Actually, i think I'm just not conveying my point.
Let me start from the beginning again and hopefully my "WTF" hypothetical situations make more sense.
Our society has, recently, been making a lot of concessions for the
religious beliefs of people in society. Whether it be Jewish holidays, Sikh turbans, etc. I've italicized religious for a reason, which I will get to later.
In the end, I am not opposed to granting persons the leeway required so that they can follow their own belief structure. Indeed, the charter of rights and freedoms guarantees their freedom of religion.
If the courts of Canada and society as a whole have chosen to express this freedom of religion through making these special observances, then I suppose that's fine, but to me (as I had hoped to be demonstrated through my hypothetical extensions of this) if followed to their natural conclusions, they have some fairly strange and undesirable results.
This was supposed to be an example of Reductio Ad Absurdum, sorry if it didn't work. (See post below for how it was supposed to come across, sorry)
But I digress.
While granting freedom of religion, the charter also grants the same freedoms to belief, and not only that, but expression of belief:
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.
HOWEVER, and this is the crux, society is MUCH LESS accepting of allowances for "beliefs" if they are not qualified with "religious" in front of them.
To me, this is wrong for two reasons:
a) No distinction in the importance between the two is made in the charter
b) "religious beliefs" are in fact just that, beliefs like any other. There really is no
fundamental logical difference between my belief that I shouldn't be required to work on Tuesday and someone Else's belief, albeit most likely for different reasons, that they shouldn't work sunday.
Thus, when applied to this particular situation, you find my original example:
If these Muslim girls are allowed to have their own private swim class because of their
beliefs, then others should be granted whatever allowances they want due to their
beliefs regardless of what they are.
To me, this leads to chaos, and a much better way of dealing with it would have been to have an equivalent alternative that people can choose to do instead, for whatever reason.
*edited for spelling and making senseness*
