New “Don’t Label Me” Billboard Campaign in the UK

I wouldn’t mind one day my child be labeled a “free thinking” child, or perhaps a “reasoning child.” All the other labels I can do without.

That is even less offensive than the other ads (if that’s even possible, you hardly could get less offensive), but I bet someone will be offended. I hope it sparks some interesting debate, because the point this ad is making is very important if we want to stop unfair child indoctrination.

Belfast is already in a freak out over it, I see. Freethinker.co.uk has an article. I like the poster, myself. It’s a reminder for everyone that labels can be limiting. Kids need morals and values and manners and need to learn what’s right and wrong, but that goes for every kid, no matter what faith or lack of faith their parents claim.

It’s unfortunate people want to earmark a generation to pre-sort them into ideologies before they even know how to think for themselves. And depending on the label, some kids may never even get the chance to try that.

Fighting the state-funded faith-based schools is a good goal but I’m not sure how I feel about the billboard.

If I saw it, without knowing the story behind it, I’d probably just think it was an anti-discriminatory billboard, racist (though I’d wonder why only two white kids then; um, why are there only two white kids?) and gender stereotypes included, and that would be a good thing.

However, much as I agree with Dawkins that it is child abuse to scare kids with hell and the wrath of “God”, I do have a problem with saying you can’t raise your kid in your religious beliefs. This hits a cord with me perhaps because I had so many Christians take issue with my raising my child unchurched. I felt I had as much right to raise her Atheist as they did to raise theirs in their faith and I still say that’s true. If you don’t allow parents to raise their children in their religion(s) or absence thereof, it’s not religious freedom.

I do think this particular religious freedom needs some tempering but it’s a careful line to be tread, especially here in the US.

(I can’t really address England since I’m not familiar with their laws concerning religious freedom. I only know they have some religious liberty but they also have the C of E they are taxed to support and religious classes in the schools that some have told me on-line have mostly become comparative religion classes. I also have a sense that religion hasn’t flourished there like it has the states because they have the State church.)

Anyway, we need to stop practices that are downright immediately dangerous like denying medical treatment and exorcisms. And I’d like to see some standards met for Biblical teachings at least akin to ones there are for movies. Something in the buybull that would be R-rated in a movie, should be reserved for the same age limitations as in a movie, same for PG, PG-13, etc.

But the tricky part is how exactly do you accomplish this and preserve religious liberty? It’s a fine line — and a tricky one — to tread and to go too far over it is a bigger danger to those of us in a religious minority than it is to those abusing their children with religion’s scare tactics.

Also, if you can’t scare children with “God”, what about scaring them with other things? Even realistic things. Like the results of immoral acts. If you pick on other kids at school, no one will like you? Even the Supernanny’s (and let’s face it, she’s terrific with kids) naughty corner could be interpreted that way. What’s the other aleternative? Teach kids no displine and let them run wild? Um, they don’t learn any self-discipline that way. And, is also, abusive to kids too. (Don’t believe me; watch an episode of Supernanny.)

Perhaps the time has come to draw the line but we’d better be careful just how we draw it.

Here’s an excellent posting on why Freedom of Religion is impossible.

@Liudvikas and others: putting this sign up in Belfast is a bit like putting up a sign advertising bacon in Riyadh or Islamabad. Totally inoffensive to reasonable people – but in a location where reasonable people are in short supply.

But yes, Belfast badly needs some campaigns like this. The separation of children into different faith-based schools was one of the main causes of the troubles in Northern Ireland. When thugs out on the streets of Belfast encountered a stranger, the standard question was “which school did you go to?” And if you gave the “wrong” answer, you got beaten up – or worse.

Good for the BHA.

Hey, I had to grow up going to church! It didn’t hurt me to grow up Presbylutheran (or whatever it was). Why should kids nowadays get off easy? Whiny little so-and-sos. There are much more harmful labels to avoid sticking on children. Let’s work on those instead.

Muggle said:

If you don’t allow parents to raise their children in their religion(s) or absence thereof, it’s not religious freedom.

Muggle seems to be confusing religious freedom with parental freedom. If you believe people should be free to believe in whatever religion they like (or none), then don’t you have to accept their children should be free to believe in whatever religion they like (or none)?

Or is it ok to have religious freedom for adults, but religious control for children?

Nice ad, the kids look yummy. A little old for most people’s tastes, but they should be nice and tender after 8-10 hours at very low heat.

This is the best billboard I have seen yet. I love it.

Please don’t label me.
Let me grow up and choose for myself.

And I agree with the BHA on this part… It is awesome.

