Japan deems religion as child abuse

[Fake Messiah]

There is an interesting new law in Japan

Forced participation in religious activities to be classified as child abuse

New health ministry guidelines will classify as abuse any acts by members of religious groups that threaten or force their children to participate in religious activities, or that hinder a child’s career path based on religious doctrine.

According to sources, the Health, Labor, and Welfare Ministry is preparing its first draft of guidelines to help local governments deal with issues of child abuse that have emerged in connection with religious groups such as the Unification Church, officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Inciting fear by telling children they will go to hell if they don’t participate in religious activities, or preventing them from making decisions about their career path, is regarded as psychological abuse and neglect in the guidelines.

https://asianews.network/forced-particip...ild-abuse/

[Jehanne]

Interesting news article. I receive the daily news feeds from The Japan Times, Japan's largest English news outlet, and they did not mention these new guidelines. They do have a story on a Tokyo court ruling that a prohibition against same-sex marriage is constitutional, and so, all is not well in Japan.

[Belacqua]

Interesting news article.  I receive the daily news feeds from The Japan Times, Japan's largest English news outlet, and they did not mention these new guidelines.  They do have a story on a Tokyo court ruling that a prohibition against same-sex marriage is constitutional, and so, all is not well in Japan.

It's interesting to read the memoirs of the Americans who came to Japan as translators after the war, and then stayed on to make a career here. Edward Seidensticker, Donald Keene, and several others were the main intermediaries showing Japanese culture to the rest of the world. 

Of this group of people, the most famous were gay. 

They decided not to return to the US in large part because the gay scene in Tokyo was as active and far more safe than that in the US at the time. A network of gay bars and gay porn theaters were well known to those with such tastes. (There are still plenty of gay bars, but the porn theaters have been put out of business by home video. Keene laments this in one of his books, since there was a lot of social activity at the theaters.) Seidensticker tells a funny story about how the Nobel Prize banquet for Kawabata was long and boring, so he and several others left the event early and went around the corner to a gay SM club.

While gay marriage is not yet legal, gay sex between consenting adults has never been illegal -- except for about 7 years in the 19th century. 

The book The Hare with Amber Eyes describes one Vienna-born businessman who arrived immediately after the war and stayed for the rest of his life. He was unable to marry his partner, so for reasons of inheritance adopted him as a son. It's a touching love story. 

It wasn't ideal, in that it was still a "Don't ask don't tell" type situation. You wouldn't announce it to your co-workers at Mitsubishi, for instance. But among those who knew, everybody knew.

[Anomalocaris]

Interesting fact: Societies that sustains a higher level of militarization and regimentation than their neighbors are also usually the ones that condone and promote homosexuality to a noticeably higher degree than their neighbor.

[Jehanne]

Interesting fact: Societies that sustains a higher level of militarization and regimentation than their neighbors are also usually the ones that condone and promote homosexuality to a noticeably higher degree than their neighbor.

Seriously? How to explain the homophobic and transphobic Russia??

[Anomalocaris]

Interesting fact:   Societies that sustains a higher level of militarization and regimentation than their neighbors are also usually the ones that condone and  promote homosexuality to a noticeably higher degree than their neighbor.

Seriously?  How to explain the homophobic and transphobic Russia??

Russian society at its base is certainly not ingrainedly militarized and regimented.   There is just a crust at the top that struts about in military prom and bombast.    You might say they are more like play acting at military drills rather than being something like military regiment.

Even during much of the Soviet times, the Russian society was slack and only superficially regimented. They tried to create a bottoms up militarized and regimented society, but it didn’t last long enough to change the subtext of cultural perception.   And it had to be given up starting in the late 1950s, long before the Soviet Union fell.   Part of the reason why it proved unsustainable had to do with enormous death toll and sacrifices the Russian people endured up to the end of WWII, and the promise of a freer, richer less regimented future that was made as the payment for it in the implicit social contract.    It was the awareness that Russian society is no longer adequately regimented and militarized to sustain a perpetual arms race with an economically stronger west, and breaking of the social contract would fatally undermine the legitimacy of communist rule that caused Andropov and Gorbachev to look for a different way which ultimately undermined the legitimacy of communist rule anyway and unraveled the USSR.

So Russian extreme nationalist view this as proof that it would have been better to break the social contract and re-regimentize and re-militarize the society to endure a protracted struggle to reestablish Russian influence.   But their wishes are certainly not reality in Russia.

[Deesse23]

Sorry, but the title of the thread is misleading.
You are doing atheism not a favor by exaggerating (or wrong portrayal) like this.

[Fake Messiah]

Sorry, but the title of the thread is misleading.
You are doing atheism not a favor by exaggerating (or wrong portrayal) like this.

Hmm, how should I have titled it then? I mean isn't that the whole point of religion to incite fear by telling children they will go to hell if they don’t participate in religious activities, and flagging that as child abuse is seeing religion as child abuse?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Jehanne]

In Japan, Christianity constitutes a tiny minority:

Wikipedia -- Religion in Japan