Yoga will be allowed again in Alabama schools, but parents must sign a permission slip acknowledging “I understand that yoga is part of the Hinduism religion.” https://t.co/awrdiQBsve
— Slate (@Slate) May 23, 2021
Yoga will be allowed again in Alabama schools, but parents must sign a permission slip acknowledging “I understand that yoga is part of the Hinduism religion.” https://t.co/awrdiQBsve
— Slate (@Slate) May 23, 2021
18 comments:
Quebec has recently passed a bill prohibiting public workers (including teachers) from displaying religious symbols. This is seen as abhorrent to the majority of Canada outside of Quebec - after all, freedom of religion is protected by our constitution.
The reason for the disparity may be a result of Quebec's strict secularism - itself a reaction to Catholic influence over most aspects of Quebec life prior to the 1960s. In that context, it may be easier to understand.
In Ontario, there are rules requiring accommodations for religious practices, but that prohibit any form of religious indoctrination or the sanctioning or endorsing of one religion over the other.
My kids were taught Yoga and meditation techniques in kindergarten, but I'm certain the teachers were careful to ensure it wasn't perceived as a religious exercise. Even still, I can find a case where a parent asked for her children to be excused from the activities on religious grounds.
The new Alabama rules seem roughly equivalent to the current Ontario rules, which don't offend me in the least.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga
Various religious links with Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and various pre-Veldic beliefs.
I can see why yoga might be seen as contravening the US separation between religion and education.
It does strike me as amusing that the same people wanting to ban yoga are the same people trying to add intelligent design to biology lessons.
Perhaps their objection to yoga is not that it is religious but that it is not their religion.
Most yoga today is simply a form of excercise. At most it may include a couple of foreign words for the positions, but it has nothing to do with religion. The new law is very careful about what is allowed:
(3) All instruction in yoga shall be limited exclusively to poses, exercises, and stretching techniques.
(4) All poses shall be limited exclusively to sitting, standing, reclining, twisting, and balancing.
(5) All poses, exercises, and stretching techniques shall have exclusively English descriptive names.
People have different bits of knowledge. Some people don't share David's knowledge that most yoga today is simply a form of exercise with no religious content. That doesn't make these people stupid.
Cheers
DiC, if they make laws they are supposed to find out the facts first, otherwise they are stupid, or at least incompetent.
Partly off topic:
Trump Derangement Syndrome makes people ridiculously stupid. When Trump was President, he said Covid might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, and called it the "Chinese virus". His enemies mocked him. Now that he's out of office, they now accept the possibility that Covid might have escaped from a Chinese lab. TDS made Trump's critics stupid.
Cheers
Hi DiC,
Do you have a citation for Trump getting mocked for saying Covid might have escaped from a Chinese lab? I hadn't heard that one.
Layzej - Here are some
"Archived fact-check: Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab"
https://www.politifact.com/li-meng-yan-fact-check/
"How the Liberal Media Dismissed the Lab-Leak Theory and Smeared Its Supporters" https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/lab-leak-liberal-media-theory-china-wuhan-lab-cotton-trump.html
"How Distrust of Donald Trump Muddled the COVID-19 'Lab Leak' Debate"
https://time.com/6051414/donald-trump-wuhan-laboratory-leak/
"Meanwhile, in some right-wing news outlets and on social media, a dangerous conspiracy theory about the origin of the health crisis won’t die."
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/21156607/how-did-the-coronavirus-get-started-china-wuhan-lab
If you put 'debunked" and "covid" into google, you can get more like this.
Cheers
What was Trump’s evidence? Or was he just lucky? What’s the point of calling it the Chinese virus, giving all the subsequent attacks on US Asian Americans? Trump is partly responsible for those attacks. Labeling it the Chinese virus was pure bigotry, very typical of his stupidity and prejudice.
David - It didn't take that much intelligence to suspect the Wuhan lab. Trump knew that
-- the disease originated in Wuhan
-- the Chinese have a laboratory in Wuhan that creates new viruses
-- Chinese are often careless about safety.
These three facts made an accidental release from the Wuhan lab plausible.
The amazing and sad thing is that many people were convinced that the Wuhan lab theory had been debunked and that there was something wrong with anyone who considered that theory to be plausible. How in the world did that myth become conventional wisdom?
It's normal to name diseases after geographic locations. E.g., Spanish flu, Lyme Disease, Ebola, Zika, West Nile virus. In the case of Covid there's extra reason to name China, since they deserve a lot of blame. Hiding information. Probably creating the disease and then releasing it due to carelessness.
Most of the attacks on Asian Americans were perpetrated by black Americans. Trump is not a hero to most black. Therefore, I don't believe that his use of the term "China virus" is the reason for the attacks. I have never seen evidence of an attacker saying that Trump's language motivated his attack. Have you?
cheers
David, "suspecting" it's a lab doesn't prove it's the lab.
Plausible isn't proof.
Surely you understand that.
And so what if the virus did leak from that lab.
So what???
The 1918 pandemic probably started in a US Army camp in Kansas. Killed 100 million. Who was ethically culpable for that?
The fact remains that Trump did an awful job of handling the virus in the US, and hundreds of thousands of Americans needlessly died as a result. His approach was often times comical, which meant it was tragic. There is no escaping that, no matter where the virus came from. Nothing says a President is absolved of responsibility if this and not that. Trump was a huge failure and far too many people died, and he clearly didn't give a shit about them.
It's normal to name diseases after geographic locations. E.g., Spanish flu, Lyme Disease, Ebola, Zika, West Nile virus. In the case of Covid there's extra reason to name China, since they deserve a lot of blame
The Spanish flu didn't originate in Spain.
Learn some history.
And we know better now. Tell an Asian American family who had a relative whose head was beat in with a hammer that it's "normal" to call the virus the "Kung flu."
David in Cal wrote:
Most of the attacks on Asian Americans were perpetrated by black Americans.
You fucking racist piece of shit.
That's enough David. You're done here. You've finally shown what you are, which is what we've all suspected all along -- a miserable Republican conservative racist.
Go away and don't come back. You're not welcome on my blog. Your future comments will be marked as spam as soon as I see them, so that the blogger platform learns about you. Then I will delete your comments as soon as possible.
I checked a few of the sources. None of them mock Trump for saying Covid might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory.
The first one is about a Hong Kong virologist who claimed the "Chinese government created the coronavirus in a Wuhan lab and released it intentionally". They cite research that suggests otherwise, but note "That doesn’t rule out the possibility that Chinese researchers were studying the virus in a lab when it managed to spread outside the lab."
I'm not sure who's right there, but if Trump had said Covid might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, then the politifact fact check had entirely endorsed Trump's views!
Putting aside DiC's racism...
One of the frustrating aspects of the "lab-leak hypothesis" discourse is that it mangles together a bunch of very different versions:
* A naturally evolved virus strain was being studied in a lab and escaped due to carelessness;
* A genetically engineered virus was being studied in a lab and escaped due to carelessness;
* A genetically engineered virus was produced as a bioweapon and was deliberately released;
etc.
Lumping them all together as a "lab-leak hypothesis" fails to distinguish between plausible vs insane ideas. It also blurs the distinction between people who are simply discussing objective reality and people who want to spread anti-China conspiracy theories.
One consequence of this is that people who made the relatively far-out versions of the "lab leak" claim (bioweapon released deliberately!) will dishonestly claim vindication when experts acknowledge the possibility of a natural virus escaping from a research lab where it was being studied.
Post a Comment