Sunday 1 February 2015

Faith and Law ~ do not mix!

Christian Law
Jewish Law
Hindu Law
Buddhist Law
Agnostic Law
Atheist Law
Pagan Law
Wiccan Law
Sikh Law
Mormon Law
Islamic Law

Do these exist?  Are they real?  And do they effect real law?

Haven't we, the societal moral compass decided that religion, politics, and law should not intermingle?

We all have the right to believe in any faith we desire.  And if that faith has laws attached to it, those laws are for YOU and you alone.  Faith, Religion, and Spirituality are ways of having a personal relationship with your Creator.  But the moment you attempt to push that faith onto someone else, you are effectively attempting to push that personal relationship onto that other person.  Personal means you and you alone, and when you start talking about your faith's laws, you delve into the territory of controlling others ... not only yourself.

In my opinion, any part of a faith or culture that undermines the human rights of another person must be eradicated.  Yet in some faiths, or in parts of some, the very facts that we live our lives within are denied.  Facts like men and women are equal.  Facts like little girls' and little boys' lives are of equal value.

We pussy-foot around cultural sensitivities everyday, hoping not to offend.  And we shouldn't just attempt to offend, but this is different.  We push our worries aside, thinking that those people must be doing those things, wearing those things, and allowing those things to occur out of choice.  I remember thinking this not six months ago in the blazing Ontario summer heat as I followed a couple on Princess Street.  He was wearing cool golf shorts and a Polo top, while his wife wore a full hijab and black burka covering all but her beautiful face.  Here face was stunning.  This robe was the blackest material I've ever seen.  I wondered how hot she was, and I wondered how in the hell she could choose that.  But it felt good to brush off that concern, thinking it's 2014 Canada ... she has rights.

Some faiths even go so far as to teach boys from the very beginning that they are slaves to lust and desire.  That they cannot control themselves when tempted, and any actions that follow that temptation are not their fault.  Are some faiths actively preparing societies of men who have no idea what it means to have personal responsibility?

Faith simply has to be something you keep to yourself.  It's something you may surround yourself with and conduct yourself with in mind, as each faith has tenets and customs.  We celebrate many of them yearly with cultural lines intermingling.  But none of those tenets can trump the rule of law that we live inside in our every day public lives.  That must be kept black and white.

Let's look at the fact that in some faiths women and girls are to blame if they are raped by a man or a boy.  And that man or boy has been taught that they are faultless in this act.  For they are slaves to lust and desire.  So has that woman or girl been taught that she mustn't be a temptress, it's why she covers her hair.  Now this seems like kind of an important thing to agree on don't you think?  We can't have half of our citizens believing in their core that a man can do any number of things to a female and remain faultless!

It's 2014 ... no faith, dogma, or religion can decide another human being's ownership.
And still, we have daily international dealings with countries, groups, and individuals who believe that faith does decide ownership.  Why I'll never understand, but that's another person's blog :)

If you ask me, believing that one sex must do anything differently than the other, is extremism.
It is not faith.

I just wonder sometimes as I read news stories of horrific things fathers elsewhere, do to daughters in the name of maintaining or confirming virginity:

Are people who believe these inequalities to be true, really capable of living within the laws of the day?





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