There are believed to be 6 million to 7 million illegal immigrants in the United States now, 60 percent of them from Mexico. Whatever that number, there are more legal immigrants speaking those languages, particularly Mexican-accented Spanish. Nothing indicates how fast the United States is changing than the panic of the Republican Party and its leader on immigration issues. It was only a few years ago that Republicans, at least in California, believed that immigrant-bashing was the path to power. Gov. Pete Wilson was the driving force behind Proposition 187, an initiative designed to mobilize both white power and black power against Mexican immigrants -- cutting off welfare help, medical care and education to illegals. Voters went for it, but the courts did not. Perhaps more important, the people who actually mobilized were legal Hispanic and Asian families, registering and voting Democratic in numbers that turned California into a more Democratic state than Massachusetts. Now Republicans, led by President Bush (news - web sites), have tried to compensate for that blunder by going as far the other way, granting amnesty (and eventually citizenship) to resident Mexicans, however they got here. Forget that one. What makes Mexicans better than Canadians, Ethiopians or Pakistanis? Bush's panic is shared by politicians of both parties, though they tend to favor whichever immigrant group has the most voting power in their own precincts. In fact, the only thing they agree on often seems to be that it is better to do something than do nothing. Why? It seems to me that U.S. immigration policy has worked well and served national imperatives over the past 30 years or so. To be crude about it, what that policy has done is make it difficult but not impossible for the most determined and craftiest of foreigners to sneak into the United States when their own countries seem incapable of utilizing their energy and ambitions. The best and the brightest find a way. They may not have documents, but somehow they seem to have whatever our country needs at a given moment: the mathematical skills of the Russians and the Indians; the work ethic of the Mexicans and their willingness to do what Americans no longer are willing to do; the entrepreneurship and family values of South and East Asians -- and, most of all, the young people the United States needs to support our aging population. Besides, many of these immigrants contribute to global stability by sending money back to their home countries, which kind of makes up for American stinginess when it comes to foreign aid. So, whatever our policy actually is, it seems to working very well -- at least to me. Why fix it if it's not broken?