I don't think that the problem is adopting in bad or good faith; personally I am saddened because the CoCs are meant to be there to protect people that are usually in a weaker position and in our development communities that usually identifies with a few categories: women, LGBT+, disabled people etc.

Now if you look at it from this point of view I think that you can at least see the irony of using a religious text in this context; to be more clear, quoting their webpage:

> This code of conduct has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years

Those "thousands of diverse communities" include the ones who were using their religion as a pretext to burn heretics/witches, torture homosexuals and in general oppress the weak and the diverse as well as the ones that today are still trying to infuse young people with their toxic shame when they are non-conforming.

This is what really grinds my gears: some people would do anything to NOT take responsibility and hide themselves behind nice words with little to no real content.

> Those "thousands of diverse communities" include the ones who were using their religion as a pretext to burn heretics/witches, torture homosexuals and in general oppress the weak and the diverse as well as the ones that today are still trying to infuse young people with their toxic shame when they are non-conforming.

Wow, those Benedictine monks have really been up to some heavy shit.

They owned actual slave plantations, too: https://www.jstor.org/stable/981267

We don't often talk about the thousands of years of human rights abuses by monastic orders, but they are pretty horrific. Even in America in living memory, it includes the torture and murder of children and the coverup of those crimes: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph...

That last read was truly grim.

However, to reject the Rule of St Benedict because some Benedictines lived in egregious violation of it is like rejecting the United States Bill of Rights because the United States has often acted in direct violation of it.

The Rule is, on the whole, a wonderful document, and there are today and have been through history a great many good people who live it day in and day out fairly faithfully. I'm privileged to call some such people my friends.

Here the discussion was a bit broader and the point was about the religious context rather than the Benedictine themselves.

To be fair the Benedictine order wasn't one of the worst orders with respct to whole witch/heresy craze but that kinda furthers the irony of the whole situation: watching to the other side while someone is being persecuted (or bullied) puts you closer to the oppressor than to the oppresed.

> watching to the other side while someone is being persecuted (or bullied) puts you closer to the oppressor than to the oppresed.

This would then dismiss every CoC-related effort, because most enforcers do little regarding humans being persecuted in other countries...

This is a bit of a logical fallacy: the fact that you are not able (maybe even because of your own limited self) to do good in every possible context it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do good in the contexts whee you can!

It is, and that's what I tried to highlight with my comment.

Apply your comment to the monks then.

I'm pretty sure that many monks individuals did the best they could with what they were given. That is very different from it being true for the whole order of the Benedictine.

At the same time I do believe that the spirit of Christianity, Islam and most other religions is inherently good, positive and inclusive and there are definitely people that use that as a guide to improve themselves and their lives.

BUT, even if the spirit is good, the actual history says that these organisation shouldn't be held on a moral high ground for anything because they don't deserve it.

Moreover, even today, chances are that if you are a non-conforming individual in a very religious community you are subject to isolation, bullying and shaming.

And that's why I find it of very bad taste to use this as a CoC that should guide integration: if I have been bullied from my ultra-religious community, for example because I am bisexual, then I'll not find that a very welcoming sign.

Traditionaly, burning heretics was a State matter, guilt was decided by a special group, the Inquisition. Heretics were burned (or had other punishment against them, like fines, emprisonment, prayers or house arrests) because it was a state matter, following the principle of Religion of the King = Religion of the People.

I see what you did there!

Religion and Church are not to be blame, since as soon as there is any blame going around, the State, and not religion / church, is responsible!

Sleak!

Yes, I see what I'm doing here.

> who were using their religion as a pretext to burn heretics/witches, torture homosexuals and in general oppress the weak and the diverse as well as the ones that today are still trying to infuse young people with their toxic shame when they are non-conforming.

While I cannot and will not defend everything that has been done in the name of my religion it's kind of disingenuous to discuss this without simultaneously acknowledging that more people have been murdered and tortured with a pretext of reason and lack of religion.

> CoCs are meant to

Stop right there. You have no authority over what a person chooses to adopt as a "code of conduct". They can be for whatever purpose they choose. It is up to others to accept them or not.

> Those "thousands of diverse communities" include the ones who were using their religion as a pretext to burn heretics/witches, torture homosexuals and in general oppress the weak and the diverse as well as the ones that today are still trying to infuse young people with their toxic shame when they are non-conforming.

Citation needed. When did the OSB do any of this?

> so little empathy that you can't possibly image someone adopting The Rule of St. Benedict in good faith

I think it's more that the wording suggests the author pushing his own faith onto others.

That's what every CoC does.

I've never heard of a CoC demanding belief in a specific deity before.

If you don't believe in (or criticise) the faith of Intersectionality, then you are subject to persecution and expulsion. There's a very disturbing parallel with the beliefs and aims of militant SJWs and the some of the worst aspects of religious intolerance. CoCs such as the "contributor covenant" are a way of enforcing these beliefs as some kind of religious document, in effect. This makes the SQLite CoC a humourous parody of this type of CoC, being an actual religious document; this is one reason for the "outrage": religion doesn't like fun being poked at it.

Most Codes of Conduct prescribe to ideas of patriarchy or intersectionality - if you don't believe in these, then you are generally reeducated or expelled.

I have seen equal evidence for the existence of a God as I have the existence of a Patriarchy.

I think he can't possibly do that as SQLite doesn't accept contributions. There are literally zero people impacted by this CoC that weren't in on it from the beginning.

Who are those others, precisely?

Suppose the authors fancied themselves a modern monastic order, is this necessarily bad?

Agnostic here.

Sure, why not? Group codes of conduct are a form of mutually-enforced morality. Why not pick up a template that seems to have worked in the past and reuse parts of it?

It all won't fit, of course, but why re-invent the wheel? I'm really much more interested in the track record of how various of these items worked out (or not) than I am in impeaching the source. Who cares about that stuff?

Can I imagine it? Sure. Can i accept it? Hell no.

I can imagine someone adopting in good faith a code of conduct that says “no colored people.” That doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it.

What rules in St. Benedict are comparable to "no coloreds" in your mind? Or do you find them unacceptable due to the context, i.e. that they are part of a larger religious text?

The very first rule is comparable. We generally consider religious discrimination to be on the same level as racial discrimination.

Do you truly _believe_ that? Would you say that is one of some number of truths you take on _faith_?

Yes, I believe that. I don’t take it on faith, I take the “we” part from the fact that religious and racial discrimination tend to be found in the same lists in the laws that outlaw discrimination against certain classes.

This says more of "we're lazy and don't actually care to do this seriously" more than it says anything in good faith.