Yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy made the first presidential appearance before the French Parliament since the 1800s. Among his topics of choice? The need to ban the burqa in the Fifth Republic.
According to the New York Times, the crowd applauded enthusiastically, but Sarkozy is already being slammed by the French press and many of his constituents. LeMonde.fr posted reactions from its readers yesterday under the (translated) title "In France, liberty for all, except the Muslims!" June 19th's edition featured an opinion piece by Eric Kaminski on the overall topic that's well worth the read if your French is up to it.
As much of a feminist as I am, I'm solidly with LeMonde's readers (and it seems to me, their editorial staff) on this one: whether or not a woman wears a burqa, a niqab, a hijab, a baseball cap, a scarf or no covering at all when she's out buying groceries or having coffee with friends is not the business of the French government.
Here's some food for thought, M. le Président: what does it matter what a woman chooses to wear on the streets of Paris, Toulouse, Marseille or Rennes when there are still places in your country where a woman who wears a skirt - no matter the length - is considered by the local population to be "inviting" rape? What does it matter that some women choose to adhere to the more austere traditions of their faith when women are still burned alive by men who feel they've been "humiliated," like Sohane Benziane, 17 years old when she was killed in 2002, who was sprayed with gasoline and tossed in the trash?
Yes, countless injustices have been committed against women in the name of Islam. Yes, some women in Muslim countries are forced into wearing the burqa by male relatives - thank you, M. Sarkozy, for apparently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. Yes, the idea that anyone thinks women must cover themselves completely from public view to ensure that only their husbands can admire their beauty is appallingly sexist and frustratingly outdated.
But, M. le Président, you have far more serious issues to address first if you're going to start on a feminist agenda, added to which it's not really a feminist issue (for you, at least) and it's none of your business.
Any type of religious garb is already banned for teachers and students in public schools, as well as for all on-the-job government employees in France, and I have no problem with that because it meshes with the French version of secularism. However, given the way he argued his case, Sarkozy's statement that "the burqa is not welcome in the territory of the French Republic" is a foot-in-mouth moment that rivals, in my mind, his "slip" with "racaille" ("scum") during the 2005 riots.
Sarkozy presented the issue as a feminist one, saying that his desire to ban the burqa is not religious. Given the tensions that already exist between the (primarily Muslim) immigrant population in France and the "native French," he either didn't think that through or - more likely, in my opinion - I'm calling a big, fat B.S. on that statement. Because, guess what? Most French citizens and residents who wear traditional Islamic garb choose to do so. (Curious? Check out the reaction from LeMonde.fr's readers - same link as "reactions from its readers" above and in French. Sorry!) Added to which, if you're going to object to Islamic garb from a feminist perspective, what about the fact that Orthodox Judaism requires married women to cover their hair? It's the same basic principle - why is Sarkozy only objecting to Islam's rendition?
Personally, I find the idea of wearing even a hijab sexist and insulting, but I'm not Muslim and it's not up to me. President Sarkozy seems to find the idea of a niqab or burqa insulting (but not a hijab, Mr. "This-is-a-question-of-feminism?"), but outside public institutions, it's not up to him.
At least, it shouldn't be. Forcing people to disavow their beliefs hasn't done France any good in the past (Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, anyone? Shortly after that is when my ancestors hopped a boat for the New World and is why they ended up fighting alongside the colonials in the Revolutionary War.) and is in fact part of the admittedly-complicated rationale behind their strict secularism.
The French government should absolutely take steps to ensure the safety and freedom of anyone on its soil who is being intimidated and oppressed - by spouses, parents, siblings or anyone else. But that's a separate and much broader issue that in this instance has little to do with either feminism or the right to wear religious garb and much more to do with the messy immigration-racism-religion triangle of tensions that Sarkozy seems to want to circumnavigate.
If I were living in France, M. le Président, I'd ask you to quit grandstanding in an attempt to avoid the real issues and do your job.
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Students at Liberty find none
I apologize, I've been neglecting you all something awful this month! Between a longer to-do list than usual at work and planning for Gina's wedding this weekend (my best friend's getting married!!!), things have been a little crazy.
