LTTE "Policy means young adults can't bear arms"

[jody]

Policy means young adults can't bear arms
QUOTE
I am 20 years old, and I recently moved into my first apartment. Because of the location of my apartment and also because I now live alone, I acquired a pistol for personal protection. I also applied for a pistol license so I would be able to carry a concealed weapon.

It is the policy of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office not to issue a license to anyone under the age of 21. However, the sheriff can make exceptions. I thought I had a good reason for applying, and so I did. Three weeks later I called the sheriff's office to see if I had been approved and was told that I had been. I paid for the license and began to carry my concealed weapon.

A little more than a week later I got a telephone call from the sheriff's pistol license investigator who said I had "slipped through the cracks" and my license was being suspended. The reason? I am not yet 21 years of age.

The Alabama State Constitution says: "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state." It is nice to know the resources of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office are being put into full use to guarantee law abiding, adult citizens under the age of 21 are unarmed.
UNQUOTE

Note, it is legal under Federal and Alabama law for a young adult to possess a handgun.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 44 > § 922 Unlawful acts

QUOTE
(x)
(1) It shall be unlawful for a person to sell, deliver, or otherwise transfer to a person who the transferor knows or has reasonable cause to believe is a juvenile—
(A) a handgun; or
* * * * * * * * *
(5) For purposes of this subsection, the term “juvenile” means a person who is less than 18 years of age.
UNQUOTE

Under Alabama’s code, Article 3 Offenses Relating to Firearms and Weapons, it is legal for citizens over the age of 18 to carry pistols:
QUOTE
Section 13A-11-76

Delivery to minors, habitual drunkards, etc.

No person shall deliver a pistol to any person under the age of 18 or to one who he has reasonable cause to believe has been convicted of a crime of violence or is a drug addict, an habitual drunkard or of unsound mind.
UNQUOTE

[Big Kahuna]

1. You'll shoot your eye out kid.

[Dhalgren]

2. Just like running with a pair of scissors...

[Burley1]

3. Thats funny....

...not old enough to carry a handgun in the country he was born in but old enough to get blow to bits in Iraq. Kinda' ironic I think.

[rkc3]

4. But at least if you get blown to bits, you've done it for a cause.

Sarcasm off.

[zbdent]

5. Well, that goes back to the times when you could serve (legally) in

the armed services (at 18), but you couldn't vote (voice your opinion) on the war until you were 21 - another of those quirks about the constitution that the conservatives probably would say was subject to "judicial activitism" . . .

[billbuckhead]

6. The Consititution doesn't guarantee your right to vote

or own a gun. You need to read that sucker a again.

[T Town Jake]

8. Someone needs to "read that sucker a again"...

...and his name is buckhead, bill:

Article XIV.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


Article XV.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State*

Try again.

*all emphases added.

[billbuckhead]

9. Eat crow pardner

A Right to Vote
Amazingly, the Constitution fails
to guarantee the most basic of Democratic rights
by Jamin B. Raskin
The American Prospect magazine, August 2001


Of everything we learned about American politics from the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore last December, nothing was more important than the Court's insistence that the people still have "no federal constitutional right to vote." We (the people) have only the voting privileges our states choose to grant us. If the Florida legislature wishes to select presidential electors without public input, the people shall not stand in the way.
More than presidential elections are at stake here. Several weeks before Bush v. Gore, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a 2-1 federal-district-court decision that rejected an equal-protection attack on the denial of voting rights and congressional representation to the more than half a million U.S. citizens who live in the District of Columbia. "The Equal Protection Clause does not protect the right of all citizens to vote," the lower court ruling stated, "but rather the right 'of all qualified citizens to vote."' Thus two Clinton-appointed federal judges overruled the senior judge on the panel- Louis Oberdorfer, a Jimmy Carter appointee-and found that however "inequitable" the condition of D.C.'s residents may be, simply being subject to federal taxation and military conscription does not confer on Washingtonians a right to vote and to be represented in the Senate and the House or other governing institutions.
This may be a conservative reading of the Constitution, but it is black-letter law. True, the Constitution contains specific, hard-won language in the 15th and 19th Amendments that forbids discrimination in voting on the basis of race or sex. But these prohibitions don't establish a universal right to vote. Thus, Congress cannot selectively disenfranchise women in the District of Columbia but can, and does, render all of its residents voiceless in Congress by denying them representation in the House and Senate. The Florida legislature may not (theoretically, anyway) dismiss only the votes of African Americans; but as the Supreme Court kindly reminded us in Bush v. Gore, it can dismiss everyone's votes. Likewise, Florida cannot selectively deny African-American ex-convicts the right to vote in state and federal elections, but it disenfranchises all ex-offenders-some 400,000 of them.

