quote:There was nothing clear from that translation.
Not my fault! The good pastor is no great orator. Now, Dag does have a point : While Green says 'they deserve to die', he does not say 'and we should be the ones to kill them.' At least not in so many words. However, there is a tone going through the entire piece that it's time Christians took matters into their own hands, since the government is clearly failing. He does not precisely come out and encourage armed revolution, but he is not so far from it.
But in any case, the formulation 'Person X deserves to die' is not covered by free speech. Nor should it be. All Europe knows what comes of that.
posted
K.O.M.-- I think the difference might be in whether someone produced a "hit list" or just made a generally threatening statement about a group of people without actually naming names.
Still, I think the limits of protected speech may or may not extend to statements like the ones that preacher made. It'd be important to figure out the intentions and the understanding of the message that the people listening came away with, I think.
I had a boss who used to say things like "who do I have to kill to get a _____ around here." None of us went out and killed someone as a result, even though we were very loyal to this boss.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Justice Janice Rogers Brown was the lone dissenting judge. Brown wrote that the Legislature's definition of a "religious employer" is too limiting if it excludes faith-based nonprofit groups like Catholic Charities.
"Here we are dealing with an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization's expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission," Brown wrote. "The government is not accidentally or incidentally interfering with religious practice; it is doing so willfully by making a judgment about what is or is not a religion."
See... I disagree with Justice Brown on this last part. I think government has the right and responsibility to set boundaries on what it will call a "religion." For purposes of taxation and exemptions from various laws, it would behoove the government to adopt a very narrow and traditionalist definition, it seems to me. The failure to limit that definition would open the door to people starting religions solely for the purpose of avoiding taxes or avoiding various laws that would otherwise apply (like anti-discrimation laws).
Also...it seems to me that we are coming up against a real issue in this country. The issue is whether our anti-discrimination laws are more important than our non-interference with religion laws. The case Dag pointed to is exactly the kind of thing that religions want to be exempt from but it's a law that the people of the state have decided they want to be governed by. They have said that it's important that employers don't discriminate against women, gays, etc.
In this case, there's already a ruling on the books that says failure to include contraceptives as part of an employer-sponsored drug plan does discriminate against women. That is now a precedent in CA, and it's the law in that state.
Churches are exempt from that law.
But that doesn't mean that EVERY organization with a religious affiliation is exempt.
That's true in lots of areas of the law surrounding the issue of exemptions for religions. Churches are used to it, seems to me. They run some organizations that are exempt from state anti-discrimination laws, and they run some that are not exempt.
If anything, this case was a further clarification of the dividing line between the different types of entities that churches run and sponsor.
Seems like the line has to be somewhere.
Why not have the line be drawn so that those church-sponsored organizations that hire from outside the religion, and minister to people outside of the religion are considered non-exempt?
What's the problem with that?
How does this infringe on the rights of the Catholic Church in any way?
They also have the right to not run a charity in CA if they don't like the way they are treated there. That would not stop the Church from existing or enjoying the benefits of its exempt status in the other operations it runs.
No-one is FORCING the church to do anything but abide by the applicable laws for this particular operation.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
You would be hard pressed to find a person more disgusted with the influence the religious right value voter has had on this country than I, but that decision does bother me. If the organization is founded by a religion, follows the directives issued by the heirarchy of that religion, and for all intents and purposes is an organ of that religion, then it should be given the same due consideration that the churches of the religion are given. If it walks like a duck, people.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
I cannot believe our society has gotten to the point where someone would even ask this question. We've gotten so used to the government limiting people's freedom of conscience that it sounds like an exception when they don't.
Here's what's wrong with it: The Catholic Church considers the use of birth (Edit: control) to be grave sin. The government is forcing them to choose between not providing prescription coverage to its employees or committing grave sin.
