It is not more important to protect religious practice than secular practice. Any law that protects religious practice from regulation should also protect comparable secular practice.
The problem with a law against wearing a yarmulke is that it’s a law against wearing a particular style of hat, which is by default an invalid law, until proven otherwise.
Not to be pedantic, but I’m not comfortable with you describing your peyote smoking neighbor as a “stoner”. That term is properly used to describe those of us who partake in the inhalation or ingestion of the cannabis plant, or parts thereof.
Peyote is more of a psychedelic. Maybe acid head could be used? Cactus flower? I’m sure there are better terms, I can’t remember them right now, duh.
Tripper. Psychonaut. Etc. You definitely can’t smoke peyote, regardless. But this is off topic!
Spoken like a true shroomer.
/hijack
In no way at all. The law doesn’t prohibit Jews from wearing yarmulkes. It prohibits everyone from wearing yarmulkes.
When Hialeah, Florida enacted a law banning animal sacrifices they didn’t single out Santeria followers. The law prohibited everyone from sacrificing animals.
What about laws banning burqas? Those have been enacted.
Huh? Do you feel you have a constitutional right to wear the hat of your choice? I’d like to see the text.
If the government wanted to pass a law banning fedoras because it hated hipsters it could do so.
Clothing is free speech.
Sorry, I should clarify. Clothing is protected speech. There are limits to this, but I have never seen anything about hats.
Lots of bigoted Frenchmen supported forbidding schoolgirls from wearing hijabs and plenty of other racist bigots have supported banning burkas.
And what exactly is the justification behind banning yarmulkes? Are yarmulkes dangerous? Do make it impossible to identify someone who’s wearing one? Can you conceal weapons in them?
If you can come up with some legitimate, secular justification to ban yarmulkes, then sure go ahead and ban them (along with anything else that that justification would apply to), and too bad to the people that want to wear them.
But the only justification I can think of to ban yarmulkes is “We don’t like Jews”, which isn’t a legitimate secular justification and absolutely targets a specific religion.
If bigots can come up with supposedly “secular” “non-bigoted” reasons for banning hijabs and burkas, they can come up with “secular” “non-bigoted” reasons for banning yarmulkes.
For the record, I obviously agree with you.
People who favor banning yarmulkes/hijabs/burkas are bigots.
However, bigots/racists/sexists/homophobes/fill-in-the-blank never think they’re being bigots/racists/sexists/homophobes/fill-in-the-blank. They think they’re telling the truth.
That case is almost the inverse of these cases where people are wanting to carve out religious exemptions to generally applicable laws.
Did the City of Hialeah ban eating animals? Of course not. Did they ban hunting? Well, the city may well have, within city limits at least. But hunting was certainly permitted in Florida more generally. Did Hialeah ban killing animals as pest control? Nope. Did they ban euthanasia of pets? No.
So we have a generally applicable law–It’s OK to kill non-human animals for a multiplicty of reasons, including for food, recreation, pest control, or humanitarian concerns–and an attempt to carve out a specific exemption: You can’t kill animals for religious reasons. That may not single out the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc., all by itself, but it clearly disfavors one set of religions (various godless heathen cults) in favor of “proper” religions (e.g., various flavors of Christianity as practiced in Hialeah, Florida). It’s more like saying everyone except followers of Native American religions can [del]smoke[/del] eat? What can I say, I’m a square peyote.
Really, I can’t imagine the Supreme Court had to break a sweat deciding that case.
I don’t follow. I’m absolutely sure this is a failure on my part. What’s up?
Not a problem and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.
I was merely pointing out that huge numbers of Europeans have advocated the banning of burkas and or hijabs.
For example, France which never had problems with Jewish students wearing yarmulkas decided to ban Muslim students from wearing hijabs.
Obviously the people who advocate this are bigots, but they insist they aren’t.
Oh, I got you now. I was writing from the perspective of the US Government. All sorts of groups can advocate different things (which is what I thought you were talking about - lobbyists or something similar), but in face of all of that, is the First Amendment which has been taken to apply to clothing as well. Except for within public school grounds and general items of profanity (such as a shirt that just a giant image of a vagina), I’m not aware of any ability by the government to limit what kind of clothing you can wear.
It is always sad to hear about any footing racism can find. Clothes bans are so ridiculous they can only be about something that’s not fabric, and so probably not the domain of the government.
Could you link me to more info about various religion-based clothing bans? I’d like to learn more.
Whether or not hijabs should be banned, you are drawing a false equivalence.
The issue with hijabs is that it is not clear whether women are doing it willingly or because they are afraid of the consequences of not wearing it. France has a culture of equality between the sexes and if women are indeed being forced to wear clothing that signifies their second class status then the state has a reason to be involved.
It’s like having women wear a sign that says “I’m not as good as a man”. That’s great if they want to do it, but not if their male relatives are threatening them .
The world is a big place full of countries with different traditions. If your culture wants to oppress women, then maybe you shouldn’t decide to emigrate to France.
Racist bullshit. Please learn about Islam before stupidly claiming that hijabs are meant “signify…their second class status”. It wasn’t and it doesn’t. In fact many Muslim feminists make a point of wearing one. Islam’s tradition is no different than the Orthodox Jewish tradition requiring women to cover their hair. For that matter, Muslim men also have dress codes that they are expected to follow.
That’s not even the excuse the French have made for their bigotry.
They insist that they did it because that allowing Muslims to wear religious garb would be a violation of their tradition of “secularism”.
In fact when they made the law banning Muslim students from wearing hijabs they also made it illegal for Christian students to wear “large crosses”(though permitted them to wear small crosses) and forbade Jewish students from wearing yarmulkas.
Of course when pressed, they’ll admit they never had such concerns about "secularism when it came to Christians wearing crosses or Jews wearing yarmulkas.
That said, I assume you support laws in the US forbidding Jewish women from keeping their hair covered as well as laws forbidding women from getting brazilian waxes, wearing thong underwear, or having their legs shaved.
After all, all of that involves some level of social pressure.
In retrospect, I realize that I should have made the post a bit less harsh.
Your post was clearly heavily influenced by bigoted stereotypes and the comments therein can fairly be described as racist/bigoted, but that doesn’t mean that you are racist, bigoted, evil, or stupid.
Lots of reasonable people make bad assumptions.
However, to suggest that the French decision to ban Muslim students from wearing hijabs due to France’s “tradition of secularism” after decades of allowing Christians to wear crosses and Jews to wear yarmulkas is not motivated by bigotry is asinine.
One can freely admit that their are Muslim traditions that warrant criticism without being an Islamophobe and one can abhor misogyny without supporting laws restricting women’s rights to choose the clothing they desire to wear.
It’s not about Islam, it’s about assholes who are Muslims and use their interpretation of Islam to do bad shit. Do you deny that Saudi Arabia won’t allow women to drive, or that they need the permission of male relatives (sometimes their own sons) to travel? How about Iran where men with sticks roam the streets to beat women who are dressed immodestly, or tribal areas that still practice honor killings. Wiki lists 15 countries where converting away from Islam (apostasy) is illegal, and in many it carries the death penalty.
Every religion has their own breeds of assholes; in the US we have conservative Christians trying to impose their craziness on us and ultra-orthodox Jews who want to have sex segregated buses in NYC and still receive state funding for them. Israel is discriminating against women at the wailing wall.
But its the height of hypocrisy to rail against the French for trying to protect womens’ rights by banning hijabs, while Islamic countries are engaged in wholesale abuse of human rights.
And as I said before, if you don’t like France’s attitudes towards certain customs followed by your religion then don’t move there.