US: Taking a cracker hostage is a mortal sin.

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Not who they are, but what they do. It's not the people, but their sins that they condemn. If they can't seperate the two, then that's their problem. If they won't seperate the two, then that's also their problem.

Wrong. They are condemning an impure act that has been forbidden by God.

No, but they are trying to coerce religious leaders to use the name of God to santify their marriages despite the fact that their sexual practices are an abomination.

I suspect that they didn't want to find another commissioner...

Well put. I have to endure people looking at me like I have two heads because I don't drink Alcohol. I even have some that believe that they are doi9ng what's best for me by trying to discredit my faith. Being called for the things that make you different from the norm IS being treated like everyone else. If the homosexuals don't like that, then be careful what they wish for...

Thank you. What right does he have to disrupt them?

That's the heart of the matter. It is the consecration of the cracker that changes it from a cracker to an emblem of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ--something key to the Catholic faith.

No, he did go. It would have been sensible to be somewhere else, but he chose to go, cause a disturbance during the most sacred part of the service, and wondered why people got pissed off...

We're talking about two different things here. You look at serving food to them or some other mundane business. The minister in question was canned for refusing to perform a marriage for them. Food is food, but Marriage is a sacred ordinance to the religious, and if their faith forbids homosexuality or rigidly defines marriage as between a man and a woman, then you are asking him to directly violate his ethos.

Let me add to this one point: The commandments apply to all. Homosexual activity, just like fornication or adultery, is strictly prohibited, but it is not the business of the congregation, but rather for the offender(s) and their Bishop.

LKD also brought up the Sacrement. In our church, it is not any great secret. The prayers are found in scripture (in two different parts, the same prayers are given), and the trays of bread and water are passed through the congregation. Anyone in attendance can see the trays and their contents. In most cases the members themselves can easily explain the Sacrement to a guest, and can introduce the person to the priesthood who officiate the ordinance.

 

You may find this hard to believe but it's sort of a religious preference. We have a large area in H-Town that is "Chinatown," in the southwest part of the city. I always thought it was a strange place, since it used to be the middle of white suburbia about 20 years ago. Now, even many of the street signs are in Chinese - big change. I asked one of the restaurant owners in Chinatown why they chose that area. He explained to me that when they started settling in Houston in larger numbers they bought over a Chinese mystic to evaluate the H-Town area, and that he determined that a dragon had died (which is a good place to live if you are Chinese) near Belaire and Gessner, and that is why they settled there. I wasn't sure if I believed him, but I looked it up and sure enough, that's what they did. Pretty cool....

 

Yep, most chinese are big into the proper feng shui alignments for were they live & work.

 

and

I assume the above relates to homosexuality specifically? In that case I have to say - oh please. This is a typical 'pick and choose' approach to which parts of the bible you follow. There is all sort of weirdness in the old testament which is largely ignored (not eating pigs and shellfish, stoning people etc), yet the vague passage supposedly condeming homosexuality is touted far and wide...

By the way, we seem to be drifting from the cracker rather a lot...

 

I don't know where you got the mistaken belief that JOP's are self employed http://www.boston.com/news/local/co...of_the_peace_split_on_civil_unions/?page=full

"In Massachusetts, where justices of the peace are gubernatorial appointees, they were warned after their state legalized gay marriage in 2004 that they are to perform same-sex marriages or resign. Some gave up their posts over the issue.

Vermont, the first state to legalize civil unions, elects its justices of the peace and, like Connecticut's, gives JPs discretion regarding particular civil unions or weddings. They could find trouble in a blanket refusal to do civil unions, however, because that could be considered illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation."
There are alot of states like massachusetts, where as a JOP you don't have a choice, you either do it or resign.

As far as not trying to censor christians : http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31080

Certain passages of the Bible can be construed as hate literature if placed in a particular context, according to a Canadian provincial court.
The Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatchewan upheld a 2001 ruling by the province's human rights tribunal that fined a man for submitting a newspaper ad that included citations of four Bible verses that address homosexuality.

A columnist noted in the Edmonton Journal last week that the Dec. 11 ruling generated virtually no news stories and "not a single editorial."

