Of crucifixes and rights

The European Court of Human Rights has decided that having crucifixes up all over the place in Italian schools denies some people their rights. In the Court’s words, “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions.”

Hmmmm…… Where to begin? This verdict makes a strong case for cultural relativism.

Very broadly speaking, human rights can be viewed in two ways. Universalists believe that rights are universal standards that should apply to all people, in all settings, regardless of the cultural context. Cultural relativists, while not necessarily denying the existence of absolute moral standards (or acknowledging them in some cases), believe that those standards are socially and culturally construed, so that the fundamental rights in one place will not necessarily be the same as those in another.

So take the issue of religious pluralism, a value I hold to. If you sit on the bench of the European Court of Human Rights you probably believe that the right to choose one’s own religion, or none at all, is a fundamental human right that trumps even the Italians’ proclivity for putting up crucifixes all over the place. If you’re Ayatollah Khamenei on the other hand, while you may also find crucifixes on classroom walls objectionable, it’s probably not because of a shared belief with a judge on the European Human Rights Court. I’m guessing the Supreme Leader, and many ordinary Iranians, would have a view on religious freedom that would make many universalist vomit. The thing is, I would identify myself as a weak relativist.

Do I really want to align myself with Ayatollah Khamenei? Not if I can help it. But if we really hold to the right to self-determination, that has to include the right for people in other cultural contexts to consensually uphold values we disagree with. While this particular case may be more about the interpretation of rights rather than what the fundamental rights are themselves, it still highlights the merit of the cultural relativist argument. Italy should be able to work out its own value system based on the prevailing culture as well we the history of the country - ideally through a mass deliberative process. If when all is said and done the Italians still want t have crucifixes in schools, so be it.

The idea of a court in Strasbourg interpreting the foundational values and their application in Italy is troubling. It’s not quite as troubling as the insistence that the whole world’s foundational values be based on a document that was put together by a handful of people in 1948. But it’s troubling all the same.