Republican controlled states are getting a lot of heat in the national press and on this website (often justified). I just want to take a minute to acknowledge that sometimes, a good law can come out of a Republican-controlled legislature.
I’m not saying these excuse the various shortcomings of Florida’s legislature - there is merit to the argument that H.B. 7051 was a watered-down version of Democrat-sponsored legislation and doesn’t go far enough. I have myself criticized Florida’s so-called ‘anti-riot’ law. There are many bills, some with bipartisan support, that didn’t even come up for a vote (we have a very short legislative session of two months per year - even less than Texas, which meets for 180 days every other year).
I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Are these laws better than similar laws in Democrat-controlled states? Or, are they missing from Democrat-controlled states completely?
Florida needing to restrict “excessive use of force and arrest of minors” and “establishing a statewide rape kit tracking system” speaks to much deeper underlying problems than a couple pieces of showpiece legislation are going to address. As for Alabama, it is really the state to look to for its treatment of victims of sexual assault and incest:
As for yoga in schools, since when does a school need a state law to be able to provide a fitness program, and what is the specific benefit to schools or students to limiting it to “poses, exercises, and stretching”, and then applying limitations to free expression on top of that beneficence?
Please feel free to use both sides of the paper to answer those questions in fullness.
Yes the blind squirrel does occasionally find the acorn. I am not at all surprised that some legislation that passes Republican legislatures is good. But one would hope/expect that for a group of elected officials good legislation would be the rule rather than the exception.
When deciding about dining at a restaurant, being shown a list of entrees that they served that were salmonella free would not inspire confidence.
Alabama had banned yoga in schools in 1993 because it was deemed a religious ritual. The same rationale lies behind the rule limiting teaching to poses, exercises, and stretching.
This year’s (July 1 '21 to June 30 '22) budget contains the following text,
"1228 EXPENSES
FROM GENERAL REVENUE FUND . . . . . 7,996,806
FROM FEDERAL GRANTS TRUST FUND . . . 2,800,000
FROM OPERATING TRUST FUND . . . . . 2,221,606
From the funds in Specific Appropriation 1228, the Department of Law
Enforcement is authorized to distribute rape kits to local law
enforcement agencies and rape crisis centers statewide at no cost. In
addition, the department is authorized to use additional federal funds
and any other available funds contained in Specific Appropriation 1228
for the purpose of processing rape kits."
The provisions of H.B. 7051 do not, so far as I can tell, require a specific appropriation.
So, the Alabama replaced an idiotic and probably unenforcible law with a slightly less idiotic law. Gotcha. If this is what Republican legislatures passing “good laws” looks like, the threshold for “goodness” would appear to be subterranean.
Obviously we have a difference of opinion, somewhere down the line. I think prohibition on teaching yoga poses, exercises, and stretching was unreasonable. I think it is reasonable to prohibit instruction in chanting, mantras, mandulas, mudras, and induction in hypnotic states in secular schools. I think the prohibition on teaching namaste greetings is unnecessary, though. In my opinion the new law is a considerable improvement over the status quo, and I do think it is a good law.
Maybe I’m just sheltered but the most “chanting, mantras, manduls, mudras,…” I’ve ever experienced in a yoga class was a general voluntary “Ooommmmm” and was in no way associated with any religious practice or teaching. All of the yoga instructors I have ever known have made reference only to a “Universal Spirit”, vague mentions of chakras or spiritual energy, and similar denomination-neutral generic spiritual labelling if referencing any at all, and I have yet to experience “induction in hypnotic states” although I have fallen asleep a couple of times in the post-exercise meditative savasana. I have, however, experienced the socially-compelled participation in prayers before sportsball games as led by school officials, as well as the compulsory reiteration of the Pledge of Allegiance at numerous in-school functions, both of which are far more a violation of the spirit of separation of church and state than some gaumless chanting or humming.
