
We don't need freedom of religion - sorbus
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/need+freedom+religion/4002627/story.html
======
raganwald
His examples are _very_ carefully cherry-picked to support his claims. I'm to
going to agree or disagree with his conclusions here, but an example that is
useful for the purpose of discussion is the subject of turbans, such as the
dastaars worn by the Sikhs he discusses.

At one time the uniform for a police officer in Toronto (and I'm sure
everywhere else in Canada) included a cap that was quite inconsistent with the
Sikh practice for men to wear a dastaar.

The law prohibiting discrimination against persons by reason of their religion
is defined to include directly passing over someone because of their beliefs.
But it is also held to include indirectly passing them over by way of rules
and regulations that are inconsistent with their beliefs and practices unless
there are strong reasons to enforce them.

The rules about uniforms were in a grey area. There are good reasons for
police officers to wear a consistent uniform. But would a Sikh in a dastaar
really violate those good reasons? The police changed its rules and
regulations to include the dastaar as an option, with its colour and the
inclusion of a badge on the head just as the original cap holds a badge.

Kirpans are a very contentious subject and reasonable people can and do
disagree on how they should be handled. But dastaars are an example of places
where a failure to provide legal protection for people to practice their
religion could create an indirect discrimination that is inconsistent with
Canadian values.

The author points out that if there's no good reason for a rule, it should be
abolished for everyone. One interesting point of discussion is this: If there
is no specific rule protecting the freedom to _practice_ one's religion, how
would rules such as the uniform rule for the police ever evolve?

~~~
slammdunc23
I think the turban example is perfectly consistent with what the author said.
You ask "how would rules such as the uniform rule for the police ever evolve?"
The answer is: in much the same way! Under this author's understanding of that
example, the rule under scrutiny would be: "Every policeman must wear a
uniform cap." The Sikhs, wishing to wear dastaars, would petition the chief of
police to be able to wear a dastaar instead. The chief of police (or whoever),
would then think to herself, "Well, is it all that important that our police
officers wear matching CAPS, or is the important part merely that they wear
headgear that matches the rest of the outfit and contains a badge?" She would
then conclude that the more appropriate rule, which should apply to
/everyone/, regardless of his religion, should be that every police officer
must wear a hat of the appropriate color and that the hat must contain a
badge. A Sikh could wear a dastaar; an atheist could wear a baseball cap or a
turban--or a dastaar. The point is that /anyone/, not just a Sikh, can wear
/any/ hat he chooses, so long as it meets those standards that /are/
considered too important to change, such as matching color and a badge.

I think another example might be more clear. Back in the 1990s, there was a
big hullaballoo about Native Americans out West using peyote, a
hallucinogenic, as part of a religious ceremony. Using peyote, however, was
illegal in the state of Oregon, so a few members of the Native American Church
were fired from their jobs and denied unemployment benefits after they were
found using peyote. The Native Americans argued that they should be exempt
from this law due to their religious beliefs, and many agreed. I don't, and
neither did the Supreme Court (check out Employment Division v. Smith [1990]).
And here's the reason: if peyote is "not that bad," i.e., if it's fine for
/some/ people to use it (here, the Native Americans), then it should be fine
for /all/ people to use it. If peyote is actually /too dangerous/, if it
really /must/ be outlawed, then it should be outlawed for /everyone./ What
someone believes about peyote should have no bearing on his right to use it.
(This is the same reason we wouldn't allow ritualized murder of children even
if someone claimed it was central to his religion--it's simply too dangerous!)
It's /discrimination based on religion/ (or lack thereof) to say that Tom, who
believes that peyote helps him communicate with a higher power, should be able
to use peyote, but that Bob, who simply feels that using peyote helps him
relax and to paint, should not. Why should Tom's belief be worth more than
Bob's simply because a higher power is involved? And what kind of law should
involve litigating someone's religious beliefs? Imagine: Q: "Isn't it true
that you don't REALLY believe that peyote helps you commune with God?" A: "No,
I swear I believe! I pray every day!" Q: "But I have a witness who says he saw
you at Catholic mass last week! And here's a Bible we found in your house!"
What a horrible mess that would be!

To get back to the dastaar example, then, all the author is saying is this: If
a Sikh should be able to wear a dastaar, then an atheist should be able to
wear a dastaar on the job, too. In fact, an atheist should be able to wear any
hat of the proper color with a badge on it. His beliefs or lack thereof should
have no bearing on his right to do something that everyone else can do.

