E’ cio’ di cui si occupa Kevin Vallier nel suo “Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation”.
Per trovare una risposta si cerca di attingere a tutte le tradizioni ideologiche.
Cosa suggeriscono i libertari duri e puri in merito? Praticamente nulla. Nulla di razionale: per loro la “sfera pubblica” nemmeno dovrebbe esistere:
… I begin by assessing the libertarian approach, or more accurately, what I see as libertarians’ lack of an approach to religion in politics … The view I most often encounter is that religious belief is dangerous and should be excluded from politics… the more general attitude is that religion in politics is uninteresting because democratic politics should be dramatically weakened or abolished; private property alone will then answer these questions… The father of this approach was Murray Rothbard… he never penned a single piece developing a systematic libertarian approach to religion in public life. He may not have thought it necessary…
Ma poiché la “sfera pubblica” è destinata a stare tra noi per molto tempo, meglio darsi da fare cercando altrove.
Comunque questo disinteresse ha i suoi lati positivi…
… Libertarians do not use politics to either establish religion or denigrate it…
Anche se non mancano i difetti…
… The weakness of the libertarian approach is that it confuses politics and the state… Politics and religion are not going away even if the state is abolished…
E l’approccio conservatore?
Essenzialmente un conservatore rivendica privilegi per la sua religione:
… Religious conservatives across many societies, including democratic ones, seek some favored social or political status for their preferred religious view. In the United States, this often takes the form of civic theism… The attempt to display the Ten Commandments in public spaces is a paradigmatic example of civic theistic legal policy, though coercive laws play a role as well, such as those that ban same-sex marriage… some establishmentarian policies violate the rights of non-believers, as with attempts to interfere with science education in mandatory public schooling. Both believers and non-believers have a right to educate their children as they think is best…
Una specie di teocrazia depotenziata.
E l’approccio progressista?
Essenzialmente il laico si inventa una religione ad hoc – di solito la chiama Laicità o Ragione – e conferisce ad essa tutti i privilegi, praticamente resta l’unica sulla scena, le altre religioni sono relegate alla sfera privata:
… The secular progressive approach claims to embrace equality and state neutrality. On these grounds, secular progressives oppose religious influences in politics… Treating others with equal respect in politics requires appealing to reasons whose force all can appreciate. Since not everyone is religious, no religious reasons are shared reasons… In this way, secular progressives assign religious reasoning an auxiliary role in public life, at best… Whether they realize it or not, secular progressives seek to establish secularism as the de facto if not official ruling ideology of democratic states by insisting on a conception of political life that excludes many people of faith…
Il pericolo di un simile approccio è quello di marginalizzare l’uomo religioso e vilipendere la sua dignità. La fede, infatti, è al cuore dell’identità personale. La Francia è l’esempio di una deriva laica.
L’opzione favorita dall’autore viene denominata “liberale classica”, si fonda sulla libertà religiosa e sulla convivenza tra fedi diverse senza bisogno di fondare nuovi culti civili di tipo laico da imporre al prossimo.
Per spiegarmi faccio il caso del liberale classico di fronte al matrimonio gay:
… Let’s assume for the sake of argument that conservatives have both successful (but not indubitable) natural law arguments that explain why heterosexual marriage is the only morally permissible… these arguments cannot justify restricting marriage to a man and a woman given that such laws force many organizations to deny benefits to gay couples that would otherwise offer them… On the other hand, legalizing gay marriage without religious exemptions disrespects sincere citizens of faith by forcing them to provide benefits to gay…
La soluzione:
… Thus, my approach either requires the abolition of government marriage, or as a second best policy, the legalization of gay marriage with extensive religious exemptions…
Faccio anche l’esempio dell’ assicurazione obbligatoria dei contraccettivi. Qui però occorre spiegare cosa sia poiché è un problema sorto in ambito americano:
… The contraception mandate, created by the Department of Health and Human Services in order to fully implement the Affordable Care Act, originally required all employers, save religious organizations, to pay for contraception for their employees…
Come giustificare questa coercizione di stampo laico?
… This mandate has been incredibly and needlessly divisive. There is no reason that the Obama Administration couldn’t have paid for contraception for women who need it in some other way. Instead, they have threatened non-profit religious institutions like Little Sisters of the Poor… This is the authoritarianism of the secular progressive approach made manifest… Religious organizations have publicly offered highly sophisticated, well-reasoned and sincere arguments against the mandate drawing on hundreds of years of intellectual tradition…
Conclusione:
… for true liberalism, religion is not the problem; coercion is the problem… legalizing same-sex marriage in combination with religious exemptions reduces legal coercion by permitting organizations to extend benefits to same-sex couples…
Cerchiamo di ricapitolare come la religione possa accostarsi alla sfera pubblica. Direi che i precetti sono quattro.
Innanzitutto nessun privilegio e nessuna penalizzazione di una religione sulle altre (compresa la religione laica):
… religious conscience and religious institutions should have no special protections… this equal treatment should be understood as leveling up the protection given to secular conscience and secular institutions, not leveling down the protection given to religious conscience and religious institutions…
Nessun limite alla libertà di espressione (su questo punto la religione laica è molto aggressiva con le sue censure per sessismo, razzismo, specismo…):
… there are no ethical (and certain no legal) restraints on when a citizen can appeal to religious reasoning… Officials also have an absolute moral and religious right to freedom of speech, save when their speech constitutes a speech act that affects whether someone is coerced (like a judicial decision)…
Obiezione di coscienza a tutto campo per chi professa una fede:
… since religious exemptions are reductions in coercion, classic liberal should favor religious exemptions basically all of the time… it is better to have less coercion rather than more, so the inequality is no reason to support the continued coercion of the religious…
Contro l’ 8 per mille et similia ma a favore della concorrenza: scuole e ospedali religiosi – per esempio - devono avere trattamento pari a quelli statali.
… classic liberal should oppose government attempts to fund expressly religious activities like proselytizing rather than a religious group’s charitable activity… lclassic liberal should not oppose government funds going to religious organizations in addition to secular organizations… Libertarians should not oppose school vouchers on the grounds that they’re forms of establishment…
Poi c’è la questione simbolica (crocifisso in classe), la più difficile. Non c’è ricetta. Una linea guida potrebbe essere questa: se il simbolo offende o discrimina, rimuovere. Altrimenti no. Solo il buon senso puo’ districare la matassa.
… on symbolic establishment we face hard issues… The only way I know how to address the issue is to argue that taxpayers own public buildings and objects (like courthouses and currency) and that the government should only use public buildings and objects in ways that represent everyone and does not reject the values of anyone. That sort of unanimity rule seems too demanding… But if we go with a supermajority or simple majority rule, then dominant social groups, religious or secular, can legitimately press public buildings and objects to represent their views… my conclusion is that lclassic liberal need have no position… I think that unless symbolic establishment is meant to directly threaten or marginalize religious or secular minorities, then libertarians just shouldn’t care about it… If Italy puts crucifixes in its public schools, or if the US leaves “In God We Trust” on coins, do libertarians really have any more reason to be upset qua libertarians than they have to be upset about government schools and government money?…After all, libertarians don’t give a damn about the ethics of the American flag, since it is a dumb symbol of an evil thing… Of course, if people started posting “Death to the Jews!” all over public buildings and currency, that would be morally objectionable, and would probably constitute some sort of injustice, but how is a libertarian to characterize that injustice?…