Imagine "the hand-wringing if ever a federal court labeled the Quran hate literature and forced a devout Muslim to pay a fine for printing some of his book's more astringent passages in an ad in a daily newspaper," wrote Lorne Gunter in the Edmonton, Alberta, daily.

Under Saskatchewan's Human Rights Code, Hugh Owens of Regina, Saskatchewan, was found guilty along with the newspaper, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, of inciting hatred and was forced to pay damages of 1,500 Canadian dollars to each of the three homosexual men who filed the complaint.

like i said there is an obvious double standard when it coms to christianity as opposed to other religions.

 

Gnarff, I think Vukodlak could be right- we are moving considerably away from the whole cracker business, so I'll leave things there apart from one final comment:

Unless it is a cracker.

I'm sorry, TGS, but that is quite simply a load of rubbish. Arguments are based on logic, and the logic behind an argument is entirely unaffected by the arguer's tone.

Attempting to sway people through tone is rhetoric- it isn't an argument in itself, and neither does it affect any arguments made. Now, I'm not saying that tone has no effect on people- it does. However, tone does not 'trump reason' in, what should be at least, an intellectual discussion.

 

Well, I called a friend of mine who works as a newscaster. She told me that to her knowledge, no civil JP (who here are employees of the government, not freelancers) in Alberta has been fired for refusing to perform a gay marriage. However, she did say that when gay marriage was legalized, a civilly employed commissioner stated that because of his religious beliefs he would not be performing any gay marriages. He was told that if he refused a request to perform a gay marriage, he risked losing his job. I have no link at the moment but I've asked my friend to search through her station's files to find the story.

So the concept is not one coming out of my butt, Drew!

I guess what I'm arguing is this -- there are a lot of extremists out there, whose views do not necessarily reflect those of the majority of people who hold to similar positions. (For example, animal rights activists who break into labs and release animals. Those activists do not reflect your position as an animal rights activist, Drew, right?) I believe that the vast majority of gays merely want to to have a marriage ceremony and live their lives the way they want. There are SOME activists who want to take things significantly further. I know that in religion there are similar extremists. I just want people to recognize that such extremists exist in other groups as well.

Which leads us back to the cracker. I'll use myself as an example - -I know that there are some Catholics who believe (or believed) that the cracker actually transubstantiates into the flesh of Christ. I do not share this belief. BUT I do not head on over to the nearest Cathedral and interrupt their services by standing up and saying "Hey, idiots, it's just a cracker! I'm gonna take one home and feed it to my pet bird, ha ha you fools!"

I know the kid didn't say anything like that but his actions were just as disrespectful. By the same token, offering a death threat for the kid's stupidity is out of proportion no matter how you cut it. If you don't agree with a religion's peaceful practices, then go home, or protest outside if you've REALLY got nothing better to do, but don't interrupt them!

 

@ Martaug, I was referring to their duties in the officiating of marriage ceremonies. Such ceremonies are usually conducted "on the side", and outside the direct employ of the state. The state licenses them and mandates how much they can charge for their services, but they decide when to work, with whom they work, and how often. Thus far, none of the many Massachusetts JOP's who have publicly refused to perform gay marriages have been asked to stand down, nor has any clergy been forced to perform gay marriages. This alarm, like most others raised in the gay marriage debate, was just another much ado about nothing.

@LKD, I think we mostly agree, now. I still feel that you grossly over-estimate the power of the tiny, tiny minority of gay rights activists that actually do want to force the religious community to perform gay marriages, but at least you've conceded that there just aren't very many people who see things that way. On the rest, we can simply agree to disagree. Time will tell.

That said, I do believe that state employees who are expressly employed to officiate marriage ceremonies should not be allowed to refuse to officiate over a gay civil marriage if at the court house, during their state appointed office hours, and specifically assigned to officiate over court-house marriages. Since a state marriage is a legal procedure and not a religious sacrament, refusing to provide such a service in a court house and during official court hours - if doing exactly that is your appointed duty - would constitute discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. An individual uncomfortable with the idea of officiating over the occasional gay courthouse marriage (which is just a dry legal proceeding, after all) during his normal work day should simply request another post.