~~~
raganwald
_I think the turban example is perfectly consistent with what the author said.
You ask "how would rules such as the uniform rule for the police ever evolve?"
The answer is: in much the same way! Under this author's understanding of that
example, the rule under scrutiny would be: "Every policeman must wear a
uniform cap." The Sikhs, wishing to wear dastaars, would petition the chief of
police to be able to wear a dastaar instead. The chief of police (or whoever),
would then think to herself, "Well, is it all that important that our police
officers wear matching CAPS, or is the important part merely that they wear
headgear that matches the rest of the outfit and contains a badge?" She would
then conclude that the more appropriate rule, which should apply to
/everyone/, regardless of his religion, should be that every police officer
must wear a hat of the appropriate color and that the hat must contain a
badge. A Sikh could wear a dastaar; an atheist could wear a baseball cap or a
turban--or a dastaar. The point is that /anyone/, not just a Sikh, can wear
/any/ hat he chooses, so long as it meets those standards that /are/
considered too important to change, such as matching color and a badge._

You have an enormously optimistic view of police chiefs. Or perhaps police
chiefs where you live are reasonable, inclusive people who are always looking
for ways to broaden their force's recruiting.

Whereas up here in Toronto, the opposite was true. The police force remained
staunchly Euro-centric until forced by rule to reconsider rules like the
requirement that officers wear the prescribed hat. Left to their own devices,
police chiefs saw no reason to change their rules about headgear or the
minimum height required to be a police officer.

The changes didn't come because Sikhs petitioned the chiefs of police, the
changes came because Sikhs petitioned the courts. And that is why we have
constitutional democracies: Some portions of our rules and regulations cannot
be left up to the "free market" or an executive branch that is concerned with
obtaining a plurality of votes in the next election.

~~~
slammdunc23
Good point--I should have said that the Sikhs would go to the courts when the
police chief (almost undoubtedly) said no. Still, the point is the same: under
this author's conception of the issue, the courts /should/ come to the same
conclusion about uniform color and badges being the only important parts of
the police cap. The difference is that this decision should free /everyone/ to
wear such hats, not just Sikhs or just the religious.

------
pjscott
That's one hell of a linkbait headline that the Ottowa Citizen came up with. A
more accurate description of the article's thesis would be "freedom of
religion can be derived from other rights which are explicitly recognized,
like freedom of speech and association, and does not need to be explicitly
protected as long as those other rights are genuinely protected." Put like
that, it sounds a lot less controversial.

~~~
Semiapies
Well, it's a bit of a stealth piece, as he's claiming to argue that while
really arguing the reverse. He's not arguing for greater freedom, he's arguing
against religious freedom.

Look at the examples he chooses. He's _not_ really arguing that anyone should
be able to wear veils, not have pictures on their IDs, carry sheathed knives,
etc. He's arguing that if voters wouldn't see any random person as
needing/deserving to be able to do something, then nobody should be able to do
it based on religion.

Myself, I'd say sure, let kids carry knives, whether pocketknives (as people
in my neck of the woods happily let kids in prior generations) or kirpans. On
the other hand, the writer's dog-whistling, saying that we should only do
something as crazy as let Sikh kids carry kirpans if we'd be willing to have a
stabby bloodbath in our (well, Canadian) schools.

