An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as “religious headgear”.
In “Austrian driver’s religious headgear strains credulity” (July 14, 2011), BBC News tells us so
Readers may recall that pastafarianism first surfaced as the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a sort of street drama against the idea of design in nature, at Kansas school board hearings. It blossomed into a Web site. Austrian Niko Alm, learning that religious headgear is allowed in official photos claimed that “the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.”
Given that “the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma,” some think his three-year crusade a protest against the permissible religious headgear policy.
While the card is said to show Alm wearing the pasta strainer, it doesn’t apparently come through on all screens.
But some wonder whether the pastafarians will get more specific (more real?) and issue a statement about women associated with a certain religion getting their drivers photos wearing a full face veil, which the ACLU has claimed to be a religious liberty in a 2003 court case. Increasingly, governments are caving to such demands, amid protests from citizens who do not conceal their identity (as most religious headgear does not).
Here is a hilarious but deadly serious denunciation of religious accommodation that harms society, from a well-known Canadian:
Levant has had to defend himself against persecution from unaccountable Canadian judicial bodies, operating outside common law and acting at the behest of Islamists.
Because Pasta Alm and his fellow congregants seek only to diss traditional beliefs that are actually consistent with civil rights, it’s not likely we’ll be hearing from them about the stuff that matters.
It’s a trait that Canadian commentator Mark Steyn (charged in three different lynch courts, at Islamists’ behest), has often noted: Such people engage in foolish or meaningless street theatre against harmless targets, then vanish like smoke from real conflicts that carry actual costs. Here (abandoned cartoonist faces identity change), for example, and here (abandoned comedian faces ruin) are instances of the supposed supporters of “freedom” doing their usual bunk, leaving the people they sneer at (like Levant) to do the fighting and support the wounded.
But that’s okay – serious issues are for serious people. We’ll leave it to the atheists to be the comic relief. If they get nasty, well, …
Update:This morning I wrote to a friend:
File under “Useless doubters”: = Old-fashioned atheists act stupid – guy gets Austria to allow him to be photo’d for his driver’s licence wearing spaghetti strainer. THAT’LL show those Jews who wear the little caps, like my chem teacher did, decades ago. (A guy whose only perp walk was for setting too high standards for other chem teachers.)
Did any guy ever confuse his identity by wearing one of those little caps? Well, who identifies a man by his bald spot?
Notice: NEVER – not once – do the spaghetti-strainer atheists address face veils – the only important issue where drivers’ licences are concerned.