---------------------snip----------------------------
<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/A_Right_to_Vote.html>

[T Town Jake]

11. Right after you have a heapin' helping...

...what you are attempting to do is called change the subject. What you flatly said in the first instance is that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to vote; when this was shown to be absurd, you then shifted to the highlighting the exceptions to that right.

So, dig in and enjoy some of that crow you were trying to offer up - I hear it's served fresh down here every day.

[billbuckhead]

12. What part of states rights don't you understand?

States can do what they want as long as they do it evenly. Then there's the electoral college.

[T Town Jake]

13. Thus saith billbuckhead...

...but not the XVth amendment or the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Read all about it

Some days it's just too, too easy...

[jody]

14. Don't forget, under federal and some state laws, a person’s RKBA

is restored as part of their civil rights unless specifically excluded, i.e. RKBA is a civil right.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 44 > § 921 Definitions

“Any conviction which has been expunged, or set aside or for which a person has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored shall not be considered a conviction for purposes of this chapter, unless such pardon, expungement, or restoration of civil rights expressly provides that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms.”

[billbuckhead]

15. Hell, if you were close to right, Al Gore would be President

Then there is that nasty electoral college that gives some states more votes per capita than others or allows a monkey wrench to be thrown into the idea one's vote counts. Our elections were designed from 1776 to be stolen and voters disenfranchised.

[T Town Jake]

16. Hell, I've been so right in this little exchange so far...

...that I've reduced the opposition, such as it is, to sputtering non sequiturs, as note:

"Then there is that nasty electoral college that gives some states more votes per capita than others or allows a monkey wrench to be thrown into the idea one's vote counts. Our elections were designed from 1776 to be stolen and voters disenfranchised"

Rummaging through the intellectual detritus of that pitiful offering, one despairs for the future of simple coherence among the ranks of the antis.

Try again, please.

[petronius]

17. Actually, I think Bill is right

(this time, anyway :)).

The Constitution states that the right to vote cannot be denied based on race (14th Amendment) or gender (19th). It also says that a states representation will be reduced if any of the male 21+ year olds are denied the right to vote for any reason (13th), but it doesn't really say that all citizens automatically have a right to vote in all elections.

For president, it merely says that states shall appoint electors (Article 2, Sec. 1); it doesn't say that the people get to vote on them. For the senate and the house, it says that "the people" of each state shall choose, but it makes clear that the states can set their own qualifications for who gets to be an elector (Article 1, Sec. 2; Amendment 17).

Anyway, there may be language in state constitutions or other federal law that specifically says that everyone has a right to vote, but I don't see it in the U.S. Constitution. The phrase "right to vote" is used several times in the document, but it doesn't precisely who that right applies to. All it says is that certain reasons are not valid causes to deny the right.

Of course, I am no constitutional scholar; I'm jut flipping through my copy of the document (Where's Iverglas when we need her?).

[T Town Jake]

18. Ah, but I never said...

..."all citizens automatically have a right to vote in all elections": what I did say, precisely, is that the right to vote is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution (it is); and that, further, there were explicit guarantees given by both the Constitution and federal law under which the denial of that right could not be legally countenanced.

One "exercises" a right under a plethora of possible denials of the same: this is why felons are routinely denied the right to vote in numerous jurisdictions.

But what "billbuckhead" was trying to peddle had nothing to do with any of that in the first place: he was trying to pretend that because a state could, under certain defined circumstances, deny a person the right to vote somewhere, it could conversely prohibit the right to own firearms anywhere.

This is a silly, nonsensical game the anti's often play - and it's horseshit, plain and simple.

"Of course, I am no constitutional scholar; I'm jut flipping through my copy of the document (Where's Iverglas when we need her?)."

Well, it is the legal wrinkles of the Constitution of the United States of America we're discussing here, not the troubling attempt to impose Shari'a law on unwilling subjects or any such similar Canadian controversies now raging in the Great White North.

So I don't see as how we're missing much from this discussion, really.

[petronius]

19. It appears that the Constitution speaks differently on voting and guns

There is nothing in the Constitution pertaining to voting that is comparable to the second amendment, so perhaps I should I should have qualified my post by saying that when Bill says "The Constitution doesn't guarantee your right to vote or own a gun" he is right about the voting issue, but wrong about the guns. It appears to me that the Constitutional protections for RKBA are stronger than the protections for voting. (And if Bill is trying to pretend that the somewhere/anywhere correlation you describe is correct, then he is wrong.)