While I'd love to be able to skip legal protection of enumerated rights,
knowing that the government would respect my freedoms in every conceivable
formulation, _it ain't gonna happen_. The best-case situation in Western
society is that the government remains leery of obviously stepping on the
rights that people most object to having abridged - free speech, religion,
etc.

ETA: And yes, that means that some people will have a "privilege" - ie,
they'll be exempted from some stupid law that would harm or impair them even
more than it does everyone else. In that case, the answer isn't to attack the
privilege, it's to attack the thing the privilege protects against.

~~~
a-priori
If kids want to go all stabby stabby in a school, they don't need ceremonial
daggers to do it. It happened at my high school, in Canada, using a cooking
knife stolen from the cafeteria kitchen.

~~~
Semiapies
Exactly. Or shivs, which turn up now and again.

~~~
forensic
Formally allowing weapons in school would arguably make schools less like
prisons.

------
mingdingo
Here's a good article by Christopher Hitchens on freedom of religion:
<http://www.slate.com/id/2266154>. Some examples of where he thinks religion
oversteps its bounds:

\- Mormon polygamy

\- Christian sects that disapprove of medicine

\- Ritual circumcision (especially when the mohel sucks off the debris from
the penis with his mouth)

I would also add to that list the ritual slaughter of animals. Kosher and
Halal both mandate that an animal cannot be stunned with a captive-bolt
stunner before having their throats cut, and must be fully conscious. Needless
to say, this cruelty only persists because of "freedom of religion".

If you ever want to get away with things you otherwise couldn't get away with,
freedom of religion is probably the most potent argument you could unleash.

~~~
avdempsey
Even Hitchens' examples reflect some basic rights a civil libertarian should
want to protect.

Mormon polygamy: the government shouldn't be telling you who you can or can't
marry.

Christian sects that disapprove of medicine: the government shouldn't be
forcing you to make changes to your body.

Ritual circumcision (especially when the mohel sucks off the debris from the
penis with his mouth): sounds gross to me, but the government shouldn't tell
you what changes you _can't_ make to your body, or how you provide care for a
member of your tribe.

Can government intervention in these areas bring about greater human well-
being? Possibly, but I think the above are relatively self-regulating.
Christian sects that disapprove of medicine (Christian Scientists for example)
must contend with proliferating evidence of the benefits of scientific
medicine. As long as scientists have freedom of speech too I suspect their
membership will continue to decline in the US.

Can government intervention in these areas bring about greater suffering?
Absolutely. The US government currently intervenes in gay marriages, and
recently intervened in abortions (and many in Congress would love to intervene
here again!).

~~~
slammdunc23
The government certainly /can/ tell you "how to care for a member of your
tribe" if that member is a minor. The ritual circumcision Hitchens references
led to a small but deadly outbreak of herpes among recently circumcised
babies. The government should let /adults/ practice their religion as they
choose, but there would certainly be a rational basis for concluding that this
particular practice unnecessarily endangers a third party: children who lack
the ability to say, "No, thank you! I'm Buddhist." The same goes for Christian
sects that disapprove of medicine. Sure, adults can turn down medical
treatment for /themselves/, but if they do so for their children they could
(and should) go to jail for child endangerment. A civil libertarian should
want to protect everyone's right to liberty, the right to do whatever they
wish /without harming others./ In these cases, the religious parents' choices
often do harm their children, who are too young to object.

~~~
Semiapies
Some choices can and do harm children, but saying religious parents' choices
"often do harm" their children is just flatly absurd.

~~~
slammdunc23
I said "in these cases"--turning down medicine and practicing that form of
ritualized circumcision. Perhaps "often" is an overstatement, but there have
been many cases of children dying when their Christian Scientist parents
refused to get them proper medical attention (see, e.g.,
[http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/xsci/s...](http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/xsci/suffer.htm)).

~~~
Semiapies
I appear to have have missed that phrase last night.

