public policy – Dani Shaw

June 11, 2012February 9, 2017

Ontario’s Bill 13 is a Missed Opportunity

[This article was originally published as ‘Tipped Hands and Missed Opportunities’ in ‘The Cardus Daily’ Blog on June 11, 2012.]

The recent debate between the Ontario government and concerned Catholic parents and educators (over the McGuinty governme

nt’s anti-bullying bill, discussed here on the Cardus Daily Blog) highlights the need for a more robust understanding and public discourse about the interplay between freedom of conscience and religion, advancing public policy, and the role of government in a diverse society.

Bill 13 aims to promote positive, inclusive, and accepting school climates, and to prevent bullying. These are laudable goals. Children of all ages should be able to go school without fear of being bullied. And in our highly diverse society, learning with and from one another helps build understanding, compassion, and a sense of community.

Whatever the merits of Bill 13, it is lamentable that the reported public debate has been reduced to a putative clash between religion and “fundamental values” such as respect and tolerance, and to a dispute about the name of clubs designed to promote understanding between students of different sexual orientations. Freedom of conscience and religion is itself a fundamental value, one that legislators tend to ignore or curtail when there is an apparent clash with other fundamental values. A more robust understanding of the value of freedom of conscience and religion in a highly diverse society is long overdue.

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January 24, 2011October 13, 2012

Reflections on Capital Punishment for Salvationist.ca

[This article was originally published as ‘An Eye for An Eye’ for the Salvation Army on January 24, 2011.]

Capital punishment strikes me as fundamentally flawed. Killing a person to send the message that killing is wrong seems contradictory at best and hypocritical at worst. The fact that executions are pre-meditated, and corrections officials or private citizens are paid to carry them out, makes them seem all the more heinous. What goes through the mind of an executioner as he or she administers a lethal injection or activates the electric chair? Does he believe the condemned prisoner is a threat to society who deserves to die? Or does she see the humanity of someone who made a terrible mistake, often decades earlier, and who may no longer pose any threat to society?

Capital punishment has been abolished in most of the Western world. According to Wikipedia, only the United States and Belarus continue to practise capital punishment, and Latvia has reserved the death penalty for war time. By contrast, the death penalty is practised in 14 out of 54 African nations as well as 24 of the 55 Middle Eastern and Asian-Pacific states. And although the United Nations has called for a moratorium on the death penalty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not mandate its complete abolition. Rather, it requires states that have not abolished the death penalty to restrict it to the “most serious crimes.”

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July 1, 2005October 13, 2012

How can The Salvation Army combat human sex trafficking?

[This article was originally published as Innocence Lost for the Salvation Army in July 2005.]

I Dreamed a Dream

Fantine’s Song

“So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home” (Judges 19:25-28).

One of the most haunting stories in the Bible is the story of the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19 and the ensuing battle against the Benjamite tribe, which left a hole in Israelite society. It is a shocking story about the human condition, a story that strikes at the very heart of evil―the desire on the part of some to dominate, abuse and destroy their fellow human beings, and the intentional or unintentional participation of other ostensibly “good” people in such schemes. It is a story about the relative powerlessness of women in certain societies and situations. It is also a story of wanton lawlessness, poignantly captured by the words: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit” (Judges 21:25).

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