My reading is that, while there appears to be an unstated assumption in the Constitution that Legislatures, Representatives, Senators, and presidential Electors will be elected by a vote of the state's citizens, it is not actually required (at least, not by that particular document). I see a difference - where the Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to bear arms, and extends this right to everyone ("the people"), it only bans certain forms of discrimination when it comes to voting, and seems to leave open a far wider range of possible ways in which this right might be irrelevant. I don't really see it as a guarantee of a right to vote when voting itself is not required.

So I don't see as how we're missing much from this discussion, really.

C'mon, you know as well as I do that no Gungeon analysis of a legal question is complete without a 97 inch post referencing a diversity of Canadian legal documents! :) (Just teasing, Iverglas, I miss your posts here...)

[iverglas]

21. but it's very short

and it goes like this:

Democratic Rights

Democratic rights of citizens

3. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

Maximum duration of legislative bodies

4. (1) No House of Commons and no legislative assembly shall continue for longer than five years from the date fixed for the return of the writs of a general election of its members.

Continuation in special circumstances

(2) In time of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection, a House of Commons may be continued by Parliament and a legislative assembly may be continued by the legislature beyond five years if such continuation is not opposed by the votes of more than one-third of the members of the House of Commons or the legislative assembly, as the case may be.

Annual sitting of legislative bodies

5. There shall be a sitting of Parliament and of each legislature at least once every twelve months.

And of course that's the bit of the Constitution of Canada that comes right after the guarantee of fundamental freedoms, right at the beginning of the whole thing. Having a constitution that actually guarantees one's right to choose one's government is such a comfort ... and saves a lot of pointless nattering ... and oppression.

For those who really want to know their stuff, of course, there are things like the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada a few years back striking down the prohibition on inmates of federal penitentiaries (sentences of 2 years+) voting.

The entire concept of removal of civil rights -- formally known as "civil death"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_death
-- has long been regarded by the actual civilized world as uncivilized, of course.

A little interesting reading on the concept. Have no fear, it's about the USofA.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/ewald-civildeath.pdf

The British magazine The Economist recently reported a new study finding that "4.7< million> Americans or 2.3 percent of the voting population have lost their rights."

(Well what would The Economist know? Stupid Brits should stick to things they do know, like footie and forelock-tugging.)

[petronius]

22. Right, that's what I don't see in our Constitution:

3. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

We don't have anything quite so pithy, and I wish we did. It may be implied, and it may be elsewhere in federal/state law, but I'd prefer a clear statement like this one (a voting rights version of the 2nd Amendment, say) in addition to the various conditions under which the right cannot be denied.

Thanks for the 'civil death' article - I'd never heard it called that before. (And welcome back; if you were gone, I mean - I haven't seen your posts recently in the spots where I've come to expect them.)

And now, back to American footie for me...

[iverglas]

25. and that's not the only one ;)

There is an assumption of rights in various places in your constitution. A couple of f'r instances:

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ...
No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...

There's no statement that anyone actually *has* the right of free speech, or the right to life, liberty and property.

Just as, heh heh, there's no statement that anyone actually has the right to possess "arms":

... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

They *all* beg the question. *What* right?

Your founders & framers seem to have had a concept of rights as containing inherent limitations: they said that Congress should make no law abriding the freedom of speech, and yet they were perfectly aware of laws against, say, perjury, and didn't see any contradiction. Their society practised the death penalty, and they saw no contradiction between that and the "right to life" that they obviously assumed to exist.

So my question re the second amendment always is: *what* right to keep and bear arms? If your founders & framers were plainly not talking about some "absolute" freedom of speech that Congress could not abridge, what is the implication in terms of what right to keep and bear arms they had in mind?


Our present constitution was written in 1982, and had the advantage of all the experience that came after yours, as well as everything that came before it. So ours makes those things explicit:

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: ...

Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

and so on -- not just a statement that rights may not be infringed (e.g. rights of citizenship -- *what* rights of citizenship?), but a statement of what the rights are. It saves a lot of work trying to read the minds of the people who wrote it all, and casting around in contemporary writings to try to figure out what they had in mind.

