Changing historic place names & symbols not about citizenship or tolerance

Submitted by Non-Catholic (United States), Jun 10, 2009 at 15:29

Dave, this is NOT an issue of citizenship or tolerance (which are in any case 2 different issues, not the same. I.e. Jews were usually tolerated in traditional Muslim and medieval Christian regimes, but they were certainly not treated as equal citizens. You can have tolerance without even coming close to approaching civic and legal equality). Jewish and Muslim citizens already are tolerated and have legal equal rights in Trinidad and Western countries, even though there often is informal social discrimination, (which in any case can not always be overcome simply through legal changes).

This is whether you must change every single historical symbol and name referring to Christian dogmas and saints in order not to violate the "citizenship rights" of non-Christians. If you change the name "Trinity Cross" even though it refers to Trinidad itself (which means Trinity in Spanish) to not offend non-Christians, by what logic do you maintain the name Trinidad for the nation at all? Why tolerate other symbols and place names referring to Christian saints, ideas and dogmas? Should Saint Paul Minnesota, and every object that contains that name then be changed, because of course many people not only don't consider Paul of Tarsus a saint, but find his ideas offensive? Same for Saint Louis, Missouri. Why retain Corpus Christi, referring to the specifically Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and so on. Must the Swiss, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and British flags be changed because they have crosses on them, and were adopted precisely because they are Christian symbols or else the non-Christian citizens living there are having their citizenship rights violated? The mind boggles at the unending slippery slope this sort of logic opens up.

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