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EU states can ban religious symbols in public workplaces
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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This isn't about banning people from wearing their religious merchandise in public. This is banning religious objects from workplaces. More precisely just public workplaces. Of course a secular state should also have secular workplaces. And the way labour rights are personal life can be completely banned from your workplace. Why would religion be treated differently?
Is that the workplace you want? Devoid of personal lives but mere drones who congregate to labour and then disperse into their personal lives where finally they are free to express themselves how they want?
If your personal life is 100% religion, you're a drone anyway.
The ol strawman
No I want democratic workplaces. But also workplaces without religion nonetheless.
I think it gets pretty hypocritical, singling out religion like that. In the workplace, I can have memorabilia of my favorite sports team even though someone else hates it (unless perhaps it's a Catholic School team that has a cross in its logo?). I can have the flag of a hostile foreign country because I'm proud of my heritige. I can have a picture of me kissing my wife even though it would normally be just outside the common no-tolerance Harassment policy. Unless it was taken at the wedding, or in/near a religious monument. I can wear gauge earrings, or just a little star... as long as it's not a Star of David. Ditto with pendants, even new-agey wooowooo pendants, as long as it's not a pentagram. There's no path there that isn't hypocritical.
Freedom of religion and freedom from religion go hand-in-hand, and it's not always an easy relationship to figure out. Forced private secularism is its own anti-freedom problem, even when discussing the employee at a government workplace. It's not really secular if I'm forbidden from wearing something for solely religious reasons. Even if the religious reason is that the thing I want to wear is religious.
I'd say there is a difference between politics and regular hobbies at the workplace. Religion is a very political issue, one about your worldview and beliefs.
From a political point of view, irreligion is religion. Telling every single person who works at a location how they are or aren't allowed to peacably express their religious views or lack thereof is a religious action by government. By definition, not secularism.
It's ok (-ish) to actively seek an atheist state, but it's duplicitous to do it under the guise of secularism. The separation of Church and government (secularism) most accurately means that government "make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise". I hate to go all "Murica", but the concept is secularism is often tied to that prior quote. How is telling people they can't wear a cross or pentacle or anything in between anything but "prohibiting its free exercise"?
Is that a trick question? Because my answer is a resounding yes.
That's what capitalism wants. They want their leaders and ceos to be their gods.