Prior to 1982, we had a largely "unwritten constitution" -- the jurisdictional aspect was covered by the 1867 constitution (the various governments, what powers they have, etc.), but the aspect relating to individual rights, something that is a feature of modern constitutions, consisted of the whole body of stuff from Magna Carta on down, and all the common law, the decisions of the courts over the centuries, that gave us things like the rule against self-incrimination / forced confessions and the like. It wasn't not there; it was there, just not in codified form.

And it didn't supercede express laws to the contrary -- the concept of the supremacy of Parliament, that the people's elected repesentatives always get the last word, meant that the unwritten constitutional rules and common law rules could be overriden by express legislation. Parliament could theoretically have passed a law making confessions extracted through torture admissible in court, e.g., or allowing secret trials, or outlawing television, or whatever.

This tended not to happen. The real guarantee of rights and freedoms will always be the people's commitment to them, no matter what is or is not writ in stone. Whether to entrench these things in the constitution was the subject of huge debate in the years leading up to the adoption of the 1982 constitution -- Pierre Trudeau being the leader of the entrenchment side, which won out. With the entrenched "out": Parliament and legislatures may legislate in violation of some constitutional individual rights (not democratic and citizenship rights) if it expressly says so. And of course, the thing is, if a country had actually elected a government whose platform was to round up all the ethnic minorities into camps, or outlaw television ... or confiscate all the shotguns ... it wouldn't matter much what the constitution said anyhow.

Civil death is pretty interesting, and the idea that the US still practises it is a scary one, to me. That's one of the many things I get my eyes opened to by hanging around places like DU.

It's completely incompatible, of course, with that whole business about inalienable rights. They're inalienable; they can't be taken away.

The modern approach is that there are circumstances in which the exercise of rights may be limited -- but the right itself remains intact. For instance, up here, someone who has been convicted of a criminal offence may be denied a licence to possess a firearm -- but only if, in that individual's personal case, doing so is justified. There is no blanket law that prohibits people who have been convicted of any crime from possessing a firearm (i.e. being granted a licence to possess a firearm). Such a law would be regarded as unconstitutional because it interfered in some people's exercise of rights without justification, and thus was not a "minimal impairment" of the rights in question.

The idea that someone loses rights, or has rights taken away, for any reason at all, is simply anathema to modern rights theory. Rights are regarded as "inherent" in human beings, for whatever reason. They're as inalienable as hearts or brains: without 'em, the person ceases to be a person, and that's just a nonsense, since a person can't become a fish or a table.

So like I say, it's fascinating to see how people think about these things in the US. And it does mean that we quite often are just speaking totally different languages.

[iverglas]

20. Did you ever ask?

... not the troubling attempt to impose Shari'a law on unwilling subjects or any such similar Canadian controversies now raging in the Great White North.

I did invite you to inquire about this invented controversy so that you could clear out the fog that was apparently preventing you from grasping the simple fact that it didn't exist. I didn't notice you asking.

Isn't if fun to just keep making inflammatory and utterly false statements about things one knows nothing about?

I wouldn't know, but it seems that it must be, given how you do seem to get off on it late at night. I'll have to try it sometime, I guess. If I run out of better things to do.


Well, it is the legal wrinkles of the Constitution of the United States of America we're discussing here ...

Hmm. I guess you folks are just all born constitutional scholars. If yer a yank, you absorb constitutional scholarship with yer mothers' milk. It must not involve things like reading and studying and analyzing, 'cause if it did, it would be something that anyone who understood English could do. Y'know, I'll bet there's folks at schools right there in the USofA who not only think they know stuff about the writings of that limey Shakespeare, they are paid to tell other people what they think ... even though they've never set foot out of Kansas and have never heard Elizabethan English as she was spoke. For shame.

[T Town Jake]

23. Heard it through the grapevine, from two impeccable sources:

There ya are #1

And there ya are #2

So precisely what, one wonders, is there legitimately left to ask? Not much, I'd wager - save an invitation to be reminded that "Google is your friend" and that one should "set foot out of Kansas"* to get the real scoop on world affairs from time to time, among other snarky observations.

Thanks, but no thanks.

"Hmm. I guess you folks are just all born constitutional scholars. If yer a yank, you absorb constitutional scholarship with yer mothers' milk"

Nope. When it comes to xenophobia in the Gungeon, I just adhere to what one could fairly call the Iverglas standard:

Did you enjoy your excursion to the Canada forum? Funny ... you don't look Canadian

Anything else?


*Funny thing about that, bye-the-bye: last I checked "Tulsa" wasn't in Kansas, anymore than Toronto is in British Columbia. Just FYI.

