The top European Union court ruled on Tuesday that public authorities in member states can prohibit employees from wearing signs of religious belief, such as an Islamic head scarf, in the latest decision on an issue that has divided Europe for years.
The case came to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) after an employee of the eastern Belgian municipality of Ans was told she could not wear an Islamic head scarf at work.
This is why you’re a zealot. You keep talking about expunging all others, and excluding, and if people don’t believe like you do, they are “atheists” or whatever other label you put on them. You don’t even see your own biases and religion in your writing and thoughts. YOU are the zealot. I am advocating keeping the governmental functions free from religious influence, nothing more. YOU keep putting words in my mouth. That’s what religious zealots do… they twist the facts to fit their preconceived notions of the world and their imaginary friends.
YOU are advocating for mental illnesses that are “acceptable” to you and those that aren’t. I’m saying NO mental illness should be allowed, regardless of the source. The fact that you don’t understand this indicates that you have that same mental illness you claim you don’t have (mentally ill people don’t usually know they are mentally ill, case in point with you) and that you don’t want to be “excluded” because you aren’t fit to hold the position you covet. You SHOULD be excluded until you seek help and cure your problems.
Okay? What problems? I work for a living in a career (non government,I have no patience for paperwork) that allows me to support an entire household, I am in a rewarding relationship of 15 years, have a host of friends whom I honestly enjoy the company of who do cool things, I have never so much as smoked a cigarette and drink rarely, I still have time for personally rewarding creative projects and I grew up in a family that armed me with the knowledge that the person I am is, was and will be cherished. To phrase it in a slightly whimsical way I am wealthy in many ways that have little to do with money in a lot of categories where others have deficits.
Quite frankly, I don’t really have need of your particular rubber stamp of approval. I more just wonder why in the world you think I desire it?
I do worry about attitudes like yours because I see how people are routinely hurt by them sometimes systemicly and other times very directly. I have a lot of friends who do struggle with burnout, anxiety, depression, PTSD and autism but that isn’t everything they are. It isn’t what defines them. You don’t chuck out the whole bloody person because of a weakness. Even those who struggle have a valid claim to seeking love, acceptance, participation and expression.
You are entirely unclear what “government” actually means to you as well. Do these things mean one should be excluded from being electable? Hardly a democratic principle… By being employed in a government office as a clerk with no particular autonomy? Not exactly egalitarian and definitely a discriminatory hiring practice … I agree that religion being a foundation of a law or constitutional principle is unjust but you seem to be on some other level of exclusion.
Jesus dude, you just can’t see the forest for the trees, can you? You are exactly the type of person I’m talking about, textbook.
Nobody said anything about “chucking out the entire person.” I said mentally ill people, which is what religious people are, should not be in a government job. They should go work in a church or some other mental institution that caters to their particular brand of crazy. It’s impossible to have a rational discussion with a zealot like you, because you keep using strawmen and fallacies, and just making up stuff other people have “said” so you can make your increasingly erratic and wild “point,” of which I don’t even think YOU know what it is at this point.
Very well. Let’s logic for fun. In philosophy debate there is a means of breaking down a proof into separate points and evaluate an arguement as a series of statements which build on each other. Anything that does not build off of the points but instead on something that isn’t relevant to the arguement is a fallacy . Normally you atomize it and break down each point as a series of statements. In the interest of brevity let’s break yours roughly into two main points.
That Religion is a Mental illness.
Mental illness is a valid disqualification from participating in a government service
So let’s take the two halves of your arguement and cut it down to one and deal with the pieces separately. For now we’ll entertain this notion that religion was a mental illness for purposes of getting past you sounding like a bloody broken record.
So in the matter of ethics in the field of mental illness and disability it is widely accepted thay Employers are prohibited from discriminating against mental health in the workplace. Under human rights legislation in the US and any number of democratic societies at this point employers have an obligation to accommodate their employees with disabilities, including mental health concerns, to the extent of undue hardship.
