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The Forum > General Discussion > Would you support an Office of Religious Freedom in Australia, like the Canadian one?

Would you support an Office of Religious Freedom in Australia, like the Canadian one?

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Canada created an Office of Religious Freedom last year.

Should Australia create an Office of Religious Freedom to help protect religious people around the World and give religious people in Australia somewhere to go if they feel persecuted for their beliefs? Just asking...
Posted by progressive pat, Friday, 10 February 2012 9:37:27 AM
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Pat I've not looked at what the Canadian model is like so comments are not based on specific details.

Generally not overly keen to have yet another "Office of " entity, they seem to have a way of become the problem rather than part of the solution. Eg "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy":

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

Secondly freedom from religion should be part of any such protection.

Would people of faith accept having the same limitations placed on their own views and actions? For a humerous take on this see the classic John Safron vs God episode where he goes door knocking athiest views in Salt Lake City http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U58wgn-9Y3c

Eg anybody who subscribes to a faith that proclaims that I'm deserving of some punishment for not-being part of their faith has pretty much in my view renounced any protections for their feelings about their faith.

Part of the problem with those sort of programs is some people and groups have a tendancy to try and use them to silence critics while not being so silent themselves.

My gut feel is that such an office would create far more grief than it solved.

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Friday, 10 February 2012 11:26:36 AM
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The ORF in Canada is designed so that everyone is free to follow their conscience, atheists as well. It's basically there to protect the separation of church and state. It could be called the Office for the Freedom of Conscience, I suppose. With the size of government growing ever larger, this Office may be a necessary evil.

"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.” - Thomas Jefferson.
Posted by progressive pat, Friday, 10 February 2012 12:11:38 PM
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I'm with RObert on this: an obvious danger would be if such an 'Office' degenerated into a devise for the protection of religions, and from that position, into a means for religious authorities to discipline their own members, regardless of the rule of law and the rights to which all citizens are entitled.

And from there to a demand for different laws for different believers.

Church and state should be kept completely separate. It is not the business of the state to protect any religion from the realities of life in a blooming, buzzing democracy.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 10 February 2012 12:51:05 PM
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One religion is not compatible with another as it is, without putting them in the same office. I think religion is best kept in a bottle behind the door. Religious people have their churches what would they want one at work for.
Posted by 579, Friday, 10 February 2012 12:55:39 PM
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@ Loudmouth,

So, even if Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states that

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance"

You still wouldn't object if a law directly infringed upon someone's right to freedom of religion? And if its not "the business of the State" to stop religious persecution from happening in a society, as you say, whose role is it to protect the religious?
Posted by progressive pat, Friday, 10 February 2012 1:32:40 PM
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