Of pious women, Pharisees, and heretics

Secularism is one of the most important achievements of Western democracies. Separating the state and laws from religious beliefs is a fundamental step forward in guaranteeing civil liberties (including freedom of worship) and ensuring internal cohesion and the pluralistic and convivial nature of democratic societies. Governance mixed with religion tends to generate authoritarian or outright totalitarian policies, which amounts to criminal governments. A theocratic state like Iran massacres its population under the direct orders of its clerics, who do not hesitate to label citizens as terrorists deserving of execution. A democracy like Israel, led by ultra-religious and far-right leaders, becomes a corrupt power machine, capable of perpetrating the countless crimes of the Gaza genocide (which, incidentally, continues, even though the media has shifted its focus). The current aspiring global dictator, the delusional Trump, and his shadowy lieutenants (Rubio, Vance, Sedgeth) often invoke God and declare themselves divinely called to a transcendent mission, to justify what are nothing more than abuses of power committed by a gang of thieves who, unfortunately, have access. One of their first victims, another dictator, Maduro, acted similarly, but on a domestic Venezuelan level.

The Spanish state embraced secularism in the current democratic era, with a Constitution that enshrines Spain as a secular and non-denominational state (despite maintaining the infamous concordat by which the Treasury gives preferential treatment to the Church, an unsavory remnant in a democracy). Before this, there were forty years of National Catholicism and military dictatorship, imposed by fire and sword in a Civil War caused by the illegal uprising of 1936 against the Republic, a war in which priests blessed the weapons and ammunition of the fascist guerrillas who carried out executions. Secularism, by the way, is what makes the holidays of the Christian calendar—such as Christmas, Saint Anthony, or Saint Sebastian—celebrations that are not only valid for all citizens regardless of their religion, or whether they profess any religion at all, but also serve as instruments to consolidate the aforementioned (and such a looming threat) social cohesion.

All this comes to mind in light of news that the Balearic Government, through the Ministry of Education, is promoting and validating a course on affective-sexual education for teachers, coordinated by a deacon, and bearing such a glittering title as The role of religion in sexual and emotional educationReligion, in a secular state, belongs to the private sphere of each individual, and its role in "sexual and emotional education" is easy to describe: it has none, nor should it.

Gestures like this, or the whiff of cheap Zionism that the current Executive occasionally exhales, contravene current educational laws and the spirit and letter of both the Statute of Autonomy and the Constitution. These are ways, we see, of trying to do some third-rate regional Trumpism, now that it's fashionable. But the Balearic Islands are, and must remain, democratic, secular, and non-denominational. May Saint Anthony and Saint Sebastian deliver us from sanctimonious hypocrites, Pharisees, and heretics who presume to govern anointed, blessed, or in the name of God, Allah, or Yahweh.