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Rest of article found here.

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

Can't we all just be friends?

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Only Love Prevails,
Don

As lovely as that sounds Don, it will probably never happen, at least not in this age.

I remember sitting in HR Law and Mngt classes involved in just such a thing. There usually is never a good answer for these, and the mantra of such classes was always "reasonable accommodations" from religion to handicaps to personal orientation.

However, this also falls into that '****ed if you don't ****ed if you do' region of the minority winning out over the majority, aka democracy, which is what the US was supposedly founded on.

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- Wisdom comes when you stop looking for it. -
"If God were alive today, he'd be an atheist" - Kurt Vonnegut

Please visit my foster dog blog: The Colbert Report.

Let's make it even simpler. What if one's religion says that all other religions are wrong and must be condemned?

Now, how will laws protecting against religious discrimination and forcing reasonable accomodation help? They are immediately in conflict in such a situation.

And the answer is, "reasonable accomodation" must be read as meaning to accomodate such religious practices as do not adversely affect other people who may not share your beliefs. Therefore, the religious person who feels homosexuality is a sin is perfectly welcome to keep right on feeling that. But feeling it is not the same as acting on it.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

Doesn't that describe just about all religions? The operative verb is "condemned", with the extremes being; a mere mental judgment or a violent act against one who holds another religion.

I think we both know that we have some extremists among our citizens who who would actually condemn in the second category, who don't embrace the concept of tolerance that both of our countries have as a guiding principle.

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Tennessee skeptic

...atheism? At least as preached by Dawkins, Hitchens et al?

Actually, under the law as it exists in Canada and the USA, your right to swing your arm ends at the point it engages the other fellow's nose. That is a very old rule, and still the best one.

Lets say we have two individuals, Joe and Moe. Moe is a religious man, and believe that his holy book the Elbib condemns homosexuality. Joe is an open homosexual. While Joe's being a homosexual may offend Moe, he does not force Moe to be a homosexual, or to take any more notice of his sexuality than any other another individual (that is, he is not having gay sex on his desk at work). Joe's homosexuality does not impinge on Moe's rights in any way...but Moe practicing discrimination against Joe clearly impinges Joe's rights.

The right of Moe to believe what he wants is not questioned, merely his right to act on those believes. Many peoploe believe that rapists and child-molesters should be castrated. There is no law forbidding such a beliefe. But if they decide to castrate someone because of that belief they will, certainly, be arrested, charged and convicted no matter how repugnant the community finds child molesters to be.

And, should the law fail to protect the child molester, then it is worthless and bankrupt. The point of the legal protection of rights is not to protect the powerful, or even the ordinary, it exists to protect the weak and the despised... because if the weak are not protected from the ordinary, then what protects the ordinary from the powerful?




Exactly!

But, to return to your original question; what if a relgion believes and teaches that all others are wrong and must be condemned? Then you already know the answer; the followers of that religion are free to believe that, much as Scots are free to believe "If it's nae Scottish it's crap" (as a bumpersticker popular in the ex-pat Scots' community proclaims).

If, however, they try to round up all infidels and exterminate them, or force conversion on them under pain of death, then in a modern world they can be condemned.

"Be seeing you..."

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Grassaf, Eolas