[tvier]

Controlling how people dress sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The fact that it's currently not acceptable to enter a bank with a covered face would indicate a law banning it in all public locations is not needed.

Taking rights away from people labelled as terrorists is a pretty standard way for governments to control viewpoints. It gives them the power to add any group they don't like to a list, and deport/imprison them with minimal judicial process.

I don't know enough about surveillance of minors to comment on that one.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Controlling how people dress sounds pretty authoritarian to me

You're making it sound like under these rules, the government can force you to wear GAP jeans instead of Levi Strauss, when in reality the government has always enforced laws on public attire in public to preserve decency and security.

Otherwise it would be tyrannical since I'm not allowed to go naked in public or wearing the loincloths and Tribal Penis Gourd of my ancestors near schools.

Similarly, burkas are a security risk in public since people could hide and smuggle weapons under that, or there could be men hiding underneath using it to enter female only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms, or so much more nefarious cases.

Then on top of that, you also have the cultural and optics aspect, that burkas are a symbol of a backwards oppressive culture that's incompatible with western progressive liberal and feminist values that the west cherishes or at least pretends to.

[tvier]

You're throwing a bunch of straw man arguments out, which makes it a lot of work to actually respond to this whole post.

Rights are always on a spectrum with a large amount of grey area.

> burkas are a security risk in public since people could hide and smuggle weapons under that

This is silly. Everyone wears coats in the winter.

> there could be men hiding underneath using it to enter female only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms

Is this actually a concern? AFAICT this isn't happening, it's just something that could theoretically happen, which doesn't make it a reason to decrease people rights. That would be another standard tactic for pushing authoritarian laws.

> Then on top of that, you also have the cultural and optics aspect, that burkas are a symbol of a backwards oppressive culture that's incompatible with western progressive liberal and feminist values that the west cherishes or at least pretends to.

This seems valid, but I'm pretty hesitant to force my cultural values on people. It hasn't gone well historically.

[coderenegade]

To play devil's advocate, isn't it illegal wear a swastika in Germany? How is wearing a burqa, a symbol of female oppression any different?

Freedom of religion only goes so far, because the culture of the host country takes precedence. To take it to the extreme, if there were a religion where part of standard practice involved assaulting women and children, we would obviously limit those practices.

[AnthonyMouse]

The ban on swastikas in Germany is an authoritarian law, it's just one which is popular enough there that there isn't enough support to repeal it despite it being an unambiguous constraint on speech.

Non-consensual violence is prohibited because it directly harms other people. Face coverings don't directly harm anyone and laws that exist only for the government's convenience are authoritarian laws. There are ways to investigate bank robberies even if the robbers are wearing masks and in fact a law against masks is fairly ridiculous because anyone willing to break the law against robbing banks would be willing to break a law against wearing a face covering, so such laws only afflict innocent people.