Saturday, November 22, 2008

Germany's constitution does not appear to be very constitutional

First, the good news: Germany dropped its pursuit of a ban on Scientology after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity, security officials said Friday.

Now, the bad news: What the hell were they doing trying to ban Scientology in the first place? And what were the alleged crimes? Well, it turns out that Scientologists are mean or as a Government report on extremism puts it: "seeks to limit or rescind basic and human rights, such as the right to develop one's personality and the right to be treated equally."

This ban, of course, would put an end to this untoward behavior of the Church by limiting or rescinding basic and human rights such as freedom of worship.

We aren’t scholars of the German constitution so maybe our post title was a little presumptuous as it’s entirely possible that the German constitution is a wonderful document its just the application of the same that gives pause.

Erhart Koerting, Berlin’s top security official would certainly lend credence to this theory: "This organization pursues goals — through its writings, its concept and its disrespect for minorities — that we cannot tolerate and that we consider in violation of the constitution. But they put very little of this into practice, The appraisal of the government at the moment is that (Scientology) is a lousy organization, but it is not an organization that we have to take a hammer to."

Well, that should make everyone feel a little more at ease.

And why do we get the feeling that similar to the No on 8 crowd concentrating their protests to the pastiest white church in the pastiest white neighborhood in San Diego, this persecution of the kooks in the CoS is only because their wackiness and general unpopularity makes them an easy target.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, the world in general makes no distinction between traditional Christianity, followers of Jesus, and the most outlandish of cults from CoS to the Jim Jones' followers who made "Don't drink the kool-aid" so infamous. I've heard "fundamentalist" believers of the Bible compared to the fundamentalis Muslim radicals who flew planes into the World Trade Center. It's been traditionally hard for the church in America to anticipate any kind of major persecution to come its way here. But, as the gospel of hope is more and more painted in the media as a "message of hate", it's not hard to see spiritual forces at work to bring that scenario to pass. Don't mean to be so apocolyptic in my vision for this country I love. But, short of a spiritual awakening, I fear the worst for people of faith.

Dean said...

Sc, the sort of non-sense that we see over in Europe right now manifests itself over here as "hate crime laws" and "hate speech laws". Though not the outright banning of institutions, the "banning" of improper thinking and speech is nearly identical in its intent and intended results.