The BHA campaigns for inclusive schools with no religious admissions policies, balanced teaching about different beliefs and values, and no compulsory ‘collective worship’.

But, I feel that this part contradicts the prior part. How can it be balanced if it cuts any belief into pieces?

The BHA also campaigns to combat the growing threat to education from creationism and pseudoscience…

But, regardless, all different faiths, whether you believe in them or not, the values of Christians and Muslims (and many more) have shaped our world and still effect it today.

@ Bradm, are you asking about my NorthAmerEurAsian kids, my half-breed kids, my bi-racial kids, or the kids that came from the Sovereign Republic of MyWomb? 😉

Do you think the same thing about labels of nationality? American child, French child, Mexican child, etc.?

A young child is no more “American” than Xian. Until they can, at the very least, perceive what it means to be X, they’re just children. I think that’s implicit in the fact that states protect children while denying them most of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

I find it’s interesting that they’ve thrown a few nonreligious labels in the background (the ones I can see with a bit of guessing due to partial cover are “libertarian child,” “post-modernist child,” “marxist child,” “capitalist child,” and “anarchist child”). I can’t imagine anyone actually using “post-modernist child,” so I’d have rather seen that bit of real-estate instead used for something like “British child,” “Irish child,” or “Scottish child.”

Brad, a kid born in America doesn’t have a choice. A parent who tells their 8 year old they are christian and must go to church if the parents force them. Nothing will change their nationality but their religion can change.

Their religion can change when they grow older, since their parents lose a degree of control on them. As long as the government maintains a monopoly on ruling a given geographical area, it’ll be true that changing their nationality is more difficult, but there’s no reason that they should be forever bound by where they were born than that they should be forever bound to who their parents were.

I have a question for those of you who don’t support labeling children. Do you think the same thing about labels of nationality? American child, French child, Mexican child, etc.?

Yes, and more so. One point of not labeling religions is that religious divisions tend to create distinction and hostility between people, leading to playground animosity, strife, and violence not because of any inherent distinction between the children but merely because their parents were dumb or cruel enough to try to force them to wear a certain label.

This problem extends naturally to nationality as well, with strife between ethnic groups or reprisals against immigrants. In fact, it’s an even worse problem because people tend to keep the same patterns into adulthood, to worry about people crossing an invisible line in order to “steal our jobs,” to claim that people born on one side of that line are inferior to people born on the other side and have lesser rights, to restrict the rights of people to associate with, trade with, or visit people who live on the other side of the line, to assert that bombing foreign cities is justifiable if it’ll save the lives of “our” soldiers who would otherwise be attacking the people of those foreign countries by conventional means, to assert that war is not the moral equivalent of murder, etc. Almost all of the problems we see in the world today stem from the fallacy of the border and that within each set of borders a certain group of people can, by any means whatever, secure a right to themselves to absolute rule over those within the border and to murder and plunder those on the other side of the border without restraint.

I may obey the decrees of the rulers of the area where I live to the extent that what they want agrees with what I would do anyway and/or to the extent that I think they can enforce their will upon me through the use of violence (less often than you might think, given the massive number of laws), but I have no nationality. Children likewise have no nationality, and I can only hope that if they aren’t taught to believe this as a child then they won’t believe it as an adult either. (Of course, as rational adults they would be free to voluntarily give allegiance to any organization of their choice. But in cases where the opportunity to offer allegiance is not voluntary but coercive, there is no way of making such a choice, even if the individual sincerely wants to do so.)

I just had this sort of conversation with my 6 and 7 year old children. One of their friends just got baptized in a Mormon church. We said it was because he was the son of Mormons and this is how the Mormons think god wants them to behave.

My son said he did not believe in god and we said something like “You are the son of atheists but you have not learned about religion and god yet. When you get older, you will learn more about religion and make up your mind. Whatever you decide will be your choice not ours.” We also mentioned that we hoped there would be comparative religion classes in high school.

During this conversation I realized, I need to teach them more about religion. They do not know what the Bible is or what a church is for. It very difficult for us to mention god or religion without getting sarcastic.

@Flah:

I have to disagree with Dawkins here. My child goes to church with us because we go to church — it’s part of what we do as a family. But when he gets to be an age where he can reason on his own, and if he decides that religion is not what he wants, he will know that I will support him.

It’s interesting how often this leap is made. You are not disagreeing with Dawkins here. He has repeatedly affirmed the right of families to engage in religious practices, so long as the child has a clear freedom of choice in the long run.

That campaign may be even more challenging than all the others. All the “won’t somebody please think of the children” folks will be terrified that we’re trying to lure their children away from “The One True God”.