I promise to get back to something like a normal blogging schedule next week, but I wanted to share an issue that's been driving me nuts personally and professionally since last Friday: Liberty University kicking their chapter of College Democrats off-campus. I just blogged about it over at State of Belief for work, so I'll send you their way to read the full post:
I promise to get back to something like a normal blogging schedule next week, but I wanted to share an issue that's been driving me nuts personally and professionally since last Friday: Liberty University kicking their chapter of College Democrats off-campus. I just blogged about it over at State of Belief for work, so I'll send you their way to read the full post:
James Madison must be exhausted. The poor guy just can’t catch a break – with all of the government interference in religion (the faith-based initiative-turned-partnership) and religious interference in politics (Propositions 8, 102 and 2), he’s probably been rolling over in his grave nonstop for years...[read the full post here]And now (well, soon)...back to your regularly-scheduled dose of There Is No Spoon.
Friday, April 24, 2009
"American" values?
A little work/life cross-pollination here, but this has been bugging me for the last few days: Burns Strider, the Clinton campaign's faith outreach director last year, has founded a new 501(c)(4) non-profit called American Values Network. American? Great, me too. Values? Good stuff. Faith? Awesome. But faith (read: organized religion) in politics? Not so much.
When I first heard about this new organization, I read Burns Strider's name, then the name of the organization and blinked. Burns Strider is a Democrat. American Values Network sounds like one of the religious right organizations created in the 80s and 90s, who gave themselves benign, all-American-sounding names - American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Traditional Values Coalition - to mask their evangelical fundamentalism, and general bigotry and intolerance. Hmm.
American Values Network's heart is in the right place, so to speak. They want to focus on critical issues like poverty, AIDS and the environment, which, bleeding-heart that I am, I'm all for. It's how they want to go about it that drives me nuts. They look at these issues as "compassion issues of the Bible," and want (Christian) politicians to talk about them in Christian terms, quoting scripture and using biblical texts to inform their work. But these aren't Christian, biblical or religious issues. They're social issues that are impacting the global community and need to be dealt with from a compassionate - but practical and modern - point of view.
Faith-based groups do great work around the world (Habitat for Humanity comes instantly to mind), and, like secular non-profits and NGOs, they often have more impact than government programs because they can avoid much of the bureaucracy and its red tape. Faith-based groups should continue to do that work, because - despite the fact that I strongly disagree with the proselytization they often inflict on the recipients of their charity - it's desperately needed. Faith-based groups should absolutely not suggest that any government representative or program embrace or fund the "faith" part of their work. It's not only exclusive and a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea, it's also unconstitutional.
What really gets me about American Values Network is that their main quarrel with the religious right - other than being on the opposite side of civil liberties issues - is that they don't use the Bible enough in their politics. If they're going to come at social issues from a moral, biblical standpoint, AVN says, they need to come at all political issues from a moral, biblical standpoint - that means the budget, health care, etc.
It was after reading that little gem that I really started wanting to bang my head against the wall.
The Democratic Party has been working for going on three decades to overpower the religious right. Up until this last election cycle, the general message from the Democrats was "let's leave faith out of politics, it messes with the separation of church and state, and bringing religion into the political arena just makes it even messier." That changed this time around, with the Democratic campaigns adding "faith outreach" staffers and the candidates working to present themselves as moral, religious people. (I'd argue that morality absolutely does not have to center on or stem from religion, but that's an issue for another day.)
Now this group wants Democrats to not only mimic the religious right's use of scripture and biblical finger-pointing in politics, but surpass it.
The critical point they're missing (aside from the whole being unconstitutional thing) is that not all Americans are Christian. Melting pot? Religious freedom? Diversity? Pluralistic society? Any of this ringing any bells? Oh right, they're all descriptions of America, land of the free. But part of American Values Network's raison d'être is this:
American Values Network has, it seems, fallen into the religious right's trap of believing that the U.S. of A. is and was founded as a Christian nation, when in fact the whole point of separating church and state in the First Amendment was to keep religion and government from becoming entangled and hurting one another, as they had done in Europe and in the colonies, pre-Declaration of Independence.