[iverglas]

24. ah yes

The BBC, the best possible source for info about Cdn law and politics:

In Canada, the government of Ontario is considering whether to allow Muslim Courts to resolve civil law disputes by arbitration.

That means Canadian Courts would uphold decisions made by Sharia Law on divorce, inheritance and business wrangles, provided those rulings did not violate Canada's charter of rights.

Actually, it means that Ontario courts would uphold decisions made by tribunals that apply the rules contained in Shari'a. Just as they have long upheld decisions made by tribunals that apply the rules set out in the body of Jewish "law", for instance.

Since Ontario doesn't have jurisdiction over divorce -- divorce is under federal jurisdiction in Canada -- it would be kinda hard for Ontario courts to uphold decisions about divorce. And since divorce is not an arbitrable subject matter -- the law in question here is Ontario's Arbitration Act, which only applies to matters that *are* arbitrable -- we have two pretty good reasons so far to suspect the accuracy of the BBC's reporting. And to disregard comments like "It means a woman is not a full person. At best, it's half a man. Doesn't have right to divorce" and "Only a man can pronounce a divorce under Islam" -- since no law that Ontario passed could have any effect on anyone's right to divorce. And even if it could, such laws would clearly violated the Cdn Constitution and be invalid.

Of course, then there's still the whole question of why anyone would even imagine that any Canadian jurisdiction would even consider enacting legislation that would treat women like half a person. Any theories?

And are you seeing something in anything you linked to that actually substantiates you own allegation --

the troubling attempt to impose Shari'a law on unwilling subjects

? I'm sure not.

Even the dear old CBC got it wrong:

... Ontario will reject the use of Shariah law and will move to prohibit all religious-based tribunals to settle family disputes such as divorce.

But then, the corporatist management there locked out its actual journalists a few weeks ago (and has been rerunning old radio and TV shows ever since), so it's no surprise to see the job not being done well.

As one person said, still managing to get it wrong:

"If the Shariah is used in Canada, I also feel threatened here," said protester Nasrin Ramzanali, who said there should be a clear separation of church and state.

Actual "separation of church and state" requires that the state not interfere in individuals' and groups' religious practices, except with the same good justification as is required in the case of interference in the exercise of any other right or freedom. (You know: no human sacrifices ...)

The real issue under Canadian constitutional law is equality:

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

As the CBC reported:

Ontario has allowed Catholic and Jewish faith-based tribunals to settle family law matters on a voluntary basis since 1991, but the practice got little attention until Muslim leaders demanded the same rights.

-- neglecting to point out that "family law matters" do NOT include divorce, and that the arrangement in fact allows such tribunals to make enforceable decisions about a whole range of civil law matters (e.g. debts under contracts) that have nothing to do with family law, and that members of some religious/ethnic groups prefer to resolve in private.

Didja catch what that Rabbi guy had to say about that in the BBC report?

RABBI REUVAN TRADBURKS:
(Secretary, Toronto Beth Din)
I think it's critical that the government find a balance between allowing religious people to do what they feel they need to do religiously. A religious Jew feels he wants to have his dispute settled in a Jewish court, so he has to have the right to do that. The Muslim world, people want the same thing.

Why, it must be National Brotherhood Week.

Now, how 'bout this for a stupid question? --

TREVELYAN:
Maybe, but what about daughters who inherit money? Why do they get less than the sons, I asked?

Are people really not allowed to do what they want with their estates -- Muslims included? If my father had made a will leaving me and my sister (adults) nothing and giving everything he had to my younger brothers, would the courts not have enforced it? The Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to government actions, not individual actions. I can't be compelled to divide my worldly possessions equally among my statutory heirs. Neither can Muslims.

If I die intestate, my estate is divided according to the law: equally among the people the law defines as my heirs. Any of those heirs may enforce that right in the courts.

If this proposal had been adopted and a Muslim parent had died intestate, any of the people that the law of Ontario defines as his/her heirs could have gone to court to enforce his/her rights exactly as I could.

However, if the children disputed how the estate was to be divided (I want the boat; no, I want the boat!), they could have agreed to have a Muslim tribunal settle the dispute, in which case and only in which case -- if all partie agreed to the arbitration -- the decision of that tribunal would have been enforceable in the courts.

Yup, some people, and probably particularly women, might have been pressured to go to the tribunal instead of to a court, and might have got a worse deal as a result.

And some Muslim women might have been pressured to go to a tribunal instead of to a court to resolve custody and support issues on separation, by a husband who thought he'd get a better deal that way.

