Make sure Code of Conduct protects atheists

[hubertlepicki]

Newly approved Code of Conduct mentions religion, but big share of Rails developers and contributors are atheists or agnostic. I come from society that was very tolerant towards various religions throughout ages. In my home country (Poland) Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together for hundreds of years and freedom of religion was protected by law.

This, never applied to atheists, however. They were prosecuted and executed. Notable example includes Kazimierz Łyszczyński https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_%C5%81yszczy%C5%84ski.

Modern societies of many countries exhibit prejudice, violence and lack of tolerance towards atheists. This does not include only Muslim states of Pakistan, Quatar or Saudi Arabia, that would be an obvious example. This includes also USA and many European countries, where atheists are being discriminated by society, law and government. An atheist would not stand a chance in presidential elections in USA, for example.

Since Rails declares to protect religious contributors from harassment, it is only fair that us, non-religious people of different cultures, races, body sizes etc. get appropriate protection too.

This patch changes "religion" to "religion or lack thereof" to ensure that we get fair treatment.

[panSarin]

+1

[mihn]

+1

[robin850]

It looks like this has already been proposed (EthicalSource/contributor_covenant#83 (comment)) but not incorporated.

While I doubt most people will agree with this idea, I would personally remove "religion" from the list here because:

• If we want to protect atheists and agnostics, the use of "lack" has a pretty negative connotation while it's just a spiritual choice (even though _a_theist and _a_gnostic etymologically express a lack).
• Even though it's true that people are more often oppressed for their religious choices rather than their political ones, most points arguing that politic opinions should be added to the list (c.f. Politics? EthicalSource/contributor_covenant#73) apply to religion as well while the former hasn't been added to the list.

At least, if we do not want to remove religion from the list, "or lack thereof" seems still better as people generally don't include atheism and agnosticism in religions. Accoding to the Collins dictionnary, the primary sense for religion is:

belief in, worship of, or obedience to a supernatural power or powers considered to be divine or to have control of human destiny

What do you think ?

[hubertlepicki]

I would not add politics to the list, personally. I'd agree it's better to stay away from such conversations, however.

About this issue being proposed and rejected already: it does bother me, for real. This is exactly the case of privilege religious people gain, simply by having a religion. I want my disbelief to be equally protected.

[robin850]

I would not add politics to the list, personally

I do not want either ; I'm just saying that since politic opinions aren't on the list, religion shouldn't be too since they are pretty close, they are personal choices.

[rafaelfranca]

As an atheists, I also think religion already cover my disbelief. I don't think adding or lack thereof will change anything.

The idea of the text wants to show is We are committed to making participation in this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, that already cover everything you can think about, even concepts still to be created.

Thank you so much for the pull request and don't worry, your lack of religion is welcome here like everything else.

[hubertlepicki]

As an atheists, I also think religion already cover my disbelief

I do believe your logic @rafaelfranca is flawed here. But I heard this argument before. "Religious beliefs" maybe, but "religion" quite clearly points to some system of beliefs that involve god or gods and/or other supernatural forces.