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Old 01-15-2014, 12:22 PM   #1
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Teacher OKs "Avoid[ing] touching females on religious grounds"

Posted 2014-01-15 12:20:10 by Jun Akiyama
News URL: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/01...g-male-student

Here's a news article entitled "Teen felt ‘degraded' after teacher backed aikido student's request to avoid touching females on religious grounds" which highlights a situation in Halifax, Canada where an aikido teacher "followed provincial human rights law and accommodated a male student's religious request not to touch his female classmates."

From the article: "Lisa Teryl, a lawyer for the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, was unable to comment on the aikido case specifically, but acknowledged the stickiness of weighing the "competing rights" of gender equity versus religious beliefs.

"In the fabric of Canadian society, [gender segregation] isn't something that, in a secular sense, we support … we generally see it as a bad thing," she said. At the same time, she said, the law requires reasonable accommodation of religious views, which are generally given much higher consideration than mere matters of personal preference. "If it doesn't cost us to the point of undue hardship, then we need to try to … support them, and not have them feel persecuted for their deeply-held belief," she said."

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