And no Christian or Jewish or Hindu or agnostic man has ever pressured his wife not to go to court to exercise custody and support rights. Noooo, no such man has ever said "if you claim support, I'll take your kids", "if you go to court, I'll spend all my money on lawyers before I give you a penny". Noooo, Christian women have perfectly equal status in our societies, and are not subject to emotional or psychological or economic ... or physical ... intimidation by their husbands. Life is wonderful and perfect as long as yer not Muslim.

NO Muslim woman would EVER have been compelled by law or government to submit ANY dispute to arbitration by a Muslim tribunal. No more than any Jewish or RC woman is now compelled by law or government to submit any dispute to arbitration by a Jewish or RC tribunal.

Do people who are vulnerable to exploitation and oppression deserve protection? You betcha. Should other people be prohibited from doing things they want to do -- and have a prima facie right to do based on such things as freedom of religion and the right not to be discriminated against based on religion, as here -- because there is a possibility that someone else will be pressured into doing it and thus exploited or oppressed? Well, I know I'd say "yes, sometimes; it depends on the seriousness of the potential harm and how high the risk is that it will materialize and whether there are other ways of avoiding it and how grave the interference with other people's exercise of their rights and freedoms is ...". I just kinda wasn't sure that you would.

Should we COMPEL Muslim women not to wear burka or hijab? The wearing of those things puts them at a disadvantage in secular society -- and women and girls are very certainly subjected to psychological, economic and even physical coercion to wear those things when they don't want to. To protect those who are subject to such coercion, shouldn't we just prohibit anyone from wearing them?

If not, why should we compel Muslims to settle their private disputes in the public courts when they don't want to?

Muslim women are not compelled by Ontario or Canadian law to wear burkas, but some do anyhow. Is their choice "free"? Some of their choices are "freer" than others ... but by legal standards, all of their choices are free, because no law or public policy compels them to do anything.

No law or public policy would have compelled anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, to submit his/her private dispute to a tribunal that applied the rules of Shari'a.

Prohibiting Muslim women, by law, from wearing burka or hijab would be a denial of equality based on religion and an interference in the exercise of freedom of religion. Prohibiting Muslims from agreeing to resolve their private disputes by binding arbitration according to the rules they agree to apply -- when other people are permitted to do that, be the rules religious or non-religious, under the Arbitration Act -- is a denial of equality based on religion and an interference in the exercise of freedom of religion.

Is it a justified denial of equality and interference in the exercise of freedom of religion? That's the question. And it may yet have to be answered, if any or all of the groups involved -- RC, Jewish and Muslim, and who knows who else -- decides to challenge the Ontario govt's decision to deny them the ability to resolve their private disputes by binding arbitration applying the rules they choose.


So you still didn't ask, but I've come to your rescue anyway. I've attempted to disabuse you of the false and silly notions you seem to have fallen victim to. What might cause you to believe such tripe, I can only guess. If you don't do something about whatever it is that makes you vulnerable to believing allegations such as the one that Canada was preparing to force Muslim women to live by Shari'a, you're likely just going to keep on having these problems, though.


I just adhere to what one could fairly call the Iverglas standard: Did you enjoy your excursion to the Canada forum? Funny ... you don't look Canadian

Such a shame that there is no evidence available of your excursion to the Canada forum ... it seems to have magically disappeared. Guess maybe it just wasn't about anything having to do with Canada.

I have no idea how Tulsa got involved in this, but if you have some reason for thinking I was referring to a professor in Tulsa, rather than alluding to the Wizard of Oz, do tell.

Oh, aha. Maybe it really is that funny specs problem. When I said:

Y'know, I'll bet there's folks at schools right there in the USofA ...

did you think that last word was "Tulsa"? Dear me. What time was it there at the time?

[T Town Jake]

7. And Reagan's chickens come home to roost...

...the legal "precedent" for this kind of nonsense is the 1983 Federal law that codified the notion that it is A-Okay for an eighteen year old to tote around an M-16 in the Army as an adult and, hell, even go fight a few wars with that weapon at the request & pleasure of the United States Government, while at the same time requiring the states to view him/her as a criminal if discovered sipping on a glass of belly-wash beer at the local tavern...
Said law was passed by Congress at the urging of then (and now) New Jersey Senator Lautenberg and signed by none other than Ronald Wilson Reagan, that "champion" of freedom and anti-communism, or so I've been told.
Such idiotic legal dicta would be sublime, if it wasn't so obviously absurd...

[jody]

10. Self delete n/t