Thanks, you saved me some typing.
This whole thing confuses me. The Christian ideas of marriage are only applicable to wedding services carried out according to the appropriate Christian form, no churches consider any form of civil marriage to be something that they should be concerned with. A registraar registering a union that the state has chosen to sanction between two people of the same sex is in no greater conflict with their beliefs than when registering a union between 2 people of the opposite sex that have not been married in a church. In which case they are probably in the wrong job…
Well, I certainly agree that this should be the case. However, given the hue and cry over same-sex marriage from religious conservatives, it seems quite obvious that there are in fact many churches concerned with what form civil marriages take.
Tough toenails. Whatever many churches feel does not dictate policy in this country.
At least, in theory… in practice, it turns out that democracy works in their way in most places. Makes you just juittery with anticipation for elections in Iraq, where there is an even stronger religious movement.
Right, that doesn’t make it a religious belief though. I mean churches might be concerned about the gap between the rich and poor in society, but that doesn’t mean revenue employees could cite religious beliefs for refusing to implement a tax rise for lower earners.
One big issue that most posters have ignored is that this is a change in policy. It’s one thing to say that if marrying same sex couples are part of job, then nobody who objects to performing these marriages should take the job. Fair enough. But it’s different to say that somebody who’s already been working this job should now be required to assume a new duty that they may find morally objectionable. This person could reasonably argue that they are still willing to do the job they were hired for.
I don’t see that that makes a difference. The job that they applied for was to administrate civil marriages as defined and legislated by the state, and that is still their job.
The implication would be that any change in any government policy could lead to a government employee claiming that it conflicted with their moral beliefs and that they were being discriminated against.
Knowing that public policy is subject to change is also part of the job. Democracies are not static in their policy, any public servant already knows that when they take the job. They are not agreeing to enforce public policy only as it is right now, they are agreeing to enforce any changes.
Just to draw an analogy, a police officer cannot argue that he should only have to enforce the laws that were on the books when he enlisted in the force.
Or this one, for that matter.
Well to play the ethics card, what if you were a cop in a state with sodomy laws which were suddenly required to be enforced ?
Then I would wonder how I would catch people in the act without a warrant to see them having sex O_o
Either quit or ignore the infractions and accept any penalization that occurs.
But a police officer CAN argue he’s disobeying the law if it’s to further the cause of granting more civil rights to people.
Right?
Wrong. A police officer can argue that he’s engaging in civil disobedience by disobeying the law in order to grant civil rights/refuse to infringe on civil rights. In so doing he is behaving morally. He should not expect to do so without consequences, naturally, and it would not be discrimination on the part of the government to discipline him - notwithstanding the fact that it would be discrimination on the part of the government to continue refusing to grant civil rights/infringing upon civil rights.
Similarly, a government agent in Manitoba may engage in civil disobedience by refusing to enact same-sex marriages. In so doing, the agent is behaving appropriately insofar as his own view of morality dictates, but we may provide soundly reasoned arguments demonstrating that any view of morality that dictates that the government may not legitimately recognize same-sex marriages is seriously flawed. So, from a purely internal viewpoint, the actions are quite similar, and we should judge the actions as similar so long as we’re judging merely the actions and not the internal viewpoints themselves. However, there’s clearly a case to be made that one of the viewpoints is commendable, and one that is not.
Moreover, and this is the point of this thread, the government is not engaging in unfair discrimination by decertifying agents who refuse to enact same-sex marriages.
Newsom was breaking the law. (Well, I’m not sure if he was breaking the law, or just issuing marriage licenses that didn’t have any legal meaning.) The marriage licenses were not valid.
I believe his stance was MORAL, and it’s admirable that he took it. But it was ILLEGAL, and what is moral is not always legal. Civil disobedience carries with it consequences - thats kind of the point of civil disobedience, as Gandhi would have pointed out, though many people seem to have forgotten that.The point of civil disobedience is that you break the law to show the law is unjust, not that you pretend the law doesn’t exist.
Right.
And another detail: Newsom’s ultra vires actions did not have the effect of depriving anyone of an already recognized right to receive a public service. The agents of the City of San Francisco were not witholding performance of their legal duties (except maybe that the flood of gay applicants may have caused serious delays to other people seeking their valid certificates), but performing one that was outside their scope of authority.
I believe you will find near-unanimous agreement on this point in this thread.