 

Once again, that prohibition was historical from the scribes and Pharisees (like judges and politicians of today), as opposed to...

...which is very explicit, and DIRECTLY from God.

That cracker as some insist on calling it, is only the tip of the iceberg. By stealing the "cracker", which is sacred to the Catholic faith, it was perceived as an attack on their faith. On the mere principle, there should have been charges brought against the young man in question.

And how would you feel if your boss told you that you would be fired for refusing to eat Veal Cutlet? These people are being asked to violate a major tenet of their religious beliefs. Shouldn't this constitute a Human Right's violation?

 

Bad comparison, Gnarff. No one is asking the judge in question to have a gay marriage himself; the couple getting married is eating the veal. The judge is being asked to legally bind a marriage contract as an agent of the state; he's being asked to cut, prepare, and sell the veal to someone else. Gnarff, if my boss required me to cut, prepare, and sell veal as a condition of employment, my boss would be a butcher, and do you think I would work for a butcher?

You may want to re-visit my bold again, since you appear to have misunderstood what I said. If you are specifically employed to perform courthouse weddings, then that is your job. In a courthouse wedding, the judge asks a few questions, signs and notarizes your marriage license, and sends you on your way. No pomp, no ceremony. It's just a legal procedure. If a judge wants to refuse to perform private gay marriages on his own time (most weddings don't happen in court-houses or during court hours), that's his prerogative, but if he's on the bench and a gay couple wants to have their marriage license signed and notarized, he has no right to tell them that no, they can't finalize their paperwork.

 

My apologies, there msut be two such passages. The one I read (in Leviticus I think it was) is vague and certainly subject to interpretation - and also has no bearing on female homosexuals. Incidentally, just to put into perspective, I seem to remember the same passage saying something about not being with your 'father's other wives', and not having sex with a woman who is menstruating...

Incidentally, I never could find that bit about the devil quoting scripture for his own purpose. That in the bible?

 

If he's the only judge in town, then I would agree with you on this one (to a point) Drew. What worries me, and you believe that I'm jumping at shadows, is a scenario like this:

Judge Franks is a Christian who firmly believes that gay marriage should be illegal. He has sat on the bench for 20 years and served the community extremely well. Now the law has changed. He's not happy with it, but he is a decent man and doesn't kick up a fuss that wouldn't make a difference anyway. Two gay men come to the courthouse asking for their papers to be signed. Franks tells them that he cannot in good conscience sign their papers, and sends them over to Judge Jones, who cheerfully signs their papers and the two gay men go home happy. No problem, no fuss.

The next two gay men who come in have the same thing happen, but THESE two are not satisfied. Judge Franks has failed to kowtow to their beliefs. To be a good person, you MUST believe exactly as they do. They want FRANKS to do it because he's the first judge they saw. They won't wait 20 minutes, that's a horrible infringment on their rights. Judge Franks, they say, secretly hates all homosexuals and wants to kill them all and his refusal to give them their gay marriage is proof that he kills homosexuals in his spare time! He must be removed from the bench for holding such dangerous beliefs!

Tempest in a teapot that could end up hurting Franks for no other reason than the second pair of gay men like to cause trouble. Getting married wasn't their prime goal. Threatening the job and livelihood of a long-standing public servant to make a political statement was their real purpose. It makes me sick. Their rights were never infringed.

Now as I said, if they live in a small town and Franks is the only judge, then Franks has some thinking to do. In his position, I would step down or move to criminal court or retire or something. But in a big city where there's plenty of other judges (or marriage commissioners, or whatever they are called in your jurisdiction) there's no need to force that representative to be a party to an action he or she is morally opposed to. Another representative can easily give the gay people what they need.

I know you think that's a pretty esotaric scenario, but I think that the radicals would love to do something like that out of spite.