Where I am this is covered under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the main constitutional document of my country. In the US this is covered more by a smattering of federal laws - an overlap of the Equality act, The American with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act which was fought for in the era of civil rights alongside racial discrimination. Both have a history of activism. The disability front at the time is actually quite heroic. I would look up “Ed Roberts and The Rolling Quads”. Think Martin Luther King but paralyzed from the neck down performing sit ins and demonstrations in Government buildings.
Whether something should be illegal (such as mental illness discrimination) usually is built off an ethical arguement. This one, campaigned for so brilliantly by people who had to overcome more than the regular obstacles has a lot of roots in the evolution of thought in Natural/Human Rights. The idea that you as a human simply by virtue of being one have a right to live, not be subject to undue cruelty, and are assured equal participation in your society. At a more fundamental level rests the idea that your natural advantages and disadvantages are randomly determined and a fair society is one that compensates for this randomness by not excluding people by mere lack of effort. There’s this concept that social systems ideally should be created from a standpoint of pretending you are a person who doesn’t yet know what random attributes you will have once you exist inside the society you build.
So the first question as to whether our veiws are at all reconcilable is :
Do you believe in the underlying principles of universal human rights?
If so, should human rights extend to people with mental illness?
If you do not agree with either of these two points we really have nothing in common and I feel justified that your views are by my standards unethical and there’s very little we can reconcile… because even if we look at religion as an illness it’s my dearly held belief that it should be an unlawful and widely agreed unethical grounds to refuse hiring someone or not reasonably accommodate a mental illness in any job much less one that is a democratic institution that serves “the people”. In all cases where governments decide they don’t have to follow their own rules I rarely like the result.
I’m not going to read all that, as I started and realized you are, once again, either being disingenuous or your zealotry is clouding your argument, either way, it’s very clearly invalid from the first paragraph as you set up the strawmen again to bolster your flawed position.
As such, I’ll respond up until then point you go off the rails:
I said keep religion/mental illness out of the (governmental) workplace. If you need to express your mental illness to everyone in the work place you aren’t fit to work there. You need to seek help. Your display of religious paraphernalia is no different than you viewing porn on your computer/phone where everyone can see it. It’s no different than you wearing other objectionable material. You just have this arbitrary line in your mind at “religion” because that’s your thing and you can’t conceive the fact that it’s offensive to other people. It’s not offensive to you, so it’s ok. But other things are offensive to you, so they aren’t ok. That’s your bias.
There are things that are offensive to you that are not offensive to me but I’m not the one arguing to allow those things in the (governmental) workplace because I’m not a self centered narcissist who thinks my way is right and any other way is wrong. I want to treat everyone equally, which means no special carve outs for religion. You want to treat religion as a special case.
That is wrong. Plain and simple.
Welp if you are not bothering to read my replies and pretending you actually understand the meaning of strawman while basing your entire schitck around the least effective ad hominem attacks I’ve encountered then there’s no real reason to continue.
That you won’t answer even two direct questions to nail down a basic ethical baseline to expand from tells me that even you can’t defend your own position for shit. Not surprising you don’t want to look too closely at your own opinions in the mirror.
Anyway, it’s been fun.
Let me sum up your argument:
“My religious views are right. As long as I approve of your religious choices they are ok, but I will arbitrarily draw the line where I see fit and if you disagree with me you are wrong.”
That’s literally what your argument boils down to.
Not even a little close. Now I just think you’re dumb as shit and don’t know how to read. Are you a bot? Maybe that explains why you just say the same thing over and over.
Lol ok… maybe you should go back and read what you’ve written. You are a religious zealot who can’t see the forest for the trees and think that anyone who doesn’t believe in your bullshit is wrong and crazy. Whatever dude. If you think I’m saying the same thing over and over it’s because you keep spouting all your nonsense and I’m trying to educate the terminally stupid, which is obviously a losing battle.