How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions

How to Determine if Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions.
Just pick "A" or "B" for each question.


1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
(B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.


2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
(B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those other two people in line down at the courthouse.


3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am being forced to use birth control.
(B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.


4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
(B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly.


5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
(B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully others with impunity.


6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am not allowed to purchase, read, or possess religious books or material.
(B) Others are allowed to have access to books, movies, and websites that I do not like.


7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
(B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings, and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like in addition to having a tax-exempt status.


8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
(B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country.


9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
(B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community.


10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
(A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home or in our place of worship.
(B) Public school science classes are teaching science.


If you answered "A" to any question, then perhaps your religious liberty is indeed at stake. You and your faith group have every right to now advocate for equal protection under the law.

If you answered "B" to any question, then not only is your religious liberty not at stake, but there is a strong chance that you are oppressing the religious liberties of others.


modified from:

Is My Religious Liberty Being Threatened? (Score:5, Insightful)
by kindbud (90044) on Monday March 30, 2015 @12:49PM (#49371711)

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7174389&cid=49371711

It would be nice if more police chiefs were like the Nashville Chief of Police

Steven Anderson, Nashville Chief of Police, writes excellent responses to a letter directed at him from a citizen.

• Has consideration been given as to whether the response of the police department “help or hurt the community.”

It is our view that every decision made within the police department should be made with the community in mind. Obviously, there are some matters in which we have no discretion. On matters in which we do have discretion, careful consideration is given as to the best course of action, always with the welfare of the general public in mind.

That has been the consideration on this issue. Certainly, in comparing the outcome here in Nashville with what has occurred in some other cities, the results speak for themselves. I stand on the decisions that have been made.

• “These actions are putting the department at disharmony from the majority of the citizens.”

While I don’t doubt that you sincerely believe that your thoughts represent the majority of citizens, I would ask you to consider the following before you chisel those thoughts in stone.

As imperfect humans, we have a tendency to limit our association with other persons to those persons who are most like us. Unfortunately, there is even more of a human tendency to stay within our comfort zone by further narrowing those associations to those persons who share our thoughts and opinions. By doing this we can avoid giving consideration to thoughts and ideas different than our own. This would make us uncomfortable. By considering only the thoughts and ideas we are in agreement with, we stay in our comfort zone. Our own biases get reinforced and reflected back at us leaving no room for any opinion but our own. By doing this, we often convince ourselves that the majority of the world shares opinion and that anyone with another opinion is, obviously, wrong.

It is only when we go outside that comfort zone, and subject ourselves to the discomfort of considering thoughts we don’t agree with, that we can make an informed judgment on any matter. We can still disagree and maintain our opinions, but we can now do so knowing that the issue has been given consideration from all four sides. Or, if we truly give fair consideration to all points of view, we may need to swallow our pride and amend our original thoughts.

And, it is only by giving consideration to the thoughts of all persons, even those that disagree with us, that we can have an understanding as to what constitutes a majority.

• “I just want myself and my family to feel that our city is safe, and right now we don't feel that way.”

I have to admit, I am somewhat puzzled by this announcement. None of the demonstrators in this city have in any way exhibited any propensity for violence or indicated, even verbally, that they would harm anyone. I can understand how you may feel that your ideologies have been questioned but I am not aware of any occurrence that would give reason for someone to feel physically threatened.

• “I have a son who I have raised to respect police officers and other authority figures, but if he comes to me today and asks "Why are the police allowing this?" I wouldn't have a good answer.”

It is somewhat perplexing when children are injected into the conversation as an attempt to bolster a position or as an attempt to thwart the position of another. While this is not the type of conversation I ordinarily engage in, here are some thoughts you may find useful as you talk with your son.

First, it is laudable that you are teaching your son respect for the police and other authority figures. However, a better lesson might be that it is the government the police serve that should be respected. The police are merely a representative of a government formed by the people for the people—for all people. Being respectful of the government would mean being respectful of all persons, no matter what their views.

Later, it might be good to point out that the government needs to be, and is, somewhat flexible, especially in situations where there are minor violations of law. A government that had zero tolerance for even minor infractions would prove unworkable in short order.

Although this is unlikely, given your zero tolerance stance, suppose that, by accident or perhaps inattention, you found yourself going 40 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone and that you were stopped by a police officer. Then, after making assurances that licenses were in order and that there were no outstanding warrants, the officer asked you not to speed again and did not issue a citation, but merely sent you on your way.

As you have suggested, a question may come to you from the back seat, “How can I respect the police if they will not enforce the law?” In the event this does occur, here are some facts that might help you answer that question.

In the year 2013, our officers made over four hundred thousand vehicle stops, mostly for traffic violations. A citation was issued in only about one in six of those stops. Five of the six received warnings. This is the police exercising discretion for minor violations of the law. Few, if any, persons would argue that the police should have no discretion.

This is an explanation you might give your son. Take into account, however, that the innocence of children can produce the most profound and probing questions. They often see the world in a very clear and precise manner, their eyes unclouded by the biases life gives us. This could produce the next question. “If you believe that the police should enforce the law at all times, why didn’t you insist that the officer write you a ticket?”

I don’t have a suggestion as to how that should be answered.

I do know, however, that this is a very diverse city. Nashville, and all of America, will be even more diverse when your son becomes an adult. Certainly, tolerance, respect and consideration for the views of all persons would be valuable attributes for him to take into adulthood.

Steve Anderson
Chief of Police

Letter to the Editor in the Tenessean

Full Post on the Official Nashville website

Toni Morrison talks about race and racism on The Colbert Report 2014-11-19

“You have to know something about racism … There is no such thing as race. None. There’s just the human race. Scientifically, anthropologically, race is a construct, a social construct; and it has benefits. Money can be made off of it. People who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So it has a social function, racism. But race can only be defined as a human being.” — Toni Morrison, Interview on The Colbert Report, 2014-11-19.

Debian and systemd

A copy of Comment #42 on Distrowatch Weekly Issue 587, 2014-12-01

42 • Debian and systemd (by Ian on 2014-12-02 01:22:53 GMT from United States)
I'm not a DD (Debian Developer) but have been a sysadmin for a heterogeneous environment (Unix, Linux, and Windows) for a while now. I like Debian's Social Contract, DFSG, etc., and don't view it as a religion. I view it as freedom from vendor lock-in.

As someone else mentioned, Debian has been around for over 20 years now and is the upstream for a lot of the Linux ecosystem. Off the top of my head, Ted T'so (ext3/4 filesystem), Keith Packard (X.org, Wayland), Ben Hutchings (Linux 3.2 kernel branch maintainer), and a bunch of other people i'm probably forgetting are all Debian Developers.

As far as systemd goes, i'm researching CentOS 7 now as a baseline. I don't like the attitudes of some systemd advocates where someone is a "hater", or "greybeard afraid of change" because maybe they have a different use case and doesn't want to upset a production environment that's been in place for years as well as update local documentation and procedures to jump to something that's been barely around for four years. I also don't like the ad hominem attacks of some of the anti-systemd people.

Thoughts on war from the youngest known veteran (15) of D-Day

Thoughts on war from the youngest known veteran of D-Day

Pale Blue Dot

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." -- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi.

The Military Industrial Complex

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander during WWII.

Dwight D. Eisenhower exit speech on Jan. 17,1961 warning us of the military industrial complex