We previously discussed the decision of Harvard to create a women-only hours at the college gym. It appears now that McGill University, an equally world-class academic institution in Montreal, is being asked to offer the same accommodation to female students who do not want to work out around males. student Soumia Allalou, 23, insists that women should not be forced to at a gym with male students. However, others raise the question of gender discrimination in barring male students solely due to their sex rather than their conduct. Allalou is a Muslim and wears a hair covering.
She notes that the school pool has special hours for women after a female student brought forward similar concerns. However, it would seem worthy of a debate about that accommodation as well as the new requested accommodation. These hours are set aside only for women while men have no such accommodation. Even it is were enforced as a separate but equal program with both male and female exclusive hours, there would remain the question of the wisdom of gender discriminatory rules.
The student union is working with Allalou to present the matter to a vote. Claire Stewart-Kanigan, the student union’s vice-president of university affairs insists “There has been backlash saying that women should just get over it and feel comfortable around men, regardless of religious or personal reasons that lead them to feel uncomfortable. But when we are talking about religious freedom, it’s not a question of asking someone to get over it. That is asking them to give up tenets of their religious practice, which is not something that we should be standing for at McGill.”
That is certainly one perspective. A different perspective is that the university is based on notions of equality and that students who insist on racial or gender or religious exclusion are not required to use such facilities as the gymnasium.
What do you think?
Islam is supremacist to the extreme – according to their doctrine, non-Muslims are to be converted to Islam, killed, or must submit under “dhimmi” rules of subjugation. Additionally, there are in Islam the tenets of “tayseer” and “darura” (ease and necessity), which allow for Muslims to break their own rules when it is impossible or inconvenient to follow them. Therefore, there is no compelling reason to change our rules and, given the history of incremental Islamization of formerly compassionate cultures, there is every reason not to bend one iota to Islam. Looked at another way, by refusing to yield to Islam, we are standing up for its victims, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
old nurse
Or religions, separating facilities based on gender is still, in our prurient society a viable alternative to the awkwardness that results. Municipal facilities are separated for age/capability: seniors, kids, athletics, etc. The problem is found when any religious group attempts to determine public facilities based on the peculiarities of their faith. We see this now most visibly with Islam but it can be found in areas where other religions’ extreme ends dominate. This is the line in the sand. It should not be crossed over. Our society is based on all, the ‘everyman’, not those who parade their beliefs incessantly, demanding to be recognized by others who don’t give a dam. The only determining factor should be that which applies to all.
old nurse – thought you would like this. The evolutionary tree is now a lollipop.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2982564/Tree-life-rewritten-Evolutionary-timeline-looks-like-giant-lollipop-reveals-new-species-appear-2-million-years.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
Why so we have to complicate things so much by making everything political.
Have a couple of hours each day for women only work outs and a couple of hours each day for men only work outs. And the rest of the time co-ed.
Make it not about politics, discrimination, or blasted rights. Make it instead about recognizing that we all have different preferences. Everybody wins.
The one reason that I’m sure that evolution exists is because humans are clearly only halfway up the evolutionary tree.
old nurse – you are presupposing the evolutionary tree has a top.
http://youtu.be/Gu1ZxHEVcQo
Sometimes they circle to the right, sometimes to the left, watch them go round and round. Puppy circuitry, just as in life.
happy
Laws don’t change as society evolves? hmmmm Elliptically circuitous perhaps, equals change yet foundation. Moral relativism, pick up a history book.
Issac
I find that interesting that you would say that. I did not know what it would take to engage you. I was referring to “The Mad Hatters Tea Party” when I was listening to you ignore Ari’s great idea about insurance.” Not Jabberwockey but whatever.
😉
Since you don’t like religion, let’s just use it as a useful myth okay, because that is surely what it is intended for, to teach lessons to people.
The God of people, the Authority Figure, told them the only thing they had to do was to not eat from the tree of Knowledge. Well the serpent tempted Eve the Woman who talked Adam into it because then they could know as much as God. Well, who wouldn’t
So the big bad God came back and banished them to the land of Nod as they were naked and ashamed.
Huh, interesting. Sounds just like people. Sure does. Which is why the founders said they believed God was a more fundamental principle,
Locke said Plato said they all said:Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself; though he has stamped no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his being; yet having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath not left himself without witness:
God is unseen.
So, why should we keep mixing up history? We still are having problems world wide with subjugation of people. Nothing has changed.
Don’t you understand that I am just trying to point out that people are the ones that need to change before the laws do. And they haven’t Not one bit.
david
If ever there were examples of lemmings, followers of this or that religion can not be out done.
‘Right’ things, that’s been apparent for some time
Jabberwocky
BY LEWIS CARROLL
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Paul C. Schule
The last time Issac said something about Law being Universal he was talking about Man creating God or some other Moral Relativism like that. I was arguing with him and he was ignoring me probably because I am just dumb little pappies you know? Unfortunately, I remember every thing that he said and it was circuitous and was about how the laws changed as society “evolved” and man “evolved” I am sure David remembers because he was arguing with him.
I have come to the conclusion that he has the mentality of Lewis Carroll so whatever, You know>>
Paul
Most enlightened Western countries, the US and Canada included are based on the rule of law. The rest is patina and BS. The search for truth, law, justice, on the basis of universal equality is exactly that by any name or piece of paper one wishes to wave in the air, cherry picking bushwhacking aside. What else ya got. Ya haven’t said much.
issac – when you say the right things you don’t have to say much. 😉
davidm
Freedom from religion means that the basic tenet of equality shall not be perverted by those of one religious sect vis a vis another. That is to say that those aspects of society that should be open to all irrespective of religion should be held above and beyond the demands or constraints of any particular religion. Regardless of what someone said over two hundred years ago, times change, and society is evolving towards the basic truths without the guidance and/or restrictions of religion. Thank god. Do some valid research without cherry picking. Many if not all of the founding fathers, the authors of the Constitution would have some serious problems if they were transported to this time and place. “What I can’t bone my slave when I’ve a mind to?” “Are you kidding me, a n*#*@# on the Supreme Court, the President, etc……”
Mothers and fathers, lock up your daughters or build a segregated pool.
issac – cheap talk from someone whose mother country has a solitary religion named after the country. Does the Church of England ring any bells? 😉
issac, those who do not learn from history are doomed to make the mistakes of history. Your evolution of society that is heading off a cliff and a lot of lemmings are following you.