Awni Etaywe, PhD’s Post

In their study on religious discrimination and health, Christopher P. Scheitle, Jacqui Frost & Elaine Howard Ecklund found that "rather than significant differences in the health impacts of religious discrimination across different religious groups, what seems to matter more is the context in which the discrimination happens." Read the full #OpenAccess article in the JSSR. #SociologyofReligion #Discrimination #Religion https://lnkd.in/eEH9kJr7

Disappointing that the NSW Government's Anti-Discrimination Amendment (Religious Vilification) Bill 2023 was passed yesterday without amendment. While prohibiting religious vilification is welcome in principle, the details of the Government's Bill were deeply problematic: too vague, too broad and protecting unlawful as well as lawful religious activity. As this article highlights, this could have an impact on people criticising religious individuals and even organisations engaged in harmful sexual orientation and gender identity conversion practices. It could also allow people breaching safe access zone laws to make vilification complaints against people publicly criticising them for engaging in that unlawful activity. Now that the Religious Vilification Bill has passed, we will be turning our attention to the much bigger reform need - to fix the entire NSW Anti-Discrimination Act, from top to bottom. As Prof Simon Rice notes in this article: “We’ve got an [anti-discrimination] act which is almost unworkable. It’s so old and dated and cobbled together.” Time to throw out the whole thing and start again from scratch - beginning with preliminary submissions to the NSW Law Reform Commission, due 29 September. More details here: https://lnkd.in/g2k96hND #nswpol #auslaw #humanrights #vilification #discrimination https://lnkd.in/gvgrSk-A

Our next article in Cains’ equality series considers “religion or belief” and some of the issues of which employers need to be aware in relation to this topic. Kirsten Porter covers, amongst other things, the interaction of different protected characteristics which happens more often in practice than you might think. See her recent article on the case of Mincher (linked below), which was in the Isle of Man Employment and Equality Tribunal and dealt with “disability” and “religion or belief”. Our series continues next week with the protected characteristic of race. #discriminationseries #equality #employmentlaw #cainsiom #isleofman  #equalityact  #discrimination

A speed read for anyone wanting to know more about the protected characteristic of “religion or belief”. An interesting area which is developing as each case comes before the Tribunal. Is veganism a protected philosophical belief? Read and find out! #discrimination #religionorbelief #equality #equalityact #isleofman #employmentlaw

https://lnkd.in/ezt4mxGm “This is a 33-hour comprehensive FREE course that covers the issue of LGBT -- and Islamic gender and sexual norms more generally -- from all angles to help us meet the current challenge posed to us by this discourse. It also includes 7-8 hours of material on worldviews, modernity, and postmodernism as a backdrop to the rest of the course. The idea is that LGBT is just one issue of many, and we need to build a more general framework of understanding to help us deal with other modern issues. One can simply watch/listen to the lectures if he wants to, but it is highly encouraged to take it as an actual course, along with all the quizzes. The quizzes have been carefully designed to test the material on a fine-grain level. I believe that taking the course with the quizzes will be a whole different experience, and lead to a significantly better grasp of the material, than simply going through the lectures. There is an extensive slide deck as well that lays everything out in great detail and includes a very detailed index at the back which full reproduces the content of the course in concise form.” — Dr. Sharif El-Tobgui

You cannot disguise hatred as religious freedom, and use the words in God‘s name to justify it! Ain’t no, God gonna create something that it loves to hate that’s just insanity and a perverse profanity! You can’t undermine antidiscrimination laws using the religious zealots, aggressive stance against the existence of others, and the right to live a life peacefully by legitimising persecution as if they are somehow being victimised! You would swear they were being sodomised! I doth protest! If you value your freedom, regardless of who you are, you have the right not to live in shame, and to be free to be who you were born to be! I knew I was gay when I was four years old, and I am absolutely appalled that in New South Wales. We have the worst laws when it comes to a quality given it’s the home of Mardi Gras and they’re happy to take our dollars and stab us in the back! What a bunch of cowards most politicians are! I have the religious freedom not to practice religion as I’m a recovering Catholic as they say, and I chose meditation, and Secular Buddhism, which isn’t a religion as my discovery, my own truth, to embrace my innermost self, and to be free to be me yet still a quarter of a century into the 25th century. I face hatred under the Guys of religious freedom wrapped up in God‘s name! Nobody has the right to preach hatred! Nothing good comes from hatred, and if you hate me, then you are hating yourself equally, if not more so! To believe otherwise this to be ignorant to the facts of reality that we’re all interconnected and everything changes! In this case, I’m asking you to write in support of laws that back changes that are centuries, if not millennia overdue! I’m still living with hatred, and I’m 50 years old now! Ignorance is no excuse neither is greed and hatred! Shame on you of hatred is what you do. Stop trying to play God and the world will be a much better place. It’s not your place to judge! I am who I am and you don’t have to like that but I’m not gay there’s so much to me and so much to you that surely we can find some common ground as human beings and embracing humanitarian values above all else and keep things secular don’t get them enmeshed with religion! Praying the guy away doesn’t work and why should it? If you were heterosexual, and I prayed for you to become gay, what difference would it make anyway anyone with an open mind can see through the nonsense, but hatred is a contagious thing and so is anger. Of course they go hand-in-hand so please just send an email saying no, this isn’t okay we’re above and beyond this, we’re not barbarians living in the dark age anymore People are who they are, and there’s no excuse to marginalise or attack others for being different and then stand up on a podium and say we celebrate diversity in this democracy! This legislation will save countless teenagers and others lives because I nearly took my own life when I was 15 because I was gay at a Catholic school! Don’t allow bullies, free reign!

The Purpose of UCC: - Provide equal status to all citizens. - Promote gender parity. - Accommodate the aspirations of the young population. - To support the national integration. - Bypass the issue of reform of existing personal laws. ------------------------------------- The Cons of UCC: - Practical difficulties due to diversity in India. - Perception of UCC as encroachment on religious freedom. - Interference of state in personal matters. - It is a sensitive and tough task to implement. - The Time is not yet suitable for this reform.

Professor Tom Berg has published "The Irony of American Religious-Freedom Disputes." It is forthcoming in the Wayne Law Review. Read the paper on SSRN at https://lnkd.in/gmmzUfpM. From the abstract: Recent religious liberty disputes—over contraception mandates, LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination claims, travel bans and other anti-Muslim measures, and COVID shutdown orders—have been especially prominent and intense, contributing to the emotional polarization that wracks the nation. These disputes often display ironic aspects, by which I mean incongruities that occur when people who make claims for justice simultaneously deny claims of others that are also warranted—and in doing so ironically undercut important bases for their own claims. For example, some evangelical Christians attack Muslim religious freedom on the very grounds that others use to attack them—undercutting the bases for their own religious-freedom claims. And although same-sex couples and religious conservatives clash in various disputes, their claims in fact have important parallels—so that ironically, in dismissing each other’s claims of freedom, they undercut key premises of their own claims. #ustlawmn #firstamendment #religiousfreedom #polarization