In regards to something that Candy said about McKoon’s RFRA, I wonder if anyone has heard of the Dutch system called “pillarization” (“verzuiling”), the system of “politico-denominational segregation of a society” in which, according to Wikipedia, “societies were (and in some areas, still are) “vertically” divided into several segments or “pillars” (zuilen, singular: zuil) according to different religions or ideologies. The best-known examples of this are the Dutch and Belgian ones.

These pillars all had their own social institutions: their own newspapers, broadcasting organisations, political parties, trade unions and farmers’ associations, banks, schools, hospitals, universities, scouting organisations and sports clubs. Some companies even hired only personnel of a specific religion or ideology. This led to a situation where many people had no personal contact with people from another pillar.” Unlike South African apartheid and American Jim Crow, this wasn’t imposed with the collusion of the state and select religio-racial institutions against other religio-racial institutions. Instead, it was imposed by a society which sought to allow for “sphere-based” development along ethical-religious lines. The Calvinist Protestants built their own social safety net in a way which favored their own parishioners, and the Catholics duplicated the same for their own parishioners in order to prevent their working-class members from joining socialist trade unions and organizations which violated what we call “sincerely-held religious beliefs”.

Finally, the socialists built their own “pillar” separate from the other two in order to support fellow socialists (a system unique to Western Europe), while the liberals were left to the remaining nonsectarian public institutions which came to be called the “General pillar”. This system was in existence from the 1860s until the Cold War, when many Dutch citizens started to merge their institutions across sectarian lines and dismantled much of the century of pillarization. Little is left of it, while Belgium has largely retained it in the form of political/language-based pillarization. Here in the U.S., if Candy and other self-identified libertarians accommodate the RFRA’s argument of only going to places where you are welcome because of/in spite of your background, and we distinguish our services/non-profits/businesses by our religio-social allegiances/ accommodations/criminations, I think the pillarization system is where we might be headed.

If we are encouraged to only go to LGBT/woman/PoC/atheist/vegan/etc.-friendly businesses and services rather than “trouble”/”oppress” those business owners and congregations who see such identities and associations as “morally wrong” or “confused”, and reactionary Christians encourage fellow parishioners to only go to places owned or operated by fellow parishioners who advertise such a religious identity, we are segregating ourselves into our own spheres and losing sight of our shared humanity, which is most apparent in the public space.

I’m not just talking about LGBT minorities choosing only accommodative spaces. I’m talking also about the allies who would willingly choose such spaces in solidarity, or would exercise the same solidarity with other groups which are criminated by reactionary politics. In our solidarity and “talking with our feet”, are we also diminishing the public spaces which are most available? Are we also diminishing chances for societal change and access to such changes?

We’re stickering up and marking our accommodational lines – progressive, libertarian, reactionary, whatever – to the advantage of those who are cynical about the social contract and wish to see it ripped apart.