July 18, 2007
Religion Department
Whose Freedom of Religion?
Members of the religious right sometimes complain that Christians like themselves are losing their religious freedom. In my experience, those complaining loudest are all too often deploring the loss of "rights" such as the right to have government-paid teachers force children to recite prayers, or the right to force everyone else in the country to use the same definition of marriage that they do.
Here's what the real thing looks like, and not from one of those crazy Muslim countries, but from the United Kingdom:
A teenager has lost her High Court challenge to be allowed to wear a Christian "purity ring" to school.
Lydia Playfoot, 16, claimed the ban imposed by the Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, was an "unlawful interference" with her right to express her faith.
But lawyers for the school successfully argued that the purity ring was not an essential part of the Christian religion and contravened the school's uniform policy.
Who cares if the purity ring is "not an essential part of the Christian religion"? All that matters is that the purity ring is an essential part of Lydia Playfoot's religion. We don't have freedom of religion for the benefit of religion. We have freedom of religion for the benefit of religious people.
(Hat tip: Kip)
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Hi Mark.
There's more to this, according to the British civil liberties blog Ministry of Truth. Their latest summary of posts on the subject is here.
The girl's parents run a not-for-profit business that sells and promotes chastity rings. They've questionable allies, too.
She also left the school before bringing her court case.
Apparently, the ring only became an issue after several other students took to wearing them. If school officials and parents don't want groups proselytizing to their children, or fads and fashions accepted as uniform, they've some right to regulate such activity, even if it's less than a private institution.
Schools in Britain are apparently traditionally very wary of jewelery, ostensibly for health and safety reasons, but perhaps more likely they don't won't the hassle of parents complaining about lost/stolen items. It's a bit of a murky policy.
That is an interesting twist on things. It doesn't change my point about who religious freedom belongs to, but it does raise some doubts about the facts of this particular case.