Zipperfish Zipperfish:
I applied the argument originally to all religions, with the example of the Biblical reference instructing followers of ther God of Abraham to kill practicing male homosexuals. As far as I know, you can walk into pretty much any church in the country, pluck the bible from the back of the pew seat in front of you, and look up that verse.
I suppose there may be some church's that have removed the offending passage, but I'm not aware of any. As it is, it kind of stands out like a sore thumb, inasfar as gay issues are concerned, and it's pretty hard to ignore.
Personally, I don't think they should have to [edit: remove any offending passages]. But I do think they have to take responsibility for it being there.
Fair enough.
$1:
Again, if the children there had the freedom to simply leave the school, you'd have a stronger argument. But there is no doubt that there are gay students in those schools who would rather be elsewhere, but do not have the legal authority to make those decisions themselves. My solution would be to give students of a certain age the legal rights to pick their schools, even if it goes the will of the parents, or something like that.
You could certainly externd the argument beyond the Christian context. In Britain they have trouble with a small percentage of Muslim schools that are radicalizing their students with jihadi ideas. The argument of the school is the same as yours--the state should not interfere with religious doctrine. In this case, it's not much of an overstatement to say that the religious doctrine is dedicated to the destruction of the secular state. What then?
I'd agree with you that students should have a bit more freedom to pick their high schools and education facilities. That being said, the situation is what it is at the moment. Although I can agree that students should have some say in their secondary education institution choice, it still begs the question if the state should have the ability to legislate the doctrine of a religious institution? In my opinion, it shouldn't, but, of course, I can see the validity of those saying that if you accept some public funding, they should abide by secular legislation.
For example, if, say, this law stated that parochial schools must provide birth control to students, even though (in Catholic schools at least), birth control is extremely frowned upon, at the consequence of losing state funding if they do not, should the parochial school be willing to compromise their beliefs?
Thankfully, the situation about parochial schools in North America have not reached such controversy, and I would believe that there are some non-Christian parochial schools operating in Canada and the United States. Such schools, at least from what I know of them in my North American experience, are still obligated to teach a curriculum, and I believe such curriculum must abide by secular standards. The issue of radicalization can be a dangerous one, but unless they're breaking any laws, I don't see what can be done. Unless such jihadi schools are teaching kids how to kill Jews and Christians, I don't know of a valid option to suppress such views.
Edit: Overlooked a part about Great Britain.
CKA Uber 
CKA Moderator 
![[B-o]](./images/smilies/drinkup.gif "Drink up")
![[popcorn]](./images/smilies/popcorn.gif "Eating Popcorn")
