Feminists give me PMS
Got a call from a Toronto Star reporter today, re: some story they're doing about some Jewish woman who's just written a book about "faith, feminism and multiculturalism" or somesuch, who is mad because women don't count as making up a minyan and blah blah blah zzzzzzzz.
I asked the reporter to email her questions to me, because I work in an open concept office and didn't want to yell a bunch of Human-Rights-Commission-actionable remarks over the phone. Here are her questions:
The question is this - when women's equality is enshrined in the charter etc., it's not a given in many religious institutions - women can't make up a minyon in some movements in Judaism, they can't lead Friday prayers in Islam, they can't be ordained in Catholicism etc. You say this is not a problem for you, it's a battle of an older generation...why is that? What should the balance be between gender rights and intercession of the state and freedom of worship? Should they be worked out by individual faith groups? Why does 5,000 years of religious tradition trump equality rights?
My reply follows. Please note that it was written in about 7 minutes, tops, over lunchhour, and it shows. Your criticisms of my grammar etc are most definitely not welcome. But you won't read much or any of this answer in the paper, so I thought you'd enjoy it regardless:
It's simply self-evident that 5000 year old Christian and Jewish beliefs should automatically trump a shabby, uninspired Trudeaupian document thrown together by a bunch of Marxist and semi-Marxist lawyers back in 1982. Or would be if our culture wasn't the embarrassing, subliterate mess it has become. (Since Islam, Buddhism and all other religions are false, man-made systems, their conformity to the Charter doesn't matter, unless that document can somehow be used to annoy and constrain radical Muslim terrorists, in which case I am all for it.)
Too many godless, stuck-up Frenchmen were involved for the Charter to be anything but a joke. It doesn't even recognize the right to private property, thanks to the interference of Ed Broadbent of the Ash Heap of History Party, to say nothing of rights to even basic self-defence.
(Although miraculously, our robed masters have discovered rights to baby killing and state sanctioned sodomy in this Charter, using their superior morality and mentality! We mere mortals can only prostrate ourselves before such Supreme beings...)
The Charter is merely a list of then-current Received Liberal Pieties and should have as much bearing on the average Canadian's life as a six-year-old Chinese takeout menu. If written today it would include a clause making the separation of paper and glass mandatory for all householders, every other Wednesday. I do my best to ignore the Charter and so should any thoughtful person.
This is so obvious to me that I have trouble explaining it. I expect to hear that some busybody will demand manditory helmet wearing at church next, should one of us happen to fall onto the marble floors. Or perhaps seat belts for the pews.
A woman who sees her religion through a brainwashed 21st century liberal Canadian multiculturalist feminist narcissist's eyes should take the advice of Jesus: "If your eye offends you, pluck it out." She is looking through the wrong end of the telescope entirely. A mature person attempts to conform themselves to the precepts of their faith, not the other way around. Or they leave and stop trying to impose their faddish notions on the rest of us. My only consolation is that one day all the old self-absorbed, spoiled hippies will be dead, and their campaign to remake God in their own image will eventually peter out.
Ironically these are the same illiterates who love chirping about 'the separation of church and state' a phrase that doesn't appear in the (truly inspired) US Constitution, Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence, let alone our pathetic little legalistic squib. They favour this (non-existent) separation when it suits them, but when it doesn't, they run to the Nanny State with their petty, selfish grievances.
There should be no interference by the State in matters of Christian or Jewish doctrine. These and other traditions need to work out these matters for themselves, unless as is so often the case with Muslims, they are busy slaughtering animals in an unsanitary fasion or cutting off bits of their daughters' genitalia, in which case the force of law should have its way (but rarely does in our multi-culti hell). Dissidents are welcome to join Reform Judaism or the United Church or any other McFaith that suits their estrogen-fuelled emotional bent of the week.