[DRAFT] Apostate Rights

Daarwyrth

It shows that I still have much to learn in WA affairs, thanks for telling me! 🙂

The suggestion is a good one and one that I had in mind initially, yet I agree that it would cause a lot of overlap with “Freedon of Religion”, hence why I thought this way might have been a workaround. As it turns out, that’s a nope.

I’ll likely table this proposal draft, as at the moment I don’t see a lot of possible pathways for it to take. Thanks for the feedback though!

Bananaistan

I disagree with VerdantHaven. It used to be the case that requirements would have to be explicitly stated to impact member states but that changed over the years, for example our old friend GAR#527 has section 3 which is a ban on employers doing stuff. There are other examples in existing resolutions too. The assumption is that if the WA says private organisations or individuals must or cannot do something, then member states must enforce this.

However, the category then becomes an issue. You’re not advancing freedom from government control over personal lives here so it can’t be civil rights.

Overall I support the idea.

Daarwyrth

Bananaistan

Ah yes, GAR #527, I think that one is even going to haunt me in my dreams xD on a serious note again, however…

I’ll keep working on this draft in that case, as taking into account what you said there is precedent for a resolution such as this. Yet I agree that in that in that case the category would be a bit of a problem.

I assume it could count as Moral Decency? As it essentially restricts the rights of religious leaderships and individual members of a religion.

Uan-aa-Boa

This is very strong and invasive, especially sections 3 and 5. As this stands, if someone decides they can’t be friends with someone who no longer shares their religion you’re literally making that person a criminal. You can’t apply such a law to religious individuals with such an inclusive protection from any and all negative consequences. It’s as though the US First Amendment not only meant the government can’t prosecute you for speaking freely, but also forbid any person from reacting negatively to what you decide to say. This is why GA#430 rightly focuses on state actors. It just doesn’t work.

I’m unsure about what this is trying to do. It seems to me that the ways that religious organisations and their members could react to an apostate are either already likely to be covered by national law on assault, harassment, slander etc or else deserving of protection by basic civil rights.

Out of curiosity, what’s the thinking behind this formal process of renouncing a religion? Why do apostates need a sort of unbaptism rather than just ceasing to participate in the religion as in real life? Does it mean that churches have to keep a record of members so that people can be removed from it?

Terrabod

Uan-aa-Boa

From personal experience - one of the things the citizen’s office asks you when you move to Germany (it’s compulsory to register your living address there) is whether you’re religious. This is because Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a compulsory religious tax (called “Kirchensteuer” - “church tax”) on their annual income that covers the respective church’s expenses. It’s actually quite steep (around 10% of your income tax on top of your income tax, which is already high).

A Catholic colleague of mine over there moved from the Philippines and declared himself as a Catholic when registering his address. After realising that he was being taxed for it (they don’t tell you they’re going to tax you at the time), and as he didn’t actually go to church in Germany, he decided he didn’t want to pay the tax and notified the state that he was no longer Catholic (that’s the only way to opt-out once you’ve told them you’re religious). He stopped having to pay the church tax, and afterwards to his surprise he received a certificate from the Catholic Church of Germany formally excommunicating him! He’s still Catholic, but just unofficially (in Germany, anyway).

So to get to the point, one reason formally renouncing your religion is important is for tax purposes - without that formal notification in Germany you keep paying Kirchensteuer even if you stop turning up to the Sunday service!

Daarwyrth

Uan-aa-Boa

Speaking from personal experience here as well: when you are baptised (Catholic in my case) you’re also formally registered as a member of the Catholic Church at the church that you were baptised. As long as you are registered in that registry (whether it is an old-fashioned book or electronic) you are formally a Catholic. At one point in my life, a few years ago, I had come to the conclusion that the Catholic church and its teachings were completely at odds with my personal convictions, and so I felt the need to separate myself from it. In other words, I wanted to commit apostasy (it sounds more dramatic than it is). It is a formal process within the Catholic church where you notify your parish, send a formal letter to the parish head, they try to talk you out of it bla bla bla, and if you maintain long enough that you want to commit apostasy, you get your way. You’re then formally removed from the registry at the church you were baptised, and huzzah, you’re formally an apostate.

Now, imagine that I lived in a more religious country, for example, a certain country in East Europe that’s introducing LGBTQ-exclusion zones. Catholicism in that country is very high, and especially the smaller towns can be very… devout when it comes to religious affairs. Had I committed apostasy in such a community, I might have faced consequences for that. Not from the state, but from the religious community. Think of societal exclusion, aggressive behaviour, verbal abuse, or even being harassed at home. Sadly, that has happened in Poland at times.

The intent of this resolution is to prevent that, so that every person can freely and without repercussion renounce their faith formally (either to ease their conscience or for practical purposes as Terrabod described). My intent was to create a sort of counterweight to Freedom of Religion, so that those who want to be free of religion can be. Yet not from state acts, those are prohibited by Freedom of Religion, but in this case from religious communities.

If some of the clauses are indeed strong and invasive, I can add wording about “harm” or “injury”, because if someone doesn’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t share a religion, they could do that with that wording (I think). Yet if I am honest, if someone doesn’t want to be friends with someone because they renounced their faith, I question the sincerity of that friendship in the first place 😛

Uan-aa-Boa

OK, you learn something every day. I was confirmed in the Church of England but I have no idea whether I’m on a list anywhere. It doesn’t have any practical consequences to make me think about it either way. So for these purposes I can see allowing someone to remove themselves from any register that exists, but maybe don’t require the creation of a register where there isn’t one already?