The reason Catholic Charities exists is because of specific elements of Catholic doctrine. Society gets enormous gains from the Church's practical exercise of that doctrine. Yet society is seeking to constrain the very impulses that lead to those good works - that is, that religious belief should have real impact in the way people behave.
quote:But in any case, the formulation 'Person X deserves to die' is not covered by free speech. Nor should it be. All Europe knows what comes of that.
I think Lee Malvo deserves to die. Guess I better not go to Europe, huh?
posted
KoM, the Bible says that we all deserve to die, "for all have sinned" and "the wages of sin is death". Hmm. Better ban the Bible as hate-speech now, shouldn't we? And now you see what has me worried.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
you do realize that churches run a variety of organizations, some of which aren't even exempt from taxes right?
They all have to abide by a subset of the state's laws regarding employment and fair practices. Those that fall under the most clearly religious charter -- like the actual church sanctuary itself -- are fully exempt. Those that are more general purpose have some laws apply to them and some that don't -- Schools and open-employment things like some of the charities are probably good examples. Then, if a church runs a for-profit entity -- like an investment program -- it is fully taxable and non-exempt.
I think churches are used to this in the US. It's not an infringement on anything the Church stands for.
This particular charity obviously doesn't fall under the completely exempt religious-institution category or the court would've been obliged to judge it fully exempt.
This isn't the only non-exempt entity operated by the Catholic Church.
This isn't forcing the CATHOLIC CHURCH to do anyting. It's forcing this particular entity, which is run by the church, to follow the laws that apply to that type of entity in the state.
Every church plays by these rules. And the Catholic Church probably knew the rules that apply to this organization before they even went to court.
They're really practiced at this sort of thing.
I'm seriously surprised that you're so shocked. You seem so much more informed about the doings of the Catholic Church than I am, and yet this way of doing business has been something I've known for as long as I can remember.
Seriously, this isn't a big deal. This organization has had to abide by fair employment laws of every state for a long, long time. They know the drill.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:I think Lee Malvo deserves to die. Guess I better not go to Europe, huh?
I would note that the law does recognise some context. Public speech is rather more controlled than private - even in Scandinavia, you can say what you like in private, which I suspect includes Internet discussion fora.
But the fact is, Europe does not consider free speech as important as you do in the US. The right to free speech is overruled by the right not to be publicly compared to cancerous tumours who deserve only death. You are free to disagree.
Incidentally, about banning the Bible : While I would certainly like to see such a thing, as a matter of simple tactics, it wouldn't work. It would only radicalise our religious people, not to mention creating martyrs. More efficient to let religion die of apathy and education - a strategy already working well in most of Western Europe.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dag, there's at least one other option between the two you gave, which means reforming the Catholic Charities organization to be more in line with the law as far as qualifying as a religious organization.
That said, it is somewhat unsettling of an opinion, and would prefer that the court had thrown the issue back to legislature on this point, to more clearly define what a religious-exempt organization can look like.
quote:you do realize that churches run a variety of organizations, some of which aren't even exempt from taxes right?
Of course.
quote:I'm seriously surprised that you're so shocked. You seem so much more informed about the doings of the Catholic Church than I am, and yet this way of doing business has been something I've known for as long as I can remember.
Seriously, this isn't a big deal. This organization has had to abide by fair employment laws of every state for a long, long time. They know the drill.
This is a huge deal. Organizations shouldn't have to meet some arbitrary, ridiculous distinction in order to decide what benefits to provide to employees.
Frankly, it's utterly ridiculous.
It's even more ridiculous when you realize that this wouldn't be an issue if the organization were less giving to their employees.
quote:Dag, there's at least one other option between the two you gave, which means reforming the Catholic Charities organization to be more in line with the law as far as qualifying as a religious organization.
That said, it is somewhat unsettling of an opinion, and would prefer that the court had thrown the issue back to legislature on this point, to more clearly define what a religious-exempt organization can look like.