The face of America isn't an old white guy (unless we're talking about the Founders, in which case it's a group of pretty awesome old white guys, some of them Christian, some of them not). The face of America is a bunch of ages and genders and colors and ethnicities and creeds, all mixed up together. It's messy, it's complicated, it often involves screaming at the top of your lungs about what you believe is right - and it belongs to every single one of us who calls this country home.
I rail enough against the religious right already - I really don't want to have to start picking on a progressive organization for the same reasons. So please, Burns Strider et al., read up on your American history, read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights already, and quit dragging religion into politics, where they inevitably both wind up in the mud.
When I first heard about this new organization, I read Burns Strider's name, then the name of the organization and blinked. Burns Strider is a Democrat. American Values Network sounds like one of the religious right organizations created in the 80s and 90s, who gave themselves benign, all-American-sounding names - American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Traditional Values Coalition - to mask their evangelical fundamentalism, and general bigotry and intolerance. Hmm.
American Values Network's heart is in the right place, so to speak. They want to focus on critical issues like poverty, AIDS and the environment, which, bleeding-heart that I am, I'm all for. It's how they want to go about it that drives me nuts. They look at these issues as "compassion issues of the Bible," and want (Christian) politicians to talk about them in Christian terms, quoting scripture and using biblical texts to inform their work. But these aren't Christian, biblical or religious issues. They're social issues that are impacting the global community and need to be dealt with from a compassionate - but practical and modern - point of view.
Faith-based groups do great work around the world (Habitat for Humanity comes instantly to mind), and, like secular non-profits and NGOs, they often have more impact than government programs because they can avoid much of the bureaucracy and its red tape. Faith-based groups should continue to do that work, because - despite the fact that I strongly disagree with the proselytization they often inflict on the recipients of their charity - it's desperately needed. Faith-based groups should absolutely not suggest that any government representative or program embrace or fund the "faith" part of their work. It's not only exclusive and a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad idea, it's also unconstitutional.
What really gets me about American Values Network is that their main quarrel with the religious right - other than being on the opposite side of civil liberties issues - is that they don't use the Bible enough in their politics. If they're going to come at social issues from a moral, biblical standpoint, AVN says, they need to come at all political issues from a moral, biblical standpoint - that means the budget, health care, etc.
It was after reading that little gem that I really started wanting to bang my head against the wall.
The Democratic Party has been working for going on three decades to overpower the religious right. Up until this last election cycle, the general message from the Democrats was "let's leave faith out of politics, it messes with the separation of church and state, and bringing religion into the political arena just makes it even messier." That changed this time around, with the Democratic campaigns adding "faith outreach" staffers and the candidates working to present themselves as moral, religious people. (I'd argue that morality absolutely does not have to center on or stem from religion, but that's an issue for another day.)
Now this group wants Democrats to not only mimic the religious right's use of scripture and biblical finger-pointing in politics, but surpass it.
The critical point they're missing (aside from the whole being unconstitutional thing) is that not all Americans are Christian. Melting pot? Religious freedom? Diversity? Pluralistic society? Any of this ringing any bells? Oh right, they're all descriptions of America, land of the free. But part of American Values Network's raison d'être is this:
We believe America needs leaders who understand public service is a calling, and who know they will be held accountable not only by voters, but by their Creator. We should not be afraid to proudly embrace the traditional and fundamental values that have guided and defined our country since its inception and helped make America a shining beacon of hope and freedom around the world.Um, that's nice (honestly, it is - public service is indeed a calling, and public servants do need to know that they'll be held accountable for their actions - and inaction). But whose "Creator" and "traditional and fundamental values?" Oh, your exclusively Christian ones, based on that Holy Bible you've got a huge picture of on your policy page? Not nice, guys. Not inclusive and not, in fact, American.
American Values Network has, it seems, fallen into the religious right's trap of believing that the U.S. of A. is and was founded as a Christian nation, when in fact the whole point of separating church and state in the First Amendment was to keep religion and government from becoming entangled and hurting one another, as they had done in Europe and in the colonies, pre-Declaration of Independence.
