Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Publius commented on his *own* freedom

The most pervasive aspect of abuse is shutting people up.
Mary Anne — (archived)

Especially children, who have no mobility and no choice in the matter. But the same can be said of the elderly infirm, who at least have experience enough to know what is being done to them.

If one is confined in a community in which there is restriction on free thought, and on actions predicated on that free thought, based solely on a philosophical aversion to a particular group of thoughts and actions, one is effectively prisoner.

This is what Monaghan is suggesting for this community. Whether people will actually be kicked out for religious non-conformity has yet to be seen, since the city hasn't been built yet. What would you think of people being forced to sell their homes against their wills because they violated a religious code based on any religion? Do the implications of property loss make more impact on you than the plight of a gay teenager (they aren't fictional) stuck in an as yet unbuilt but promised hostile community?

The Amish don't isolate their children, incidentally. They live in a way that harks back a couple hundred years, but they don't prohibit their children from interacting with, listening to, or reading anything at all that's modern. They don't own televisions, but they don't forbid contact with them, or with any other machines owned by "the English" (that would be the rest of us). Youth from Amish families own and operate cars. People are not members of the Church until they accept baptism, which does not happen until adulthood. Once adults accept baptism, deviation is punished by expulsion, which often includes shunning, an especially cruel thing. But if a family member reaches adulthood and does not choose baptizm, they are accepted and welcomed as they are.

Undiagnosed mental illness (often treated by prayer) and domestic violence supported by but not caused by a paternalistic, Biblical approach to family life are genuine problems leading to abuse among the Amish, but these problems are hardly unique to them.

This is not what we're talking about here.

We are talking about upholding the First for those unable to claim its protections for themselves. We are talking about maintaining the protections of the First for people who are American citizens. We are talking about protecting our own freedoms by maintaining them for others. So yes, in the sense that attacks on freedom of conscience diminish us all, Publius's freedom is threatened by communities that forbid or require certain things based not on civil law, but on canon law. So is mine.

If people wish to live in accordance with any faith in this country, they don't need a home owners' association to enforce it on the whole municipality. They can live their religion because they want to, subject to the pressures and challenges of the world, without constructing a hothouse for it. We don't zone for religion in the United States.

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