The problem is that the court is basically saying that the organization isn't restrictive enough to qualify. Every thing Catholic Charities does is a religious action, or an action taken to allow them to carry out religious actions. The whole organization exists as an attempt to carry out Christ's commands. It's a distressingly narrow interpretation of religion.
posted
Let's take this a step further, Bob. The reason I'm in favor of legalized gay marriage, despite my moral opposition to them, is that I believe as much as possible should be left to individual conscience. Why are you unwilling to extend this courtesy to other areas of conscience? Especialy by compelling behavior contrary to conscience, rather than denial of access to a benefit?
posted
As a taxpayer and someone who likes laws that force employers to stop discriminating against employees on the basis of race, gender or religion (and one day, I hope, sexual preference), I think that it's important for government to ensure that exemptions are granted only to those organizations that truly qualify as religious institutions under the applicable laws. The failure to do so would allow the unscrupulous to flaunt the state's and the nation's laws under the guise of religion. Something that is not good for the state or the institutions that really are religious in nature.
If you assert that Catholic Charities is purely Catholic and should be viewed as such, then I think it is in encumbent upon you to explain why they hire non-Catholics and why the administer aid in areas other than religious services and to those who are not part of that religion.
You say it's because they are carrying out Christ's charge. But that's a Christian thing, not a purely Catholic thing. So, you have to explain, in particular, why their activities are uniquely Catholic.
I don't think it behaves in such a manner. So, it really isn't purely a religious institution.
It is, however, a charitable institution. As such, it has earned certain exemptions under the law and it enjoys the freedom from some taxes and some laws that apply to for-profit corporations, and to government, by the way.
I think it would also matter who cuts the paychecks. If the check says "Catholic Charities" is the payee, then the laws that apply to that institution, and not the Catholic Church certainly do apply.
As I said, the Church does it this way by choice. They protect assets of the Church by keeping other organizations quasi separated. If the church gets sued, Catholic Charities is left out of it, and vice versa.
Nobody told them to set up separate institutions. They didn't have to. There were obviously advantages to them to do so. And so they did.
One of the potential disadvantages is that more of the states' various laws on fair employment practices apply to them. If they don't like it, they do have the option of taking Catholic Charities completely in house and managing as part of the church itself. In other words, they could make the distinction between the Church and Catholic Charities disappear and avoid this situation entirely. And not have to deal with this so-called assault on their principles.
But if they are going to reap the advantages of having separate entities, they have to figure out how to do it within the laws of the states in which they operate.
Nobody is telling them what to do. The state is telling them "given that you've chosen to operate THIS type of entity, these are the laws that apply."
Again, this is not a big deal.
It's the way this has worked for a long, long time.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:And twinky, I am not concerned about my religion becoming a minority. I am very much concerned that things in Canada will soon begin to go the way they are in Europe, where preachers are emprisoned for saying that homosexuality is wrong, where students are forbidden to wear any sort of religious symbols or religious dress in schools (and even this, I fear, is only the barest of beginnings; we're not even getting warmed up yet). I am concerned that this is a direct road to intolerance and persecution. That is what I am concerned about. No one will be happier than I if it turns out that I am under the spell of some raving paranoia when I say this. But I don't think that I am.
That still reads to me like you're afraid of losing "moral majority" status. If I were to try to summarize it as I tried to do with your last post on the subject, I would do so in exactly the same way as I did the first time around.
Regardless, that simply doesn't follow logically. Granting homosexuals the legal right to marry is not a negative action directed at churches, it's a positive action directed at homosexuals. The fact that you see it as the former rather than the latter is probably why you feel the way you do about the future of the country.
The government, some time ago, legally recognized homosexuals as a distinct minority that needs to be protected against precisely the same kinds of intolerance and persecution you claim to be afraid of (remember, as late as 1965, we were still putting people in prison for being homosexual). Given their legal minority status, it behooves the government to confer upon them the same rights and benefits given to heterosexuals. Since giving a homosexual the right to a heterosexual marriage is nonsensical, they're changing the legal definition of marriage so that homosexuals can have something that right now only heterosexuals have: the right to legally bind oneself to another person in a civil marriage.
