(no subject)

[fpb]

A commission reporting to the French National Assembly (Parliament) has returned the most coherent and intellectually formidable negative response to the advocates of "gay marriage" - (in French): http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/12/dossiers/mission_famille_enfants.asp. This is frankly astonishing, in view of the French tendency to PC attitudes and Chirac's hostility to anything that reeks of Christianity, but it shows that unless you pack your commission with journalists, activists and politicians, certain problems arise by themselves.

Comments

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

Well, the French take the separation of Church and State pretty far, as you know. The mention of the American President saying "God bless you" makes us shiver. If Chirac had condoned that, he would soon have been out of a job.
Personally, I have no problem with the Christian roots of Europe, but I don't see what place they have in a Constitution. I'm no historian, and what I'm going to say will probably make you scream of PCness and other mortal sins, but I've always understood that the Christian roots of Europe take their own roots in paganism, and nobody's suggesting mentioning Zeus and Odin in the European Constitution, right?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am a historian, and I wrote something on the matter in my own LJ, to which I refer you. http://fpb.livejournal.com/141494.html As for Thorr and Odhinn, I suggest you read what C.S.Lewis, who knew more medieval literature than I do (and I know plenty) had to say about medieval culture in his great masterpiece The Discarded Image: "for one uncertain allusion to the Celtic or Norse gods, you find ten certain ones to Minerva, Diana and Jupiter". And that applies even to Irish and Scandinavian writing.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The French only take the separation of Church and State as far as it is convenient for the State. The current proposal to nationalize the mosques and have the State hire and vet imams shows how seriously certain "principles" are to be taken.

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

nobody's suggesting mentioning Zeus and Odin in the European Constitution, right?
Actually yes, they did. This was the funniest part of it. The original preamble - as far as I remember - mentioned "Hellenic" and "Christian" as two sources of European tradition (although neither Zeus nor Christian God). Then most of the left, led by France, throw a tantrum about the Christian stuff. Okay, so a version with neither of two mentioned was proposed . But no, it was not good enough: Greece was to stay, but Christians were to be ruled out (that was the moment it got ridiculous).
Finally, both were scraped. Therefore we Europeans are legally floating, rootless, like dandelion seeds, very postmodernist... :)

Polish constitution (we have a Church-state separation, too) says in the preamble:
We, the Polish Nation - all citizens of the Republic,
Both those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty,
As well as those not sharing such faith but respecting those universal values as arising from other sources...

Version for the European Constitution based on this text was also proposed and gained quite large following at one moment as taking a middle ground. But it was scraped, too - mainly due to the protests of guess who :)

[patchworkmind.livejournal.com]

How "politically correct" of them. :)