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May. 7th, 2009
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Religion and law
May. 7th, 2009 04:50 pmReading some of the latest fundie crap about the laws they want, and having stumbled across some stuff on dhimmi and related topics with regards to Islamic countries in the past, I had a sudden flash of insight.
We need to "redefine" separation of church and state. Here's my take:
You may have laws based on religion. However, they may onl;y be created by members of that religion and may not be applied to non-mebers. Period.
Any law that is to apply to everyone, or to members of a faith not that of those who created and passed the law, may not be based on any religion.
any intimation of "moral/immoral" or that something is a sin or that *not* following the law would be a sin is an automatic "this is a religious law" ruling.
Want to pass a law against X? Or requiring Y? Then you cannot talk about sinfulness or morality in arguing for or against the laws.
I'm not sure how one could prevent ringers from derailing things by deliberately making religios based arguments though...
And yes, the bit about making laws by and for members of a religion allows for "religious courts". But they'd only have jurisdiction where people were willing to *let* them have jurisdiction. Say that you don't belong and they have no authority over you.
Not that it could happen, but could you *see* the fur flying if something like that was brought up in the UN. You'd have the Islamic fundamentalists, the Isreali ones and the Christian fundies *all* arguing on the same side!
We need to "redefine" separation of church and state. Here's my take:
You may have laws based on religion. However, they may onl;y be created by members of that religion and may not be applied to non-mebers. Period.
Any law that is to apply to everyone, or to members of a faith not that of those who created and passed the law, may not be based on any religion.
any intimation of "moral/immoral" or that something is a sin or that *not* following the law would be a sin is an automatic "this is a religious law" ruling.
Want to pass a law against X? Or requiring Y? Then you cannot talk about sinfulness or morality in arguing for or against the laws.
I'm not sure how one could prevent ringers from derailing things by deliberately making religios based arguments though...
And yes, the bit about making laws by and for members of a religion allows for "religious courts". But they'd only have jurisdiction where people were willing to *let* them have jurisdiction. Say that you don't belong and they have no authority over you.
Not that it could happen, but could you *see* the fur flying if something like that was brought up in the UN. You'd have the Islamic fundamentalists, the Isreali ones and the Christian fundies *all* arguing on the same side!