They have been persecuted, and then some. You have not. Let's wait until your rights actually look like they might get trampled on before we begin to contemplate a return to restricting theirs.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Let's take this a step further, Bob. The reason I'm in favor of legalized gay marriage, despite my moral opposition to them, is that I believe as much as possible should be left to individual conscience. Why are you unwilling to extend this courtesy to other areas of conscience? Especialy by compelling behavior contrary to conscience, rather than denial of access to a benefit?
Corporations, even those that are charitable institutions, can't have a conscience. People can. The corporations operate under a set of laws that govern their behavior and, to a certain extent, protect the rest of us from them being able to do whatever their board of directors want to.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
"The Catholic Church considers the use of birth to be grave sin" I have to say, I am gravely disappointed that no one else noticed this in Dagonees' post. I mean, the sweet, sweet irony of it...
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote: They have been persecuted, and then some. You have not. Let's wait until your rights actually look like they might get trampled on before we begin to contemplate a return to restricting theirs
I am NOT talking about restricting rights! It isn't about rights. It's about calling apples oranges and oranges bananas. If I buy a dog and love him very much, does that mean that my relationship with him is the same as a parent/child relationship, and that the federal government should treat it as such? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. I could rant all I wanted to about how it is exactly the same, since my dog depends on me and I care for him and love him and teach him stuff. But I would never be able to adopt him as my son, because the relationship is just completely different. Well, this is the same thing.
Homosexuals can do whatever they want, and I can't stop them, nor do I even want to try. But let's call things by their real names. Oh, wait... it's already too late for that, at least in this country.
Posts: 609 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote: I could rant all I wanted to about how it is exactly the same, since my dog depends on me and I care for him and love him and teach him stuff. But I would never be able to adopt him as my son, because the relationship is just completely different. Well, this is the same thing.
dh, do you have any clue how offensive it is to make an analogy between the relationship of two human beings to your relationship with a dog?
I get that you don't like flexibility in language, but your rant is undermined by such absurdist contrasts.
If anything, this situation is more like the redefinition socially of terms like "men" in the US Constitution. Well...noboday actually HAD to redefine that term, we just made it more inclusive of all humans by doing things like passing laws for universal suffrage and civil rights.
Seems like a rather apt analogy actually. Now the term "marriage" is being broadened to include the union of two adult human beings, rather than the more restrictive (but certainly more traditional) union of two adult human beings of opposite genders.
Seems like your government is deleting an unnecessarily restrictive modifying phrase.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote: I am NOT talking about restricting rights! It isn't about rights. It's about calling apples oranges and oranges bananas.
Believe whatever you want, but for the people who are actually DIRECTLY affected by this, it is, in fact about rights. You don't get to define the terms of the struggle, the people struggling do. It just so happens that without the word "marriage" thay will never be assured the rights they need in order to live the way they want to. Their relationships will be seen as invalid. I honestly don't see what makes this semantic argument so important for you that you feel deep anguish if it's really JUST about the language of it. Do you boycott bakeries where muffins are labeled scones and eclaires go by the name of donuts? So the word marriage won't mean the same thing it did before. So what? The sacrament of marriage will not have changed. In many (dare I say most) churches, it will still only be available to a man and woman. It's only the legal definition that will change, and if a small semantic change has to occur to give rights to a currently downtrodden group in society, I'm all for it.
And your example of trying to adopt a dog saddens me. If you can't see the difference, you never will.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Excuse me? We are talking about a piece of legislation that changes the fundamental meaning of a word, a word which is attached to something which is the fundamental basis of our society, and this doesn't affect me at all? It affects the very shape of the society we live in, and the society that my kids will someday grow up in, and I'm gonna have to do alot of explaining for them that my parents never had to do.
A) The government lacks the power to change the meaning of a word. It merely has the power to misuse that word.
B) The government makes decisions every day that are going to change society more than this will. We're talking about the term the government uses to describe a certain relationship. That's not a society-changing issue. It's a technicality that at most will slightly alter taxes for the rest of us. It won't even alter what you have to explain to your children, because children are not concerned with legal definitions - either way they will want to know why a man and a man can be in such a relationship, whether it is called marriage or not.
