Dutch Muslims & Jews united together

[Razgovory]

Presumably you could also engage of the "extra" right of kosher slaughter.

Alas, no. They wouldn't allow it.

What about the US?  I did post an article that had a gentile Kosher butcher.

[Neil]

Presumably you could also engage of the "extra" right of kosher slaughter.

Alas, no. They wouldn't allow it.

What about the US?  I did post an article that had a gentile Kosher butcher.

The US doesn't pass laws because they hate Jews, or even Muslims.

[Queequeg]

Agreed.

You and Slargos do have a lot in common.

We don't like retards who follow bronze age customs in the 21st century. Yes.

3rd Century BC greece was bronze age

1) You probably meant to say 6th and 5th centuries BC. The Hellenistic was not the hayday for homosexuality in Greece.
2) The Bronze Age ended half a millenium before what you are thinking of. At least.

[Razgovory]

Agreed.

You and Slargos do have a lot in common.

We don't like retards who follow bronze age customs in the 21st century. Yes.

3rd Century BC greece was bronze age

1) You probably meant to say 6th and 5th centuries BC. The Hellenistic was not the hayday for homosexuality in Greece.
2) The Bronze Age ended half a millenium before what you are thinking of. At least.

I guess we should throw away, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid and the like.  Bunch of Bronze age savages.

[Martinus]

You are a tard.

[Razgovory]

Cause I know that BC doesn't stand for "Bronze age"?

[dps]

I still don't get this position. If the law is "baseless" enough to allow for exemptions, perhaps everyone should get those same exemptions. What's so exceptional about the halal slaughter ritual that if divorced from a religious context, it should be banned but allowed if it keeps the religious element?

I think that you (and possibly Berkut, based on some of his posts earlier in the thread) are operating off of a mistaken assumption.  In general, a government that has general police powers (which in the US, individual states do, but the Federal government, in theory, doesn't) don't have to have an compelling reason to enact laws.  They can do so just on the vague notion that it seems like a good idea, for completely trivial reasons, or even just on the whims of the legislators.  Consider that every state has an official state bird.  Is there any compelling reason that a state should have an official bird?  No, but that doesn't make such legislation invalid or unconstitutional.  The only time that a state has to demonstrate a compelling reason for a law is if it infringes on constitutionally protected freedoms--and even then only if it's challanged in court, in which case, if the courts, if they find that the state lacks a sufficiently compelling reason, will not allow the law to be enforced in a manner that violates a constitutionally protected right.  Assuming that neither you nor I are observant Jews, enforcing a law against slaughtering animals in the manner required by keeping kosher wouldn't infringe on our right to the free exercise of religion, so it would be enforceble against us, but not against an observant Jew (though we might be able to make a case under the equal protection clause).  In practice, legislatures will often right exemptions for certain groups into the legislation in the first place, just to avoid court fights over the issue.

[Razgovory]

Since cutting the throat of an animal with out electrocuting it or bashing it in the head is vile torture for bloodthirsty gods, I wonder what else is torture?  When I go fishing, am being a vile torturer?

[Slargos]

Since cutting the throat of an animal with out electrocuting it or bashing it in the head is vile torture for bloodthirsty gods, I wonder what else is torture?  When I go fishing, am being a vile torturer?

Your posting here is torture.

[grumbler]

I think that you (and possibly Berkut, based on some of his posts earlier in the thread) are operating off of a mistaken assumption.  In general, a government that has general police powers (which in the US, individual states do, but the Federal government, in theory, doesn't) don't have to have an compelling reason to enact laws.  They can do so just on the vague notion that it seems like a good idea, for completely trivial reasons, or even just on the whims of the legislators.  Consider that every state has an official state bird.  Is there any compelling reason that a state should have an official bird?  No, but that doesn't make such legislation invalid or unconstitutional.  The only time that a state has to demonstrate a compelling reason for a law is if it infringes on constitutionally protected freedoms--and even then only if it's challanged in court, in which case, if the courts, if they find that the state lacks a sufficiently compelling reason, will not allow the law to be enforced in a manner that violates a constitutionally protected right.  Assuming that neither you nor I are observant Jews, enforcing a law against slaughtering animals in the manner required by keeping kosher wouldn't infringe on our right to the free exercise of religion, so it would be enforceble against us, but not against an observant Jew (though we might be able to make a case under the equal protection clause).  In practice, legislatures will often right exemptions for certain groups into the legislation in the first place, just to avoid court fights over the issue.

  I haven't a clue as to what position you are actually taking here.

Governments have the powers given them by the people, in the US.  Laws which authorize compulsion (though not symbolic laws like ones designating state birds or commemorative days) must fall within the assigned powers of the government or they will be declared invalid by the courts.  This isn't a matter of constitutionally-protected freedoms; if any government from the town to the nation passed a law requiring everyone to wear red shirts or be thrown in jail, it would be stayed immediately, and not because the people subject to the law have a constitutionally-protected right to wear non-red shirts.  The government could order its employees to wear red shirts, though.  The reason it could do the latter and not the former is because the latter falls within its powers and the former does not.

I think you are, as someone said, "operating off of a mistaken assumption" if you think that governments can pass laws "just on the whims of the legislators."  That is theoretically true in Britain, perhaps, but not in the US.

[ulmont]

Governments have the powers given them by the people, in the US.  Laws which authorize compulsion (though not symbolic laws like ones designating state birds or commemorative days) must fall within the assigned powers of the government or they will be declared invalid by the courts.

You missed his point.  The US federal government, at least in theory, has to be able to point to a specific authorization for every law.  That is, it operates on a "what is not specifically permitted is forbidden" model.  The states have a generic police power to pass laws, so long as those laws don't conflict with the state constitution or the federal constitution.  That is, unless something is specifically forbidden, it is permitted.

[The Minsky Moment]

The argument that "well, yes, the method used (copied directly from halal regulations, because halal was naturally the focus of their studies) caused pain, but doing the exact same thing with a slightly longer blade sharpened in a slightly different manner would have completely different results" simply isn't logically tenable.  It may prove to be true, but it certainly isn't obviously true or even scientifically valid.  It is like arguing that we understand the reflectivity of light striking a surface at a 45 degree angle, but its behavior is completely different at 46

But the analogy doesn't hold because an expert in thte field raises several specific reasons why based on her extensive prior observations, there are good reasons to believe there may indeed be significant differences.  This can be only discounted by reversing the burden of proof. 

If your argument is that as a matter of public policy a study like this would be sufficient to support legislation (in the absence of other considerations like interference with free exercise) I would agree, because policy is often made based on evidence that is objectively weak or flawed from a scientific perspective.  But you seem to be making a stronger argument about this about the strength of this study's results as applied to a materially different context.

[Razgovory]

You at the office on the Sabbath?  tsk tsk.

[The Minsky Moment]

You at the office on the Sabbath?  tsk tsk.

Sun is down.

[Siege]

Do you ever worry that your Jew blood may be impairing your judgement? 

Not really.  After all, it's not blood that impairs judgement, but rather culture.

For once, you got something right.