The face of America isn't an old white guy (unless we're talking about the Founders, in which case it's a group of pretty awesome old white guys, some of them Christian, some of them not). The face of America is a bunch of ages and genders and colors and ethnicities and creeds, all mixed up together. It's messy, it's complicated, it often involves screaming at the top of your lungs about what you believe is right - and it belongs to every single one of us who calls this country home.
I rail enough against the religious right already - I really don't want to have to start picking on a progressive organization for the same reasons. So please, Burns Strider et al., read up on your American history, read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights already, and quit dragging religion into politics, where they inevitably both wind up in the mud.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Marriage - who decides?
I've been trying to stay out of the marriage/Prop. 8 debate, at least in the blogosphere, for two reasons:
This article in the San Francisco Chronicle changed my mind (since I don't visit their website regularly, it took me awhile to see the article, published last Friday) - on #2 because as a state Supreme Court case, the decision on Proposition 8 will create precedent and thus its impact will extend more concretely beyond California's borders, and on #1 because some things are too important to avoid just because it's more comfortable to do so. So I'm climbing up on my soapbox.
Unsurprisingly, given where I grew up, this is an issue I've been aware of since middle school, and on which my personal opinion has evolved over the years. I started out, at 12 or 13, hesitant to have an opinion, in the "I'm not a member of the LGBT community, can't I just stay out of this?" vein. Then, briefly, and I felt guilty about it even at the time, I thought civil unions were the way to go: "Marriage is a religious institution, after all, and aren't a lot of religions at odds with being gay?" After that, I threw up my hands and went back to not knowing what to think, although I was 100% sure that the LGBT community (and let me emphasize the T part of that acronym, because it's a subsection of the community that's overlooked appallingly often) should have the same rights as married couples - in regard to taxes, next-of-kin, custody, etc. - regardless of what a formal union was called.
That last part has become the focus of my opinion as it stands today: equal rights are a necessity. Not only for the LGBT community, but for our society, which continues to find things to divide itself over rather than focusing on the fact that we're all people, we're all Americans and if we'd just accept that human beings don't come from cookie cutter molds and move past that to see the similarities beneath the surface, most of us would probably get along pretty well.
Personally, I don't think the government should be involved in marriage at all. Marriage is a religious institution, and who religious leaders marry should be a decision of individual religious communities, whether their faith tradition chooses to make such a decision on a global level, a local one or on a case-by-case basis. As far as the government is concerned, whether or not people are married shouldn't matter - whether or not they're committed to one another for the purposes of our society should.
So really, a civil union is all the government should be granting or getting involved with, and any two people who want to commit their lives to one another should be able to enter into one, in my opinion. No restrictions other than basic ones such as age and familial relationship (brother and sister...still not such a great idea, sorry!) should even enter into the government's consideration. Our society isn't geared toward single people - in fact, it can make life pretty difficult for them, financially - and if the government focuses on what will make for the most productive society in the long run, as governments are supposed to do, they'll have to recognize that more formally united couples means a more productive, healthier United States.
Leaving the decision about marriage up to individual religious institutions doesn't make the problem go away - there are bitter debates among clergy and lay people within religious traditions and even within individual congregations about the sanctity of marriage and what exactly it means in today's world. (And then there's the question, "What about people who don't adhere to any religion?" I'd say entering into marriage, a union traditionally believed to be blessed by a deity of some kind through the proxy of a religious leader, doesn't make much sense if you don't believe in the deity and you'd probably be more comfortable with a civil union anyway. But maybe that's just me.)
There are religious traditions that flat-out reject the LGBT community, which I think is bigoted and short-sighted (and hypocritical, in Christian traditions, but that's another topic), and which cause a great deal of pain to the LGBT people who were raised in and would like to be adherent to them. And there are religious traditions that welcome everyone with open arms, regardless of their differences from "the norm." That isn't fair to those who don't fit into their faith tradition's mold, but it's also not a battle the government can (or should, at any rate) fight - each tradition needs to evolve in their own time and on their own terms, not when and how they're told to do so by a legislature or a court.