 

You're jumping at shadows again, LKD. People don't just walk up to a judge in chambers or in the courthouse. The clerk sends them, and a judge who has requested not to be assigned weddings simply won't have them assigned to him. You are using a fake situation that has never happened* with fake, two dimensional people to illustrate your fear. You have a just and righteous judge and two wholly nefarious homosexual reactionaries who act purely out of malice, spite, and ignorance. Issues with real people don't happen as you've laid them out, and we have yet to see a judge get fired for refusing to officiate over a gay union.

Judges can choose which kinds of cases they'll take. They don't have to perform marriages. Now, if a judge chooses to have marriages added to his caseload and is uncomfortable with the idea of performing the occasional gay union, then he is well within his rights to choose to have marriages removed from his caseload. Just as a vegetarian waiter at a steakhouse can't reasonably expect to keep his job while refusing to serve his customers steak, an anti-gay marriage judge shouldn't be allowed to refuse to perform gay civil unions if he chooses to have marriage proceedings added to his caseload. Given the fact that bench weddings are among the least stressful and acrimonious things a judge can possibly be asked to do, there will be no shortage of judges who will take them on without a fuss.

My point here is that a judge shouldn't be able to perform some marriages while refusing others during work hours. He is within his rights to choose not to receive any marriage licenses during bench or office hours, but as an agent of the state, he is not within his rights to tell homosexuals to "get in another line" when they are on his caseload. After work, he can discriminate against homosexuals all he wants, but at work, his job is to serve as an agent of the state, and the state doesn't discriminate on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

* Or you'd be talking about a real situation, instead.

 

oh i see drew any situation you make up is real & any situation that doesn't agree with you is false.
Jeez, you totally ingored half of what he posted to try and spin it your way.

 

The State is composed of people, and a judge is a citizen with just as many rights as another citizen. It is not discrimination to send people to another line, as the first quote I took from your post illustrates -- there's lots of other representatives of the State who can help you -- it is not necessary for me to do so.

I know you think that my scenario is 2 dimensional, but I see it as plausible, as I do believe that there are homosexuals out there with a definite agenda, just as there are Christians with an agenda, politicians with an agenda . . . having an agenda is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is disagreeing with someone else's agenda.

 

Martaug, I don't traffic in hyperbole and apocryphal stories. My situation was an if-then. If a judge has weddings on his caseload, then he would be discriminating if he told people who waited in line to receive a constitutionally guaranteed service that, since they are gay, they need to wait in line again. Since that isn't the same treatment to which a heterosexual couple would be subjected, it would constitute discrimination. Since judges are asked to finalize marriage paperwork for heterosexual and, where applicable, homosexual couples, this isn't a made up situation, either.

No JOP's have been asked to stand down for recusing themselves from gay courthouse marriages. Since gay marriages and civil unions have been legal in one form or another and one state or another for quite some time in the US, it stands to reason that if this was going to happen, it would have happened already. While technically possible, the fact that it already hasn't means that it isn't bloody likely to happen in the future. The moon hasn't turned to blood at any time in at least the last 10,000 years. It won't turn to blood tomorrow.

Just because some two dimensional, comic-book-nefarious gay couple tries to institute an eeeevil plan to get a righteous, god-fearing judge fired for sticking to his Christian principles doesn't mean anyone else is going to bite. It isn't enough to be an activist, after all, to make something happen. It isn't enough to make lots of noise and create controversy. The public - 2/3 of whom still disapprove of gay marriage - actually has to take both you and your agenda seriously.

 

But they are demanding that they commit blasphemy against their deeply held religious beliefs. That too is a greivous sin.

But what if your job description was CHANGED to demand that you do just that? It had never before done that, but now you are required to do that lest you get fired and labeled a pariah, ridiculed for your vegan principles. That is what's happenning to these judges. They had the duty to preform marriages between men and women. This has never been a violation of their convictions before, but now that the law has changed, they should not be forced to act against their ethical principles. To do otherwise is persecutory to those with religious beliefs.

But Marriage is NOT just a legal procedure to Christians. To Christianity Marriage is a very sacred ordinance. To most Christian faiths, it is restricted to male and female. To change their job description to require that they do anything against their moral principles is unethical. To discriminate against their religious beliefs is unconstitutional.

