Stargoat's Journal: Europe is a more bigoted place than the United States

Gee Stargoat, tell us what you really think?

France barred the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in its state schools earlier this year, a law aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarfs. Also in France, Noel Mamere was suspended as mayor, and threatened with jail time when he wed two homosexuals. That wedding has been overturned. In the US, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently made gay marriage legal. Many other communities have been doing the same.

In Turkey, headscarfs were recently banned at universities and the law upheld by an EU court. In May, the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg banned teachers from wearing headscards in class. In the US, Oklahoma recently passed a similar law, which was immediately challanged by what is considered by US standards a conservative Federal Justice Department.

When debating on the EU Constitution, the major debate was whether or not a reference to Christianity was needed. The main purpose to that reference would be keeping Turkey out of the EU. Turkish entrance into the EU has long been opposed by men like Jacques Chirac, supposedly out of economic considerations, though the US was more than happy to have Turkey in NATO and was recently lauded by George W. Bush as an example of a Muslim democracy.

Brigitte Bardot has been fined multiple times by France for writing books critical of Islam.

The state of Civil Liberties in some places in Europe, particularly France, is shocking. Although there are other European countries with more sensible views on civil liberities, such as Belgium and Denmark, the world community must understand that Europe has a long way to go before achieving the freedoms invisioned two hundred years ago in France, or even achieving parity with the United States.

Not a monolith

[peacefinder]

You're treating Europe as one monolithic entity, which does not reflect reality very well. The push towards peaceful unification of Europe is less than sixty years old, and the EU has a much greater range of cultural diversity than the US ever dealt with peacefully. It'll be a long time before cultural blending really gets underway in Europe, if it ever does.

In any case, bigotry itself is not a monolithic entity. I'd rather be black in England than in Alabama, I'd rather be Romany in the US than anywhere i

Re:Not a monolith

[eglamkowski]

The US unified in a matter of years, not decades.

And to suggest the EU has more cultural diversity than the US is rather a staggering statement. We also get people from every corner of the globe! I doubt there exists a country on the planet that doesn't have ex-pats in the USA.

The real difference is that the US has been a republic continuously for over 220 years, based on certain ideals that transcend race, gender, religion and everything else.

European countries, well, empires didn't come down til the

Re:Not a monolith

[peacefinder]

When I said that Europe is more culturally diverse, I wasn't specific enough. I was referring to a diversity of cultures, not to a diversity of people of different cultural origins. It's not quite the same thing. (Our common usage of "cultural diversity" does not make this distinction, and I apologize for not realizing that what I said was unclear.)

Of course we in the US have many expats from pretty much everywhere. But by and large, they do not bring their cultures with them and keep them intact. They bri

Re:Not a monolith

[Lenale]

"The real difference is that the US has been a republic continuously for over 220 years, based on certain ideals that transcend race, gender, religion and everything else."

I do seem to remember the laws about diversion based on race, which existed until the fifties. The European country I live in (Holland) has never had such laws, nor do I know another EU country that had. I haven't looked specifically into it though, I could be mistaken.

In any case, I think you shouldn't only look at the laws, be they fo

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Poor headline

[Ethelred Unraed]

And yeah, I know you came up with a single German example

And a lousy one at that, because it's in one German state. To be fair, Bavaria -- the neighboring state to Baden-Württemberg -- is also considering such a ban. No other state is, at least not that I have heard of.

Anyway, that standard, we should think America is nothing but Bible-thumpers because of the actions of one county in Mississippi.

although the Muslim headscalves thing, I'm told, ironically by a Rush Limbaugh-loving Republican, rat