Doesn't religion adhering to the dictates of government about a religious institution breach our freedom of religion? And doesn't a religious institution being adopted by the government interfere with freedom from religion? Both freedoms are written into the Constitution, and shouldn't that be the answer, as far as the government is concerned?
- It's an issue people can get very ugly about, and while I enjoy a good political debate, virulent hatred makes me uncomfortable.
- I don't live in California anymore.
This article in the San Francisco Chronicle changed my mind (since I don't visit their website regularly, it took me awhile to see the article, published last Friday) - on #2 because as a state Supreme Court case, the decision on Proposition 8 will create precedent and thus its impact will extend more concretely beyond California's borders, and on #1 because some things are too important to avoid just because it's more comfortable to do so. So I'm climbing up on my soapbox.
Unsurprisingly, given where I grew up, this is an issue I've been aware of since middle school, and on which my personal opinion has evolved over the years. I started out, at 12 or 13, hesitant to have an opinion, in the "I'm not a member of the LGBT community, can't I just stay out of this?" vein. Then, briefly, and I felt guilty about it even at the time, I thought civil unions were the way to go: "Marriage is a religious institution, after all, and aren't a lot of religions at odds with being gay?" After that, I threw up my hands and went back to not knowing what to think, although I was 100% sure that the LGBT community (and let me emphasize the T part of that acronym, because it's a subsection of the community that's overlooked appallingly often) should have the same rights as married couples - in regard to taxes, next-of-kin, custody, etc. - regardless of what a formal union was called.
That last part has become the focus of my opinion as it stands today: equal rights are a necessity. Not only for the LGBT community, but for our society, which continues to find things to divide itself over rather than focusing on the fact that we're all people, we're all Americans and if we'd just accept that human beings don't come from cookie cutter molds and move past that to see the similarities beneath the surface, most of us would probably get along pretty well.
Personally, I don't think the government should be involved in marriage at all. Marriage is a religious institution, and who religious leaders marry should be a decision of individual religious communities, whether their faith tradition chooses to make such a decision on a global level, a local one or on a case-by-case basis. As far as the government is concerned, whether or not people are married shouldn't matter - whether or not they're committed to one another for the purposes of our society should.
So really, a civil union is all the government should be granting or getting involved with, and any two people who want to commit their lives to one another should be able to enter into one, in my opinion. No restrictions other than basic ones such as age and familial relationship (brother and sister...still not such a great idea, sorry!) should even enter into the government's consideration. Our society isn't geared toward single people - in fact, it can make life pretty difficult for them, financially - and if the government focuses on what will make for the most productive society in the long run, as governments are supposed to do, they'll have to recognize that more formally united couples means a more productive, healthier United States.
Leaving the decision about marriage up to individual religious institutions doesn't make the problem go away - there are bitter debates among clergy and lay people within religious traditions and even within individual congregations about the sanctity of marriage and what exactly it means in today's world. (And then there's the question, "What about people who don't adhere to any religion?" I'd say entering into marriage, a union traditionally believed to be blessed by a deity of some kind through the proxy of a religious leader, doesn't make much sense if you don't believe in the deity and you'd probably be more comfortable with a civil union anyway. But maybe that's just me.)
There are religious traditions that flat-out reject the LGBT community, which I think is bigoted and short-sighted (and hypocritical, in Christian traditions, but that's another topic), and which cause a great deal of pain to the LGBT people who were raised in and would like to be adherent to them. And there are religious traditions that welcome everyone with open arms, regardless of their differences from "the norm." That isn't fair to those who don't fit into their faith tradition's mold, but it's also not a battle the government can (or should, at any rate) fight - each tradition needs to evolve in their own time and on their own terms, not when and how they're told to do so by a legislature or a court.
Doesn't religion adhering to the dictates of government about a religious institution breach our freedom of religion? And doesn't a religious institution being adopted by the government interfere with freedom from religion? Both freedoms are written into the Constitution, and shouldn't that be the answer, as far as the government is concerned?
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