On the subject of what’s wrong with labels of nationality or race, you should read Zora Neale Hurston.

Revyloution wrote:

My point of being ‘human’ means to be a part of a society. That does not come naturally, it must be taught.

Then how do animal ‘societies’ exist and thrive?

Then how do animal ’societies’ exist and thrive?

There are so many, and all have different adaptations. Bees have a genetic hierarchy in their make up. No bee will stop to help another, and no drone can aspire to be the queen. Lions use a system of strength. The strongest lion will get a harem of females, the weakest are cast out and survive alone. Chimpanzees wont allow anyone else to care for their children, and will often attack and kill chimps from other troops that enter their territory.

There are many different ways for a social animal groups to organize themselves. Some of them even require teaching from the adults to the juveniles. None of the other animal societies require the deep compassion and altruism present in human societies, so its a safe conclusion that those qualities are not required for a social animal to exist and thrive.
Example:
The alpha lion has no sympathy for other male lions, nor even for his own cubs. The female lions will readily accept any male lion that can defeat the current pride patriarch. Lion society looks more like a marriage of convenience than passion. If everyone can keep up, the get to be part of the group, if they fall behind, abandonment.

Only humans have developed a way to codify and transmit that societal information beyond the immediate generation (writing) That unique innovation creates complex societies where the basic survival information cannot be transmitted simply through genetics or parental example training. Formal operant conditioning is the only way to transfer the huge quantity of information a human will need to live in our world.

I think it is hilarious that Almighty God has arranged for the “Humanist Society” to “choose” Christian children who are obviously very happy, and thus showing how great a Christian upbringing is, to front the campaign. Psalm 14:1 comes to mind. With every blessing to you from someone who is very grateful that she was sent to Sunday School as a child. This put me in good stead when my life fell apart in 1994 and I was able to draw on the faith that was taught me as a child. I know now that there definitely is a God.

PubMan, get real. Of course, children are controlled by their parents. Well, hopefully. Sadly, less and less parents are controlling their children and what we have as a result are a bunch of wild animals.

And check the law. People don’t have full rights until they reach the age of majority. That’s because they don’t have the maturity to handle it. Duh. I have heard people argue that the age of majority should be changed to 16 but I’ve yet heard anyone argue that it should be 6. The reason is obvious.

Raising a child is training a wild animal to be human.

Absofuckinglutely! Somehow I don’t think realizing this makes me a bad mother or grandmother. Like you, I got compliments on my daughter all the time growing up (some seemed mystified that this was in spite of her being unchurched). I’d think do you think this is some freaking accident. No, it’s due to hard work on my behalf. And, yes, different training methods. I broke the cycle of abuse thank you very much.

My grandson’s tougher because he’s a stubborn, rebellious cuss like his grandmother and rather hyperactive but, yeah, he too has more civilized manners than a hell of a lot of kids his age.

Just like the lion cub couldn’t survive on it’s own, neither could people cubs and I’m sorry but whoever’s taking the trouble to nurture said people cubs deserves the right to raise them as they see fit, including in their religous rituals (or absence thereof). They should only be interfered with when they aren’t taking proper care of said cub under their responsibility.

Like it or not, kids are not fully developed, mature individuals and do have to be guided. When they are fully developed, mature individuals — or when the laws of their land recognize them as such — then they will make their own way in this world. Until them, no, PubMan, (or any other idiot who thinks parents should concede control to the cubs’ “freedom of conscience”) they don’t have said liberty. Deal with that and grow up yourself.

And what the hell is wrong with calling an American kid American? Or a kid in India Indian and so on and so forth. Um, it’s just stating a fact. Deal with that too unless you have accomplished your creepy new one government world order which all humans must cowtow to.

And how the hell is this religious liberty for kids supposed to work exactly? Kids of religious families get to stay home alone while their parents attend church or temple? The Atheist has to allow their child to attend church if they express an interest?

Why do I suspect that those promoting taking away parents’ rights to raise their children in their worldview assume that kids will naturally see that their worldview is superior to Mommy and Daddy’s? Pretty fucked up and egotistical if you ask me. Odds are kids would choose whoever’s raising them anyway, at least before a certain age. Let them label themself and they will label themself what their caregiver would have anyway.

This is making a big deal over nothing.

And, no, it doesn’t mean the kid will grow up so freaking brainwashed they won’t change their mind. I was Christian when I was seven. The nones are growing. That’s not because a kid raised with a label was unable to change that label as an adult.

How about this for an ad?:
Parents stating “Don’t label me a ‘child abuser’ or ‘brainwasher’ let me raise my children without interfering.”