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Power Femme
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Okay, here's where I have the courage of my convictions. While I think what the church-run school did was odious, bigoted and needlessly small-minded, I ALSO believe that they had the right to do so. In fact, they have a right to do so that supersedes the right of this lesbian couple to send a child to the school of their choice? How so? Because I want to be protected from the Catholic church making public policy (law) in America. The method that protects me from that is the First Amendment. The *price* for "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion..." (which protects me from having the 80+% of Americans who DO believe in some god or another forcing it down my throat by the use of the democratic process) is that churches can, for the most part, discriminate however they choose, against whomever they choose, for whatever reasons they choose to do so. I may think that discrimination is wrong. I may think that discrimination is odious. I may think that the church doing the discrimination deserves to be roundly excoriating from every hilltop and soapbox in the country. However, that does not mean that I can assert a 'right' to some service that the church provides and expect to have the government enforce that right. Do the parents of this child have the right to choose a school for their child? Yes. Do the parents of this child have the right to expect that ANY school they choose must accept their child? No. Is that discrimination? Yes. Am I defending discrimination as right? No. My argument is not "the Catholic diocese is correct". My argument is "the Catholic diocese is within their rights to discriminate" because by granting them that right, I keep them on the far side of my government where the amount of harm they can do is mitigated (at least a little bit). If we state that the parents of this child have a right to send their child to a Catholic school and that the Catholic school is in violation of some non-discrimination clause or another, then we are telling the government to tell the Catholic church how to conduct their affairs. If the government can do that then the Catholic church is within its rights to turn around and petition the government to have its vision of morality foisted upon the rest of us who may not share their belief in a divine being. That foisting, if it were to come to pass, would almost certainly involve laws preventing this lesbian couple from having their child. To prevent that, I may have to put up with things I consider odious or offensive--and those are precisely my judgements about the dioceses' decision regarding this child attending the school. Our commitment to certain rights are not tested when we are talking about OUR rights. My being in favor of the First Amendment in as much as it benefits *me* tells you nothing about my level of commitment to its underlying principles. It is far more telling how we feel about those rights being applied to those we most vehemently disagree with. My position is not an easy one for me to take because my reflexive sympathies lie with the lesbian couple. However, I value and treasure my right to be non-theistic, to be *openly* and *vocally* non-theistic and not worry that I will have some religious police or inquisition come-a-calling in the middle of the night to take me someplace for reeducation. If having to swallow my disdain for the bigotry on display by some Catholic diocese is the price I have to pay for it, then it is a price I am more than willing to pay no matter what kind of bad taste it leaves in my mouth. Cheers Aj p.s. Please don't take my position on Catholicism to be about Catholicism. I am not fond of ANY form of monotheism or, for that matter, theism of any sort. Quote:
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Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett) Last edited by dreadgeek; 03-10-2010 at 06:32 PM. Reason: added |
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