------
andreyf
That's silly. Many laws are meant to minimize people harming each other. For
example, the point of laws that control whether a child may bring a dagger to
school is for the safety of minors, who don't have the neurobiological
facilities to make good decisions (e.g. whether or not to bring a knife to
school, or whether or not to use it). I imagine it's easily demonstrable that
enforcement of those rules yields less stabbings than an "everyone bring your
knives" policy.

Now, before you think it, nobody is saying that such restrictions on freedom
are the proper long term solution to stopping kids stabbing each other, and
better solutions should be put in place, but in the meantime, lives are
literally at stake. Of course, it's also easily demonstrable that Sikh
children don't really ever kill each other with their ceremonial daggers.

So frankly, I don't see a good argument as to why the law should never use
race as a metric to optimize safety for minors while not infringing on the
ceremonial customs of certain groups.

------
zupatol
Freedom of religion is something else than making exceptions to other laws
because of religion.

Freedom of religion is the right to believe whatever you want and not be
discriminated because of it. There needs to be a freedom of religion because
there is such a strong tendency to discriminate against minority religions.

Similarly the law needs to be the same for men and women, but the tendency to
discriminate is so strong that there needs to be a law against discrimination
based on gender.

------
dkarl
_Let's leave aside the fact that it's no business of the government whether we
are disrespectful to each other's religions, as well as Justice Charron's call
for schools to indoctrinate children._

Schools have to indoctrinate children. They're freaking _children_. It's
normal childish behavior to lie when they're afraid of getting in trouble, hit
other children or destroy their property when they get angry, disrupt lessons
when they're bored, and ridicule others when they sense weakness. Discipline
and indoctrination about proper behavior can't stop when parents drop their
children off at school. If you don't want your kid indoctrinated by someone
else, if you can't handle the idea of your kid being partly raised by people
who may have different ideas from you, then school just isn't going to work.
Forget about school, and forget about tee ball, summer camp, piano lessons,
hell, forget about church, because you don't know the exact behavioral
standards the Sunday school teachers might enforce. Just keep your child at
home and you never have to worry about anyone indoctrinating your kid except
you.

------
Semiapies
You know, I get the funny feeling that some of my fellow atheists believe that
if we got rid of "freedom of religion", it'd only be those crazy religionists
who'd be affected or restricted, while we could gloat on the sidelines.

Considering that those of us in the US had to have a Supreme Court case to
protect us from being forced to take part in group prayers in school, the far
more likely case is that without a protected freedom of religion, the majority
merrily pushes around various minorities on a religious basis.

Look at how poorly Muslims poll and how they're demonized by many in the US -
and then recall that polls say _Americans regard atheists even more
negatively_.

(And no, Canada is no utopia devoid of religious bullying.)

------
yycom
The problem with laws and regulations kowtowing to religion is who is the
arbiter of authentic religions vs. other arbitrary mumbo jumbo? What stops me
(or L. Ron Hubbard) from inventing a religion specifically contrary the law so
I can evade responsibility for paying tax, enslavement, or eating babies?

------
charlesju
I've come to realize that no moral issues can be boiled down into black and
white. All moral debates have strong examples on either side.

The goal of government, however, is not to take a stance on moral debates.
It's to create laws that are amenable to both situations.

I believe with this professor is trying to say is that the constitution, or
written law, should not include laws that are categorically protective of
civil liberties that may not be culturally acceptable. We need to break down
civil liberties in this particular arena into more granular cases and judge
based on those cases as opposed to an overarching blank check for religion.

------
known
Your religion must be private.

If you intend to make religion public via pony tails, emblems, beards, burkah,
turbans etc, you're _advertising_ your religion viz <http://goo.gl/dHSA8> Govt
will _regulate_ every advertisement.

~~~
splat
And you also must keep your political opinions private. If you intend to make
your political opinions public via pamphlets, opinion editorials, posters,
books, protests, etc. you're _advertising_ your political opinions and the
government can _regulate_ your advertisement.

~~~
known
God != Religion != Politics

