Osservatorio Cardinale Van Thuan– Newsletter n.450 2013, 28,10Stefano Fontana
The recent turn of events in France is calling into question the moderate version of laicity proposed, for example, by the philosopher Charles Taylor. Mayors in France can not exercise conscientious objection on either religious or philosophical grounds with respect to marriages between homosexuals: the current law does not permit this.
In the face of such positions, which are expected to become increasingly widespread, it is necessary to rethink freedom of conscience and religion far above and beyond the moderate and enlightened version recently proposed by Charles Taylor in the book “La scommessa del laico” (Laterza, Roma-Bari 2013) co-authored with Jocelyn Maclure.
According to Taylor, a modern State must maintain neutrality with respect to religious or philosophical frames of reference. Nonetheless, it may not remain neutral with respect to the commitment to guarantee equality of treatment to all citizens, as well as respect for their moral and religious choices. Were it not to do so, it would be unable to guarantee civic co-existence.
Therefore, the State must not become a defender of secularisation, fighting against religion.
It is necessary to take flight from the temptation to turn laicity into a secular equivalent of religion, replacing religion with a secular moral philosophy and turning laicity into a sort of civic religion as is happening in France according to Taylor. On the contrary, it is necessary to travel the pathway of reasonable accommodations.
If Sunday and neither Friday nor Saturday are holidays according to the calendar, if Kosher food is not served in school cafeterias as Jewish tradition would like it to be, and if a teacher cannot wear the burka in the classroom and a policeman cannot wear a turban while on duty, it suffices to contemplate exceptions, reasonable accommodations, and everything works out.
Certainly, it will be necessary to grant these exceptions not only on religious grounds, but on secular grounds as well. A vegetarian, whether at school or in prison, has a right to vegetarian food, and a practicing Jew has a right to stay home from work on Saturday in order to attend to his religious duties.
Now, the recent French provisions regarding conscientious objection on the part of mayors seriously undermine this moderate version for a number of reasons.
Here’s the first one. If we accept Taylor’s proposal, each and every reference framework would have the right to respect and protection on the part of the State, the public authorities. If the criterion, as Taylor argues, is solely the conscientious adhesion of those who espouse the reference framework, then paedophiles, pornographers and even Mafiosi would have a right to protection on the part of the State. In other words, opening up would be a nigh unto infinite proliferation of requests for respective reference frameworks to be protected.
In fact, the distinction between individual preferences – tastes, desires – and moral and existential reference frameworks is very thin. If a person is a ‘vegan’, is it nothing more than a subjective preference or is it a vision of life? If someone expects to do his job as a policemen with a beard and a turban because he is a Sikh, why couldn’t someone else ask to do so with his hair combed in a colourful crest and adorned with nose piercing?
Moreover, reasonable accommodations may be applied when it is simply a matter of wearing a religions symbol in an office or a place open to the general public, but how would it be possible to do so with respect to abortion or gay marriage? Here as well interested parties could appeal to reference frameworks that deserve the respect of State protection. When issues of natural law emerge, any and all reasonable accommodations lose any substance whatsoever, because admitting them would no longer be reasonable. And if admitted are rights to unreasonable accommodations it then becomes necessary to admit them all in order to be consistent.
This is the core point: when is an accommodation reasonable and when isn’t it? If the State were not considered indifferent to reference frameworks issuing forth from natural law, the criterion would be clear. A Sikh policemen wearing a turban, yes; a Jew staying at home on Saturday, yes; a Muslim adolescent wearing a veil at school, yes; but a matrimony between two homosexuals, no. What happens, however, is exactly the absurd opposite: girls cannot wear a veil to school and homosexual matrimony is admitted in France.
Taylor’s moderate version is not able to hold its own and inevitably equality of treatment slips and slides towards the radical French-style solution. Without a criterion, which could be natural law, the only way any accommodation may be understood is in terms of majority and minority. In that case the majority could claim it had the right to grant no accommodations at all, as is happening in France with the conscientious objection of mayors. This as well could be a reference framework and vision of life, and not just a preference or a desire.
