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.
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.
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.
I agree that that headline is awfully dramatic --- but your summary misses what is, to me, the most interesting part of the article: that enforcing freedom of religion has led to inconsistencies in the way we maintain those other rights. The fact that we do have explicit protections of the freedom of religion means we are failing to genuinely protect speech, association, etc. That seems like a conclusion worthy of at least a little drama.
However, I'd only buy that as the writer's real message if he wasn't going for a subtext of Gee, look at all the unreasonable privileges people get on the grounds of religion!
I'm reminded of the argument that we shouldn't support gay marriage, but instead should support getting government entirely out of marriage and letting any consenting adults form any arrangement they want. I absolutely agree with that ideal, but it's not happening anytime soon - so I support gay marriage. However, there are people who make this argument and use it as a reason to oppose gay marriage as a "privilege" we should not be establishing.
I can't help noticing that people giving that objection are uniformly straight.
And they remain straight people unrestricted by the status quo, arguing against removing restrictions on others on grounds that are naive at best, disingenuous at worst. Do you have a point?
You're welcome to provide citations of gay individuals arguing against their getting marriage rights on the basis that government needs to get out of marriage.
E J Graff's "What is marriage for?" is beautiful book by a lesbian author that comes close to making this argument. While not exactly arguing that government needs to get out of marriage, it's a solid argument that government's involvement in marriage is a relatively new thing. It's also a good history of marriage from a heterosexual direction. Interview with the author here:
http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/24266.shtml
I'll reiterate what I've said twice already: I'm talking about people using this argument to oppose (or at least refuse to support) allowing gay people to marry members of the same sex.
You're welcome to point it out, but I sure don't see any such argument made by Graff in this interview.
So when you were claiming my gaydar was "broken", you knew you were lying?
At this point, I simply don't believe that you've met gay people who argued against supporting gay marriage on the basis that we have to get government out of the business of marriage first. It's a highly dubious claim, and you seem less than entirely honest.
> So when you were claiming my gaydar was "broken", you knew you were lying?
Not at all. I believe that you have described things as you saw them. I'm suggesting that reality was different.
> At this point, I simply don't believe that you've met gay people who argued against supporting gay marriage on the basis that we have to get government out of the business of marriage first.
Good for you. I don't believe your claim either.
> It's a highly dubious claim,
Based on what? Your perception of the political uniformity of gays?
> and you seem less than entirely honest.
Based on what?
I'm not relying on gaydar. I'm relying on "I'm gay and I think ..." statements. How do you know that they were lying?
What's the basis for your "uniformly straight" claim? Did they all say "I'm straight and I think ...."?
I started to think that it's part of the internet age of journalism, but quickly realized I was just being naïve. The sensationalism of headlines is as old as the headline.
Definitely. Mortgages are loans, but we have special laws for them anyway. There might be benefits to eliminating mortgage-specific laws, but it would be odd to term that argument as "mortgages don't need to be regulated".
