In Canada, we are now debating the proposed legislation in Quebec on the restriction of in-your-face religious symbols in government owned spaces.
I am on record with my unease in permitting a government – any government – in legislating how sovereign citizens may or may not dress…while at the same time, I am also on record with my reservations about permitting individuals who are acting as ‘agents of the state’ to display overt religious symbols as we, as a country of immigrants, are bound to have some citizens who have come to Canada to escape the oppression of every single religious group ‘out there’…..and if an agent of the state, WHILE acting as the agent of the state, displays that religion’s symbols, the individual citizen will have been, in my never-humble-opinion, alienated at best and oppressed by the state at worst.
I have never claimed that I know where the balance lies!!!
Indeed, I do not.
Yet, I do think it is essential that we have this discussion honestly, without the fears that Cultural Marxism with its doctrine of ‘political correctness’ and the fear to speak honestly about our own desires and fears – so that our fellow citizens can honestly understand them, however irrational they may be – can happen. Only when we understand this can we go back to the first principles (self ownership) and reason out the least harmful solution…our fellow citizens deserve nothing less than that!
The following video offers a bit of that – much less than that in some respects, much more in others. I think it brings some factors to this discussion that we all ought to keep in mind when we consider the wider implication of any legislation which would seek to define what the boundaries of the outward expressions of one’s religious faith ought to be:
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 