Niqabs Again

There was a Supreme Court ruling on September 15 overturning the law banning niqabs at citizenship ceremonies. I’ve been procrastinating on this for a while, and… wait, what’s that? I already wrote about niqabs? And it’s all still relevant?

Well, that makes it easy.

So my stance for the last few years has been that I want to be on the side that isn’t telling women what they have to wear. I’m still pretty happy with this stance. As luck would have it, it turns out that Tom Mulcair seems to agree with me:

"No one has the right to tell a woman what she must — or must not — wear."

It’s nice to know that I’m in good company. Or rather, that Mulcair is in good company, because I already knew that I was right.

As with all other forms of religious accommodation, I think this should be applied across the board. That if people can cover their faces for religious reasons, they should be able to cover their faces because they are cold, or they have bad zits that day, or without bothering to give a reason at all.

If I wasn’t a citizen already, I’d show up wearing a ski mask and one of those Mulcair Beard face covering things. Just to see if I could get away with it.

It’s possible to imagine a situation where some rights could only be extended to a few people. Like in National Parks… a few people leaving the trails does negligible damage, but a hundred thousand people leaving the trails is catastrophic, so those areas are limited to parks staff. It makes sense in contexts like that. The best example of this with religious accommodations is for holidays. It’s relatively easy to give people time off for their religious holidays if they are in a minority religion, but gets increasingly difficult as that religion gets more adherents.

In contrast, sometimes the compromises made for the religious accommodation can make it something that can be made available for everyone. Like with the Kirpan case. The government argued - and I disagree with this, but will accept the premise for the sake of argument - that it wasn’t safe to have knives in school. Sikh boys are required to carry ceremonial knives. So the compromise was that they can now carry dull knives, securely strapped into the holsters. Well, once you’ve made those changes, it’s no longer unsafe to let everyone do that. At least, not unless you plan to ban metal rulers and sturdy pens as well.

But neither of these applies in this case. Citizenship will not be harmed if a majority covers their faces, or even if everyone does so. That is because the work of becoming a citizen is all done in advance of the oath. The citizenship ceremony is meaningless in itself. In fact, if I were setting it up, I’d make it like a graduation ceremony: Those who can’t or won’t attend will get their citizenship card in the mail.

Politics in the Internet Age: The Totals So Far

I wrote last month about candidates being worth to withdraw due to internet comments, and today I wondered just how much it’s been happening. I couldn’t find this list anywhere on the internet, so I had to actually research it. Legitimate journalism! So here are all the withdrawn candidates I could find, including both social media gaffes and otherwise.

May 12 - Chris Lloyd - Conservative - Just running as an art project

June 20 - Ray Fox - Liberal - Facebook - Racism, sexism

August 7 - Buddy Ford - Conservative - Pot charges

August 7 - Augustin Ali Kotoko - Conservative - Actually an NDP supporter

August 10 - Morgan Wheeldon - NDP - Facebook - Israel

August 18 - Ala Buzreba - Liberal - Twitter - Lots of profane stuff

August 21 - Gilles Guibord - Conservative - Comments Sections - Racism, Sexism

September 7 - Tim Dutaud - Conservative - Youtube - Crank Calls, Ableism

September 7 - Jerry Bance - Conservative - CBC News - Pissed in a Mug

September 10 - Joy Davies - Liberal - Facebook - Marijuana

September 15 - Blair Dale - Conservative - Racism, Sexism

September 16 - Chris Austin - Liberal - Jian Ghomeshi comments

September 22 - Louis Robicaud - Conservative - Unknown

September 24 - Stefan Jonasson - NDP - Israel Comments

The score right now: Conservatives 8, Liberal 4, NDP 2. I think the list is comprehensive up to September 16… it’s mostly based on this list, with three additions from early in the campaign and two additions from this week. There might have been more this week, I’m not sure.

The nominations will be finalized on September 28. I wonder what will happen after that? It seems likely that anything unearthed by opposition researchers has been hoarded, so that candidates can be targeted when they no longer have the chance to withdraw. It will be interesting to see what people have come up with… I wonder if there are any candidates left without embarrassing things somewhere in their pasts?

Certainly most of the candidates won’t have criminal charges, won’t have made national TV pissing in a mug, and won’t secretly be members of some other party. Unlike Ala Buzreba, most of them will have gone through adolescence long before the ubiquity of social media. And yet, I suspect we have only seen a fraction of the mud that will get slung around after next Monday.

The Inevitable Kim Davis Post

I just realized while going over my financial records that I’ve worked 120 hours in the last 12 days… so maybe I shouldn’t feel too guilty about letting the blog lapse a little. There really aren’t any consequences for doing so… except now and then a missed opportunity to say “I told you so”.

One of the bigger pieces of political news last week was a county clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis, who is refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Her office is an elected one, so she can’t simply be dismissed for failing to do her job… she has to resign or be impeached. Impeachment is very unlikely given the current state of the Kentucky state legislature.

After weeks of impasse a solution was found… a court order was given requiring her to issue the licenses, and when she breached it she was jailed for contempt of court. Reportedly this was chosen over a fine because her supporters would have paid any fine she incurred, leaving it ineffective as a punishment.

I have no doubt that would be the case, there seems to be an unlimited pool of money in the US for reactionary conservatives who commit all sorts of crimes, high or petty, everything from gunning down children in the streets to refusing to sell flowers to a wedding. There’s little doubt a fine would have been meaningless to her, unless it was the sort of grossly unreasonably fine that would bankrupt small countries.

Had I staked out a claim at the time I would have recommended a fine anyway. I’m not what you could call a “Carceral Liberal”, I don’t like prison generally. I don’t recommend it for any cases except where the criminal is a danger to the public. But it’s especially bad in this case. It fires up that wingnut welfare machine, guaranteeing that when she’s released (which has already happened) Kim Davis walks away with wealth and fame and no lasting consequences.

A far better approach, I think, would have been an escalating fine. Start it out small… a few day’s pay for her first day not working, perhaps. Then double it for the second day. Double it again for the third day. If the wingnut welfare comes, let it come! I’m sure Kentucky can find a use for vast hoards of ill-gotten treasure.

The only downside I can see is the delay. Jailing Davis, however temporarily, allowed weddings to proceed unobstructed for the last week. If she refuses again, and is jailed again, they will presumably continue again this week. My escalating fine scenario would have resulted in a delay… not much of one, geometric progression being pretty fast, but some. This might have had lasting consequences, such as happened when the when a US soldier with breast cancer died while her prospective marriage was being appealed. But in such cases I think all those fines could be used to transport people to the next county over.

Anyway, she’s out now, and apparently none the worse for wear. She now has throngs of followers. The Republican presidential candidates are falling over themselves to praise her. She has vowed to continue defying the court order, so she’ll probably go back to jail sometime this week. And nobody will be safer or better off for it, leaving only the cold comfort of the schadenfreude.

I do wish I’d staked out this position in advance. But by waiting, I did manage to avoid a couple pitfalls… there was a tweet from someone pretending to be Kim Davis, comparing her to Rosa Parks. Lots of excellent rebuttals of that, but since Davis never actually said that they were all a little misplaced.

And the slut shaming… oy, the slut shaming. Libby Anne, who I’m not sure I’ve ever disagreed with about anything, dealt with that nicely. Pretty much all I can say about it is this: Come on now, we should be better than that.