On the bigger point, it’s a big step from making requirements of organised bodies and making them of individuals. You can require that organisations don’t discriminate on the basis of race, for example, but you can’t easily legislate against individuals being racist. You can ban incitement and hate speech, but if a person goes through their day being nice to white people and a dick to everyone else then the law isn’t the best tool for dealing with that. Horrible though it must be for an apostate to be shunned by their former congregation I don’t see how you can prevent that and still respect the fundamental freedom to associate with others or not according to choice.

You could reword to harm or injury, but shouldn’t the WA assume that reasonable nations will already have laws that deal with harm and injury in general, whether they’re motivated by apostasy or not. Poland, for example, has those laws on the statute books, it just isn’t enforcing them in all cases. I’m not convinced I see a role for international law there.

I guess what I’m saying is that if people hate you because you’re an apostate you will unavoidably suffer negative consequences. Even if it were legally possible to make acting on that hatred actionable in some way, they still hate you. You can’t legislate away the social consequences of your choices.

Bananaistan

Are we looking at this from too much of a western POV?

Apostate rights in other parts of the world are a major issue.

Relating to the RCC. I believe that the option was never to have your name stricken from the baptismal record* at a particular church but rather to have a note entered beside it that you had left the church. As far as I am aware, the church no longer provides this option. The only way to leave the church is to be excommunicated. You could punch the pope for example to achieve this.

*Editing or deleting the historical record of the fact of someone’s baptism would be awful IMO. These are useful records that merely state that an event happened.

Daarwyrth

Bananaistan

I think we might be a little, yeah. The West is relatively secularised, but I can imagine it’s a much bigger issue to be an apostate in countries where there is religious law. That’s kind of what I hoped to target with this proposal, yeah.

And you’re totally right, it’s not about the name being stricken from the record, but a note added that you left the church. I must have confused the name being struck with something else, thanks for the correction! 🙂 and doesn’t it? Back when I formally requested that note to be added it seemed to be possible. Yet come to think of it, I never received a confirmation letter or anything, hmm…

Regarding what @Uan-aa-Boa said, I think it is a bit of a question of whether we are looking too much at Western POV here (though I could be wrong). An issue like this would be relevant to nations where Apostate rights would be a major issue due to a lack of such a right, or the existence of a religious law instead of a secular one. A person wanting to renounce their religion in such a country should receive protections akin to what I propose in this draft, but I am more than open to hear counter-arguments to this!

Uan-aa-Boa

Daarwyrth

If religious rather than secular law is in force then doesn’t GA#430 have it covered? I don’t think my point is specific to a Western POV because the right to decide how to treat other people should be universal. People in developing countries should be equally free to end friendships or give people the silent treatment on religious grounds.

We had a similar discussion on the honour violence vote recently. It basically just said that such violence had to be illegal, and didn’t engage with the fact that in Pakistan, Afghanistan etc it already is. The problem isn’t illegality but a cultural willingness to turn a blind eye while the law is broken. In a similar way, I think that in this case also the worst acts that are directed at apostates will in the overwhelming majority of countries be illegal because you’re not allowed to do that to anybody. If not, we’d be better proposing a WA wide ban on violence itself rather than just honour based violence or violence towards apostates.

I suppose it could be argued that the WA compliance system might encourage those nations where a blind eye is turned to tighten things up a bit in order to prevent international legal consequences, but then you’re (a) in strange territory with no real world precedent at all (b) basically creating a system where rich countries fine poor ones for not being as enlightened as they are, which isn’t a good look.

It’s hard to directly legislate on culture, and my feeling is that honour based violence and retribution against apostates both decline primarily through education and progress in society as a whole rather than through sending people to jail.

Daarwyrth

I’ve considered the feedback on this draft, and I made some changes to it in light of it. Hopefully Clause 3 will now be a little more limited as to what exactly is forbidden, and that Clause 7 will leave enough room for member states to protect the rights granted by this resolution proposal, yet not immediately have to send everyone to jail who so much as looks bad at an apostate 😛

I am eager to hear your comments and feedback!

Uan-aa-Boa

Daarwyrth

I hate to be overly negative but I think there’s a fundamental problem with the topic rather than the specifics of the draft.

Why should a political party, a chess club, the Freemasons and various other organisations be able to subject former members to some degree of reprisal, persecution or humiliation without breaking the law, but uniquely a church cannot? If a way of treating another person is sufficiently bad then shouldn’t it be illegal in general rather then legal for some people but illegal for others? Conversely, if a type of conduct doesn’t warrant be banned for everyone why should it be banned for a specific group of people? At its core this is itself a form of discrimination on the basis of religion, and while I don’t think a legal challenge would actually succeed it may well sail close to conflicting with GA#430.

Daarwyrth

Uan-aa-Boa

I do see your point, and if I am honest I would like to see a resolution that forbids other organisations along the lines that you mentioned to be restricted from the same as well. In this particular case, I was motivated to offer a counterbalance to GA #430 “Freedom of Religion” that protects people that have renounced their religion. I may of course be mistaken, but I feel that in such cases there is a greater threat of punishment, reprisal etc. etc., especially if you look at how cults can be vindictive towards members leaving its ranks, or a highly religious state having a society that inflicts those things on an apostate or someone contemplating such.

I agree, it does limit the freedoms of religious people, yet I feel that the limitation is for a good cause. An apostate should have the freedom and ability to renounce their faith in peace, without having to fear any reprisal or punishment from anyone. GAR #430 protects apostates from state actions against them, I’d hope for this resolution to protect them from actions from the religious communities 🙂