This law seems to be a problem in search of a solution, or maybe a nostalgic callback to the ‘Eighties ‘Satanic Panic’ that lead to my mother literally tearing my room apart, burning my collection of RuneQuest books, and taking me to some weird Charismatic version of an exorcism where they smacked me on the back of the head while I sat in the middle of a bunch of people speaking “in tongues”, which seemed way more in line with Satanism or cult behavior than sitting in someone’s basement arguing over what Strike Rank a Broo attacks at. It certainly doesn’t seem to be ensuring public safety or instilling order, nor facilitating commerce or providing a necessary service, so why it needs to be codified into law instead of being left up to school administrations to determine as a matter of policy is unclear save for the obvious imposition of legislators’ desire to advertise their piety to Puritan ideals. It does give me an idea for another unnecessary Footloose remake, however, except staring Timothée Chalamet because he’s everywhere these days and featuring a game of “Chicken” incorporating those stupid “Hoverboards” that don’t actually hover or let you go anywhere requiring more than an inch of ground clearance.
There are different forms of yoga just like there are different ways to meditate. Being still with your eyes closed is one way of meditating that is not necessarily a religious ritual. The Jewish Amidah is a religious ritual. Yoga is an ancient and explicit part of the Hindu religion, and the pious variant is very much not the generic non-denominational posture and stress-relief exercises you (or most people who do yoga in the U.S.) are thinking of.
But that stuff you mentioned about chakra and spiritual energy, the ‘om’ (a mantra), well, you may think that is vague or not important to yoga, but it comes from esoteric Indian religious tradition. ‘Om’ is a sacred sound with religious significance, compare the religious significance of ‘amen’ in Abrahamic religions (they don’t mean the same thing, but are both significant for their religions, esp. when used during spiritual activity). Maybe you don’t think of yoga that way, but at least some Hindus think western-style yoga is appropriation of their religion. Likewise at least some people from other religions (eg: Christians, Jews, Muslims) believe yoga is a pagan ritual.
Compulsory school prayers and compulsory recitation of the pledge of allegiance were famously ruled unconstitutional in 1940. I don’t think the law can help you with social obligations, though.
The previous law prohibited all yoga in public schools, so there was no widespread issue of schools teaching yoga.
Well, this is a large amount of handwaving to distract from the fact that what you have explicitly characterized as a “good law” is a statute restricting schools to only allowing a specific activity with certain prohibitions, which in no way satisfies any of the general criteria for the necessary of legal strictures and removes the abilities of individual schools to set policy as they see fit. Republicans seem to be all about personal freedom and accountability until it is something that offends their delicate sensibilities like the ‘pagan ritual’ of Americanized ‘yoga’, and let’s not pretend that their motivation is to repair the cultural appropriation of Hindu practices.
In other words, an unnecessary and pointless exercise in pseudo-religious posturing in the guise of being slightly more tolerant than previous law. I mean, I guess for Alabama this might count as “good” in a strictly relative sense compared to the other nonsense that goes on there, but given that the state is ranked 49 out of 50 states in terms of the quality of primary and secondary education, you would think legislation regarding the educational system would be focused on more funding for education and programs to improve student access rather than telling people where they can pose and what they can and cannot say.
Moron-controlled legistatures occasionally manage to pass laws including a sentwnce with a subject, a verb, and an object in the correct order. But it’s still in service of an evil goal.
And while the Mitsubishi Pajero is a car brand, it can also mean masturbation in some central american countries.
Likewise, “Om” somewhere in the world might be considered esoteric Indian religious tradition (btw, you forgot Tibetan buddhism), for 99.9% of every one in a US yoga session, it means jack squat.
As pointed out above, speaking in tongues doesn’t require some squirrely (can I write that or is that some anamalistic appropriation?) Alabama legislature law for the tongues stuff. Wouldn’t banning “Om” be a first amendment violation?
Christ, next thing the 'Bama legislature will ban Tae Kwon Do students from counting to 10 in Korean.
Opps, my bad, the above three examples all violate the constitution that says Thou shalt only speak American.
