I never knew how differently France and America value religion

[Warren Stupidity]

I made my first trip to France in December 2003, when I visited my French cousins in Paris. At the time, newspapers were headlined with the motto of the French Republic, but with the last word changed: “Liberté, Egalité, Laicité.”

I made my first trip to France in December 2003, when I visited my French cousins in Paris. At the time, newspapers were headlined with the motto of the French Republic, but with the last word changed: “Liberté, Egalité, Laicité.”

That was the buzzword at the time: laicité, or secularism. A law was being advanced to forbid students at public schools from displaying any religious symbols — no headscarves for Muslim girls, no yarmulkes for Jewish boys. The law passed, and it's still in effect.

I debated the law with my cousins around the dinner table, and it became clear that we came from starkly different societies. If the US enshrined freedom of religion, France seemed to be embracing freedom from religion. People’s religious affiliations should not be present at all in the public sphere, my cousins said.

Now I'm back in Paris. I joined my French cousins Ivan and Katia at the huge march that followed the deadly attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket. Religion was again at the forefront of the national conversation in France.

“I am here because I want the religion and the religious people to stay away from the Republic,” Ivan said. “If we want to live together, we have to respect laws of the Republic and keep religion home.”

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-21/i-never-knew-how-differently-france-and-america-value-religion

Keep religion in your home. Works for me. Of course we can't ban students from public display of religious symbols, but we sure as heck ought to make our public sphere far more secular than it currently is.

[trotsky]

1. ZOMG, what are you gonna do, round up all the religious people and put them in ghettos???

Seriously though, what's so wrong with keeping one's religion private? You come into the public sphere to make your case for how we should behave, or what laws we should pass, we had better agree upon one mutually shared frame of reference. Since we'd never agree on what religious system that should be, by default it should be secularism.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. How many times do I have to explain that the Atheist World Dictatorship

is going to tickle all the believers into atheism? We are going to send forth an army of robotic tickle monsters equipped with theistic sensory devices. With compassion and benevolence they will tickle the god right out of you.

[skepticscott]

2. Of course, in this country, religionistas whine when they think religion

is being pushed out of the "public square", but they also whine when they're subjected to everything that the "public square" entails, including open examination and criticism of all aspects of their "faith".

[Warren Stupidity]

4. whereas in that awful french country they actually have laws protecting people

from public expressions of hatred against them for their religious beliefs. Plus their laws are written in FRENCH.

[Heddi]

6. Exactly. **AND** they find the idea of an Atheist billboard or bus ad

to be SO FUCKING TACKY OH MY GOD HOW GAUCHE DOES IT HAVE TO BE ALL OBVIOUS AND IN YOUR FACE OMG THEIR TACTICS ARE A BIT OVER THE TOP DON'T YOU THINK OH JEEZE JUST BE LOW KEY ABOUT IT

without realizing that a billboard on an interstate is less than a drop in the bucket compared to the in your face public religiosity

[AtheistCrusader]

5. I tend to think of the difference between France and the US on Religion, like the difference betwen

the Religion group and General Discussion on DU, on religion. In religion, like the US, people give all sorts of un-earned obsequious deference to religious bullshit, whereas in General Discussion, like France, religion pretty much gets shit on from orbit because people have had e-fucking-nough of that bullshit.

Check any of the religious threads in GD that meet the 'late breaking/high visibility' exceptions to the general prohibition on religious bullshit in DU. The tone in those threads is vastly more hostile to religion, than you will find among 'certain parties' in Religion group.

[progressoid]

7. No no no,

We need to join together with everyone of all faiths and creeds.

Let us all come together in perfect harmony.

Kum ba yah!