And moreover, by law he or she has to be.
Or like the local YMCA that had men and women only hours for the pool that they shared with the YWCA in the same building, so that my grandfather could swim naked when he wanted to.
Why, or Y, I’ll never understand.
CMC fnord!
But she’s not the head of the Church of Canada. Canada has no established church.
From Ibn Warraq’s post:
I don’t think English public schools in Quebec are governed by a Protestant school board. Quebec did have (officially) confessional schools until the 1990s, but they were then replaced with language-based schools through a constitutional amendment. There was a reorganization in the school board system at the time. Confessional (Catholic or Protestant) religious education continued in Quebec public schools for nearly a decade afterward (authorized through the use of the notwithstanding clause of the constitution), but it stopped a few years ago.
Ontario does have officially Catholic schools, but that’s not all of Canada.
And of course, we do get the debates over the presence of religious symbols in public places, and the arguments about how government should not promote a religion over another, or a religious lifestyle over a secular lifestyle (or vice-versa) in Canada as well. Courts have ordered some city councils to stop opening their meetings with a Christian prayer since it was an undue promotion of one confession over others. Separation of church and state may not be in the Canadian constitution in the same way as it is in the American one, but as a concept it exists here as well.
In our town, children are denied access to our public pool for two or three hours, several times a week, out of consideration for senior citizens- who enjoy a more peaceful swim without the splashing and active young people around.
Oh, and for the record, I enjoy the smell and taste of hummus.
Actually, it wouldn’t bother me. Landlord can have whatever rules he or she wants as long they are enforced equally for all the tennants. Of course, I wouldn’t rent from a landlord with rules I didn’t agree with unless the housing shortage was severe. I personally would love to ban alcohol at some of my rental properties not for religious reasons, but because of some of the property damage I’ve seen because of drunken behavior.
Unless you want to radically redefine the term “Seperation of Church and State” Canada doesn’t have it.
What they have is “religious accommodation”, and a strong belief in non-discrimination against others, but that’s not “Separation of Church and State”.
To add to what you’re saying, many condo associations do ban dogs and that’s even more common in apartment buildings. Similarly, many have regulations restricting display of various symbols on the exteriors.
If Lonesome ever gets out of his mother’s basement, I’m sure he’ll discover that.
Oh, and by the way:
They do massacre dozens of innocent teens at camp shortly before Ramadan, though.
Jewish ones do, of course.
Nah, just abortion clinics.
Which makes all the massacres and kidnappings look pretty insignificant, of course.
Cue the predictable whining and hairsplitting about how “that doesn’t count as Christian violence!” or “they didn’t do that because they were Jews!”, etc., etc.
Which, of course, is exactly my point. There’s really no such thing as “Muslim violence” or “Christian violence” or “Jewish violence” (or, of course, Hindu or Buddhist or atheist violence, etc.) per se. There’s violence committed by certain Muslims and Christians and Jews, etc., in accordance with some part of their religious worldview. But all of these acts are also shaped by other ideological and political factors. It would be idiotic and bigoted reductionism to try to classify them merely as religious violence pure and simple.
It is certainly true (and nobody here has tried to deny or gloss over it) that over the past few decades, radical-fundamentalist extremist violence has been more prevalent among sects of Islam than in those of most other major religions. (Not necessarily more prevalent than in any other religion, though: for instance, various small cults such as Aum Shinrikyo have higher percentages of terrorism advocates than Islam does, and one could make a similar case for certain subdivisions of Hinduism.)
But what that means is “Islamic radical-fundamentalist extremist violence is a serious problem”. Not “Muslim violence is a serious problem”.
How do you want to define “separation of church and state” such that the US has it but Canada does not? The concept doesn’t appear in its constitution except as a codified guarantee of “religious accommodation”. Not necessarily saying you’re wrong but I suspect you’re overstating it.
Speaking as a Jew, I think the overwhelming majority of objections to Muslims apply to us Hebrews as well.
Sharia law?
Beit dins.
Weird head gear?
Check
Ban on pork?
Big check
The main difference I see is that we have already successfully infiltrated all the positions of power. Plenty of senators and congressman know it would mean the end of their careers to speak out against Israel. Food sold in the USA is routinely certified kosher (at an added expense to the consumer). Bagels are everywhere.
Hmm, maybe what folks are really saying is ‘We don’t want the Muslims to achieve what the Jews have.’
Well, in the First Amendment we’ve got the statement “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, which in conjunction with its historical interpretation by the courts amounts to a fairly strong ban on government entanglement with religion.
As Wiki notes,
So it appears (to my totally naive layperson’s view, at least) that in the Canadian constitution there’s no reason you couldn’t have an established church, just that if you did have one you’d have to accommodate minority religions fairly as well.
Whereas in the US, the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause is tantamount to Ain’t Got No Official Gummint Religion and Can’t Have One Even If We Wanted To, Nosiree, Can’t Even Make It Look Like We Got One, Nix Nix Nix on the Church of USA, Chuckie.
Was it Mel Brooks? “So, we are the Chosen People? Would You mind choosing somebody else for a while?”
Check also on the foreskin snip and backwards writing and literal interpretation of monotheism.
[QUOTE=DocCathode]
The main difference I see is that we have already successfully infiltrated all the positions of power. Plenty of senators and congressman know it would mean the end of their careers to speak out against Israel. Food sold in the USA is routinely certified kosher (at an added expense to the consumer). Bagels are everywhere.
Hmm, maybe what folks are really saying is ‘We don’t want the Muslims to achieve what the Jews have.’
[/QUOTE]
Interesting point, but I think what it mostly boils down to is “We feel comfortable with Jews now and don’t find them scary anymore”.
Which, a short hundred years ago or so during a rise in Jewish immigration and terror attacks by anarchist radicals, many of them Jews, was most emphatically not the case. As the UK’s Jewish Chronicle pointed out,
For starters, any Country in which, by law, the Head of State has to be the head of the Anglican Church does not have “Separation of Church and State” nor for that matter does any State which has official schools for Catholic students.
By the standards being set, if Canada has “Separation of Church and State” then virtually every country in the Middle East, except for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel and one or two others, have Separation of Church and State.
But that Canada has a monarchy at all, and particularly that its monarch heads the Church of England, are practically insignificant historical accidents that have no effect on the lives of any Canadian. Technically speaking it’s true that, contra the US, Canada has a monarch and that monarch is the head of the Anglican Church. But this has no bearing on whether Canadians would allow greater or less involvement of the Church in political matters, which I take to be the primary thrust behind “separation of church and state”.
Eh. “Separation of church and state” is a principle, not something enshrined in some one specific law. When a country’s government does not allow — and would not allow — a large degree of religious tampering in its political process, I think it counts.
Wait a minute! You guys made that Bieber kid King of Canada?
That line (or a close variant) is used in Fiddler on the Roof, though I’m sure the concept goes back much further.
Fair enough. If you wish to redefine the term you certainly can.
I assume then you’re also outraged at all the idiots squealing about Islam being a threat to the western tradition of “Separation of Church and State” since, by your standard, virtually all Muslim countries practice it and most do so to an even greater degree than Valteron’s beloved Canada.
[Aside]
I am particularly fond of a Twain essay on the Jews. Using the crude population data available at the time, he estimated that the Jews numbered close to, but less than, one percent of the population. And that even their enemies, perhaps unintentionally, testify to their significance in world affairs, far out of proportion to their numbers. And further to their representation in intellectual endeavors, such as academics and science.
TL:DR They really are smarter than the rest of us.
[/Aside]
Don’t sell yourself short. It’s pretty clear that you’re doing the best you can.