CMV: Laws with religious justification are functionally equivalent to forcing others to follow your religion

I have noted that society (as a general rule; this may not apply to you specifically) often accepts religious justifications for proposed laws, which strikes me as completely anathema to the separation of church and state. You have a very uninformed view of it is law and of political theory. I'll explain why. What is law? Jurisprudence says that law is a normative order who has the goal of creating norms that normalize and influence human conduct by valuing what that society sees as it's cultural representation. Now, the religious folk that is reading my post is probably wondering how much different is religion from law, since what I said pretty much applies to any religion. This is where jurisprudence starts to kick in:

What's the difference between law and religion? Religion is a type of law. You have codes, you have rules, values, principles, an hierarchy of sources of law, etc. For centuries, law was religion, and vice-versa. Canonical law was a thing until the XV for most countries. You have to understand that the biggest reason why secular law was ever created was to empower the political power of each country in Europe. You had universities all over Europe creating a thing called common law, that was a law conceived to empower kings and overthrow the massive tentacles of power that the Papal state had all over Europe through Canonical law. This goes by saying that there's no difference between them,except if you're a voluntary positivist - someone who views law as something that only can come from the political power -, or you view coercivity as something necessary to a normative order.

Yeah, ok. But what does that have to do with what I said? Reasons:

1.Because for a long time jurisprudence had a naturalist view on law - they viewed law and morality as twins, law had to be moral. This is because of religion - since religion was the law. The moment started losing ground you had movements like rationalist law and positivism which separated morality and law. The moment positivism dethroned naturalism law was separated from morality and this led to many evil doings. The growth of totalitarian and authoritarian states is the common example used. These states used and abused positivism because everything they legislated was law. Back in the days when naturalism was alive and well a king couldn't legislate an unjust law, or it would be void. Why? Because of morality. And what is morality in law? Christian and Roman values, not principles, values (At least, in Portugal. Our legal family is Roman-Germanic, but you're american your legal family is Anglo-Saxon with all that common law stuff). So basically, people in law praise values or religion because it's basically norms that were used for centuries and they worked. (It boils down to: if it's not broken, don't fix it). Oh, and nowadays the legal scientific community is trying to implant a neo-naturalism since positivism isn't doable since it leds to societies that are amoral.

2.The separation of State and Church doesn't mean that church should ostracized. The separation of State and Church means that the church loses all it's influence on the state in terms of being juridically relevant. Many countries have this republican value, but they still have some Canonical laws. For example, for marriage. In some countries, if you marry through the church, you'll subject yourself to canonical law. This means you won't be allowed to get a divorce approved by the church - you can get one from the state though. But back to the separation: this just means that the state is secular and that it's law is secular. That's it. A religious citizen can always suggest a law that has a religious basis. Take a close look at this example: someone that follows the teachings of Jesus (Jesus' morality - I can't call it Christianity and I hope you understand why) and starts law declaring that gay marriage legal. Should the law be void since it has a religious reason?

I find this galling, because it seems tantamount, to me, to state endorsed religion. As an example that is less immediate to our culture, imagine if you lived in a society that said "Oh, you don't have to be a Muslim! Of course not, we're not a theocracy. However, you do have to bow to Mecca 5 times a day, you cannot eat pork, your wife must wear a hijab, and so forth." How is that different from the cult that the State has been subjected to? As I said secular law and canonical law aren't that different in this case. You're still subjected to other juridical norms that most might not like. I'll assume you're an American, by the way:

You don't have to be a grade A quality citizen, but if you're not you're most likely to suffer from police brutality - being the police the coercive entity from the state. You cannot smoke weed or you'll go to jail.You can only use government approved drugs. You cannot have more than one wife. You cannot disobey government approved legislation.

Some examples might be a bit sketchy, I'm aware, but my point is that the state subjects it's own people to some laws that to citizens from other countries might seem ridiculous or confusing. They might have the same reaction you're having. They're from another juridical order. They aren't used to yours.

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