Freedom of religion is not freedom from offense

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 Tishri 5771 (Parashath Noaḥ).

Today’s holidays:  Tuesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Pope Benedict IX (Church of the SubGenius).

Topic 1:  “Are war crimes caused by bad apples or bad barrels?”.  This article deals with the causes of war crimes, specifically whether there is specifically something wrong with the people who commit them (such as psychopathy) or whether the situation of being in a war leads to war crimes.  People often like to trace problems to a single cause (e.g., “Money is the root of all evil”), but guess what:  there is evidence that war crimes are caused by “bad apples” and “bad barrels”.  Humans are frightfully complex beings; there is no reason to assume our behavior is necessarily simple.  This should be kept in mind with dealing with the causes of evil in general:  people do things we consider wrong for all sorts of reasons, ranging from immediate gratification to greed to indifference to curiosity to zeal to jealousy to the noblest intentions.  (That last one is due to not everyone agreeing on what is evil.  What one person considers wickedness, another person may consider completely righteous.)

Image of Jim DeMint via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  “DeMint: Sexually Active Unmarried Women And Gay Teachers Should Be Barred From 
Classrooms”.  I heard about this one indirectly due to Josh.  Let me quote the start of the article:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says that even though "no one" came to his defense in 2004 after he said that gay people and unwed mothers should be banned from teaching, "everyone" quietly told him that he shouldn't back down from his position.

He also implied that not banning gay people and women who have sex before marriage from teaching would be an attack on Christians, and defended his position on banning gay teachers because he holds the same position on women who have sex outside of marriage.

"[When I said those things,] no one came to my defense," he said, the Spartanberg Herald-Journal reported. "But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion."

Exactly what legal right or aspect of freedom of religion would be violated by being taught by a homosexual or a woman who has non-marital sex?  I freely acknowledge that Christianity (at least certain branches) is fond of neither.  And I can easily understand that a Christian (at least of the DeMintian variety) might consider such a teacher a poor role model for his/her students and thus be offended.  But permitting such people to teach is not an attack on Christianity per se; not all Christians are so opposed to homosexuals or fornicators as DeMint.  Furthermore, while there is a constitutional right in the United States to practice one’s religion, there is no right to impose one’s religion on others.  In fact, since belief in one religion frequently requires belief that something certain other people believe or do is offensive, freedom of religion effectively requires that people be allowed to do things which offend other people.  And freedom of speech, also a constitutional right, includes being able to say and do things which other people do not approve of.  So DeMint does not approve of homosexuals and fornicators teaching others?  That is his prerogative.  But freedom of religion is not a case for a ban on homosexuals and fornicators from teaching.

Topic 3:  Update on yesterday’s post “It was not just the Temple Mount which the Muslims stole”:  “India less tense after court verdict on holy site”.  The court divided the land between the Hindus and the Muslims.  The Muslims get ⅓ of the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Mosque site, while the Hindus get ⅔ of the site, including the place where the mosque—and previously a Hindu temple—once stood.  I call this a triumph against Islamic supremacism.  Now we get to wait to see what happens next.

Peace.

Aaron

Exactly how is anyone supposed to be able to prove their virginity?

Greetings.

Jewish date:   19 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath Behar-Beḥuqqothay).

Today’s holidays:   Day 34 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Feast Day of Philip and James (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Frank Zappa (Church of the SubGenius), Discoflux (Discordianism).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Don't let the climate deniers drown out science”.

Topic 1:  “Who Can Mock the True Catholic Church?”  By now everyone who is not living in isolation from civilization probably has heard of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal, the real scandal being not that individual priests did something horrible, but that their higher-ups knew about it and covered it up rather than stopping it.  At this point, it is very easy to attack the Roman Catholic Church in general and assume it is 100% horrible and evil.  This article correctly notes that despite everything that has gone wrong, there are still priests and nuns out in the trenches (so to speak) out to do actually helping people, e.g., by helping the poor and downtrodden.  The transgressions of some Catholic clergy does not mean the rest are guilty.

WARNING:  THE NEXT TOPIC IS NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH.

Topic 2:  “The virginity industry”.  (Submitted by Barry.)  Islam forbids premarital sex, which is the usual among Abrahamic religions.  However, unlike Jews and Christians, Muslims will kill women who are discovered to have prematurely lost their virginity.  This has led Muslim women to have their hymens repaired to cover their transgression, compounding one sin with another.  What your humble blogger is puzzled about is how is any man really knows that the woman he is marrying is a virgin or not.  In some cases it may be evident, e.g., he gets a disease only transmitted sexually from her. However, I have heard that the spilling-of-blood-from-the-hymen test is not perfect, and it is not simply that women have sometimes managed to cheat.  Like any other part of the human body, the hymen can be damaged (non-sexually).  Furthermore, I have heard that by the time people usually get married these days (as adults, rather than the Arab practice of child brides), the hymen has already deteriorated, thus making the test in question return even for a genuine virgin a false negative.  Relying on this test would thus seem to be a good way to commit unjustified homicide.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Put ur monee in the bowl 4 Jeeesus!”:

This cat apparently thinks he/she is a televangelist.

Peace.

Aaron