Bob,
quote:dh, do you have any clue how offensive it is to make an analogy between the relationship of two human beings to your relationship with a dog?
Perhaps as offensive as it is to many to try to equate the marriage of a man and woman to the relationship of two men or two woman?
If we are doing so, that means we must be throwing offensiveness out the window - saying that gay people have the right to marry, and be called married, no matter how offensive it is to others. And if we're throwing offensiveness out the window, why not include man-dog relationships? Why not include ANY exclusive, intimate relationship under the definition of marriage? After all, doing so could only bring happiness to the people who want those relationships, and doesn't really effect the rest of us.
Don't dog-lovers have the right to marry too? Who gets hurt by allowing dog-man marriages to exist?
quote:Perhaps as offensive as it is to many to try to equate the marriage of a man and woman to the relationship of two men or two woman?
Xap, that's absurd.
"I am offended by homosexual marriage, but I am not homosexual."
The worst that can happen here, if homosexual marriage is allowed, is you wind up horrified by the direction your country is taking because it does not mesh with your personal morality. This is the situation DH finds himself in. It is not a happy place, and I confess I will feel exactly the same if the same-sex marriage bill does not pass in Parliament: I will be disgusted and saddened.
"I am homosexual and am offended that some heterosexuals want to keep me from having a civil marriage."
Homosexuals feel that this is a denial of their right to equal treatment as human beings. Horror, disgust, and sadness do not even come close to how homosexuals feel about this issue, and you should know that.
No wonder Caleb and Karl don't post here anymore.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
William Raspberry, in today's Washington Post, referenced a passage from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity which has formed half the philosophical position for my support of civil marriage for same-sex couples:
quote: C.S. Lewis, the British essayist, author and cleric, died 41 years ago, so he wasn't writing about same-sex marriage in America. No, his subject in his book "Mere Christianity" was divorce. Still, his observations may shed some light on our "values" controversy today.
"I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused," he wrote. "The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question -- how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws.
"A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. . . .
"There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."
Religious marriage, he was saying, is a sacrament, and the state has no more business involving itself in the rules that govern it than it has in such questions as the efficacy of infant baptism, the validity of kosher certification or the number of virgins a (male) martyr might reasonably anticipate as his reward.
But marriage isn't only sacrament. It is also the basis on which we decide who may inherit in the absence of a will, who may make life-or-death decisions for loved ones, or who is eligible for the advantages of joint tax returns. And because it has these secular implications, the state has a legitimate role in determining who is married and who isn't.
The church has no interest in joint filings, and the state no interest in declarations of love or religious affiliation. To the one, marriage is a sacred rite; to the other, it is the sanctioning of a contractual relationship. The church may care whether he is a philanderer or she a gold-digger, or whether there's too great a gap in their ages. The state's interests run to the validity of the contract.
It's also the reason for my stated preference that the legal side simply be called "civil union." Let marriage refer, not just to Christian Marriage (of which there are several variations), but to the spiritual, sacramental, or otherwise non-legalistic implications of two people joining together for life (or eternity).
However, my preference is just that - a preference, one I will vote for and urge my representatives to vote for. It is not foundationally necessary to my wish that a legal entity creating legal responsibilities, rights, and conveniences be opened up to couples that wish to partake of it.
posted
The only problem there is that "marriage" has been used for both purposes for so long. Even if the word were struck from all of our laws, I think lots of people who got civil unions would still say they were married -- partly because of inertia and partly because it's a lot less cumbersome than saying "we have a civil union."
What about adopting something along the lines of the LDS "sealing" to signify an eternal bonding of souls, and leaving "marriage" for the law books?
Edit: Or, obviously, coming up with some one-word term for civil unions that's easily verbed. At the end of the day, I think that the inertia behind the use of "marriage" to describe both of these unions is too great.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