First, that passagte is NOT vague, but rather explicit. Secondly, thou is gender neutral. This prohibition applies to both men and women. The rules for sex are explicit. Between a man and a woman who are married. ANYTHING else qualifies as a grievous sin.

I would have thought that fell under the heading of adultery...

So their rights as religious people mean nothing? Their job description has changed. To do this, you put their rights below that of an ordinary citizen.

Which is completely wrong. If it is at all possible, a person SHOULD have the right to legally refuse ANY action that would violate or compromise their values.

Going to a Mormon specific example, here. Suppose a Judge were ordered to perform a gay marriage. Doing so would call his standing within the church into question, possibly to the point of warranting additional dicipline from the Church. So you would force them to choose between their Job and their Religion? Just imagine the furor if someone was told they are fired because they are gay...

 

So it's sacred when a pair of atheists go to the courthouse and fill out some paperwork with a judge? What about the union of an earnest young bi-sexual man and his butch bi-sexual girlfriend who both enjoy swinging, worshiping the devil, and practicing sado-masochism? Is their open marriage sacred? State marriages are legal proceedings. They are not religious proceedings. People for whom marriage is sacred don't get married in the courthouse with the bailiff and court reporter as witnesses. They marry through a church.

Sometimes, the terms of your employment change. When they do, you have a choice to make. I've left 2 different jobs because they asked me to do things I wasn't comfortable doing. What they asked me to do wasn't illegal (and it wasn't food-related), but I felt it was shady. Both times, the decision was hard, but I made it. A judge's job is to be an instrument of the law. When he accepts his appointment or election, a judge knows damn well that laws change from time to time. When they do, he has a choice. He doesn't have to stay a judge, but if he does, then he does have to follow the law.

He can. A judge isn't a soldier under a binding contract. He can quit. He can also request not to have weddings put on his case load when he's on the bench.

No. I would force him to choose between doing his job and not doing his job. If he doesn't want to do the job he agreed to perform with full knowledge of the fact that he is expected to execute the law whether he agrees with it or not and that the law is subject to change, he can choose to quit...or, more conveniently, he can simply have the bench marriages put on someone else's docket. There are lots of judges would love to have a break from criminals, speeders, broken families, etc that they usually deal with and would be more than happy to conduct a wedding for a couple of strangers - even gay strangers - instead.

 

You mentioned this before, and I have to say I agree with it, as odd as it is for us to agree (actually, it's not that odd, but anyhow) Simply focussing on other areas of law would seem to be the best bet. Also, while my examples were designed to make a point (one that I still feel is valid, if unlikely to occur) I do not think (and never did) that people simply waltz in one day and get a marriage performed. It's something they schedule. The judge's clerk could simply not schedule gay marriages for his judge, filling up the judges docket with other marriages and letting another judge perform that wedding (I would bet lots of judges do this for myriad reasons.) That way, EVERY side gets it's reasonable demands / needs met and no one gets their rights trampled on.

GETTING BACK TO THE CRACKER!! Is there any follow up on the cracker incident? Did the fellow apologize? Has Paul Bettany taken a break from flagellating himself and killed the blasphemer? (It was Bettany who played the Opus Dei assassin in Da Vinci Code, right?), has the boy been arrested for trespassing for his behaviour on privateproperty?

 

Ok, here's the thing that I don't see. How is this a crime? He didn't steal it, they gave it to him and, when he didn't eat it, they tried to take it back. Now, they may have given it to him under the assumption he would eat it, and he may have even understood that assumption, but if he didn't legally agree to it, and if he didn't try any kind of deciet in getting the cracker (I don't think he lied about not being Catholic, I think he was never asked), then what crime was he commiting.

Likewise, if I go to a sinagogue and ask if I can bring food in, and the rabbi (assuming me to be a practicing Jew) says its ok (I have no idea if it is or not, but just pretend) and I bring out a ham sandwitch, I may have offended them, I may have insulted their religion, but I have not committed a crime. Have I?

On top of that, the reaction of these people is ridiculous. They threaten him with death because he (a non-catholic) violated a catholic rite? That's about par with a Jew threatening death on a doctor who didn't circumcise a child at birth, in my book.