[Buddha-l] Practicing ahimsa

[Joy Vriens]

Bill,
  
>There is a bill in the US Senate that is still "in committee", 
>but that might make it out onto the Senate floor with enough 
>support, viz. the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act 
>(S. 594) sponsored by Feinstein and Leahy.  Despite my best  
>efforts to play devil's advocate, I can't see how supporting  
>this bill in its present form in any way violates the principle  
>of ahimsa.  If anyone can see a downside, please send a 
>reply (on or off list is fine). 

One can only agree with this. A possible downside in my view would be that to forbid specific means of warfare could be considered as an endorsement for the other means.

In France DNA tests for immigrants have entered legislation. They were presented as something positive. It would allow immigrants from countries with a deficient administration to prove their descendendacy not through papers but through a simple DNA test. There are lots of problems and possible problems involved in this that got debated, but the fact is that DNA tets have been acknowledged and that we now have an antecedent for other laws using DNA tests. The biggest problem is that in this law the definition of what constitutes a family is based on DNA, which excludes adoption, "illigetimate" children and other non-DNA based creative ways for humans to constitute families.

Joy