Mairead  (1000+ posts)      Thu Oct-13-05 05:13 PM
Response to Original message
67. Until *ALL* public display of religiosity is banned, militant fanatics
will continue to demand that women be third-class citizens, slightly higher-class than animals but not really as valuable.

Face it: these are not people who are preserving folk-dances or practicing some other cultural thing as a way of feeling connected to their ancestral homeland. These are LUNATICS who firmly believe that a Big Beard In The Sky has vouchsafed to them the Knowledge of the One, True Way, and has licenced them to make sure that everyone else toes that same mark or suffers whatever consequences these loonies choose to dream up. It's not secularists who commit 'honor' killings, prevent girls from escaping their burning school, or force girls to submit to genital mutilation.

A secular, pluralistic society should not tolerate any of that even for a moment. Public religiosity should be treated like public masturbation--initially a minor civil offence with overtones of psychiatric difficulty, with the stakes rising for each repeat.

It's the only way to stop this shit.

It's not secularists who commit 'honor' killings, prevent girls from escaping their burning school, or force girls to submit to genital mutilation.

And it's not the Christians either. It's the guys down in Guantanamo Bay that you were crying for in some previous thread because they are being denied their human rights.