Tovarich EmmyNoether on Nostr: Yes, I like this analogy. This is precisely the point. If you lived in a crazy ...
Yes, I like this analogy. This is precisely the point.
If you lived in a crazy theocracy where the law stated that "people who tell you they hear the word of god are as a matter of law hearing the word of god, and hearing the word of god is an admissible defence for all crimes up to and including murder," then, yes, legally within that nutty system, the person would be not guilty.
Australia (and many other western countries) have created an equally absurd secular religion of gendered souls where "if someone tells you they feel like they are a woman, then as a matter of law they are a woman, so sex discrimination legislation has to treat them as a woman." All sorts of absurd legal consequences follow from this, but there's no constitutional principle (unfortunately) that the law has to be tethered to reality in any way.
If you lived in a crazy theocracy where the law stated that "people who tell you they hear the word of god are as a matter of law hearing the word of god, and hearing the word of god is an admissible defence for all crimes up to and including murder," then, yes, legally within that nutty system, the person would be not guilty.
Australia (and many other western countries) have created an equally absurd secular religion of gendered souls where "if someone tells you they feel like they are a woman, then as a matter of law they are a woman, so sex discrimination legislation has to treat them as a woman." All sorts of absurd legal consequences follow from this, but there's no constitutional principle (unfortunately) that the law has to be tethered to reality in any way.