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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (216602)	8/22/2007 3:23:43 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793750

1. We were talking about Mass. You might have missed that, but that was the context of the discussion. If you want to make it about something else, that's fine, but it has very little to do with what I was saying, which was specific to the Mass example. Mass gay marriage is legal. 2. No I am not setting up a "smokescreen". I am saying that defining pork as a religious subject is illogical. It can be religious, but it can also be secular- and religious folks shouldn't (imo) force everyone to call it religious. I don't happen to think secular folks can tell the religious it's NEVER religious, but since religion doesn't belong in school, that point really doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about- unless teachers are telling kids that something their family believes is a religious edict is not, and if they do that they should be disciplined. You can be personally as disapproving as you want of the religious nature of things which are both secular and religious, but you don't get to bring your religious disapproval to school- no matter how much you stomp your feet. "No, it wasn't the original question. The original question had to do with children being taught things in school that their parents objected to, which includes but is not limited to, religious beliefs foreign to the parents. It was your doing to put up a sharp dividing line that forbids only "religion" and yet excludes from religion concepts of marriage, ritual, honor - in short, the exact set of issues that touched off this discussion in the first place." That was NOT the original point I was making- in the post you replied to. The point I was making was that many subjects have secular and religious components- and yes, I think we leave the religious baggage out of school, because everyone has a different set of bags. That doesn't mean we can't make special accommodations for students who feel unable to see the separate components - but those accommodations need not affect the curriculum for all- because if we do that, then we have (imo) an unacceptable entanglement of church and state. And if you understand the concept of the separation of church and state as it applies to the law of public education you must, indeed, draw a line between the religious and the secular. Now why are you so against drawing such a line when it is quite clear one can be drawn, and when the constitutional law around our schools requires that it be drawn?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (216602)	8/22/2007 3:31:32 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793750

You are setting up a smokescreen called "religious vs non-religious" and putting ethical issues of importance and weight behind the "non-religious" smokescreen, where they are not allowed to be discussed or disapproved. If one is immersed in religion, as some are, then most everything can be about religion. Some committed people have this "unified theory of everything" attitude about religion. If we excluded discussions of subjects where religion informs some of the participants or where some religious establishment takes an interest, we would exclude a lot of things of educational and cultural value. Religion is religion; culture is culture. "Don't mess with my religion" only works if we define religion strictly.