That means that the state should neither support or oppose the exercise of religion,
As a mental exercise, that's fine and can help clarify unexamined assumptions.
But none of it is applicable here. We aren't talking about public urination or human sacrifice or public nudity.
The rights of a supposedly free people are being threatened so that there might be some hypothetical gain for a subcategory of the people being impacted.
That hypothetical gain already exists and can be strengthened without bans on dress.
My advice would be to keep the state from exerting any power over people that isn't absolutely necessary. And guard that jealously.
My advice would be to keep the state from exerting any power over people that isn't absolutely necessary
As for polygamy, it's a legacy of biblical injunctions that doubles as good deal for women and their empowerment. It might not be strictly necessary, but it has its purposes.
Precisely. Whether you agree with its justification or not, public nudity is outlawed for a specific reason: to "protect" the public from so-called "indecency". Clearly that same reason does not apply to the wearing of burqas. So the issue of public nudity is really not relevant here.
What is relevant is finding a reason that justifies prohibiting the wearing of burqas. So far at least three have been brought up, with varying levels of explicitness:
Still, somehow I feel there are indecency criteria or an indecency threshold that indecent exposure does satisfy but burqas do not. I have to think about it more, but I believe that it has something to do with the intent of the behavior (or lack thereof). If I understand illegal public nudity correctly, it must involve an intention to shock, offend, titillate or "upset" others in some way. In other words, it involves a form of psychological aggression. I think there is a key difference with burqas there: while some people may wear burqas in order to offend, shock, upset, etc., I believe that for the vast majority, that is far from the case. People may be disturbed at the sight of burqas, but that is normally not the intention of the wearer. Wearing a burqa, I daresay, is not a form of psychological aggression. And for this reason, even if some people may find it "indecent", that indecency is in their (the viewers') head, not in the intent of the burqa-wearer, and so it is not a form indecency that should be made punishable by the law. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
It speaks volumes about the contempt and domination in which those women are held by their own community. Nudity, in contrast, does not diminish anyone, only the social stigma associated to it would make it so. That the indecency be not the intention of the Burqa-wearer only makes it worse: it is the intention of the community that forces them to become Burqa-wearer.
And it is not about religion -unless we are talking about a new religion. Islam was all over the world with not a Burqa in sight apart from Afghanistan until very recently.
It is, however, very much about the subjugation of women. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
