Apparently MPs are to vote this afternoon on whether there should be retail trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday in New Zealand (see: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10386507). Here's an email I sent to Newstalk ZB about it:
First of all, I am a Christian, and I think it would be great to see retails stores stay closed throughout Easter and in fact be closed on every Sunday throughout the year. There are plenty of other days to do shopping and people can easily prepare themselves by shopping on the Saturday so that they wouldn't need to shop on Sundays.
Or we could look at it this way. Have retails stores open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I'm sure this would drastically reduce unemployment. When it came to weekends and public holidays employees of these retails stores should be given a choice on whether they want to work or not. I'm sure there would be many people out there who would willingly work on these days as they would need the money, and of course need employment.
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Sorry Adam, I've got a different view to this one...
In a multicultural society, religion should not influence politics or policy...
For Christians Sundays / Easter / Christmas is important, but for the majority of the world... these days are not.
I say we should all get a number of 'sacred' days that we can choose in advance - that may well be days of Christian importance, but then they could instead be days of Hindu/Muslim/Jewish significance; or like the majority of NZ who are irreligious – whichever ‘family gathering’ days they like.
There should still be national days – such as Waitangi Day, ANZAC Day etc –
But government protected religious holidays should be abolished.
Same goes for same sex marriages/legalisation of prostitution/gambling etc...
Government of a multicultural society should protect my rights to freedom, and my right to live and work as I see fit - free from violence, crime etc.. but should not impose religious beliefs..
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