Interesting developments in New Brunswick (the Canadian province, not the New Jersey municipality.)
Last week, a member of the Opposition announced that he was going to introduce a private member’s bill in the Assembly, to allow religious officials and court clerks (who perform civil marriages in New Brunswick) to refuse to perform same-sex marriages if it was contrary to their religion: Activists Fight Bill Permitting Marriage Commissioners to Refuse Homosexual “Marriages”. (Note that the Supreme Court of Canada has already said that the Charter and provincial human rights codes will protect religious officials who refuse to perform same-sex marriages, so the point of this bill is the reference to the court clerks who perform civil marriages.)
The Attorney General of New Brunswick said that the government of New Brunswick would support the bill:
What he said the second time is correct. You’re hired to perform a service. If you don’t want to do the job, get out of the job. He was in error initially. Sadly, the seemingly bizarre thinking we see taking place some places south of the border sometimes trickles up here. Fortunately, so far, reason has prevailed and swatted away lunatic principles such as being allowed to remain in a job that you refuse to perform.
Edited to add: I’m a civil servant and I’d fully expect to be tossed out if I decided that I wouldn’t do my job for whatever reason.
I can’t even begin to imagine why anybody could think that kind of ‘do your job only if it feels good’ attitude would be defensible.
Well, but if GOD tells you not to do it because GOD would be all offended and stuff if you go against GOD’s will and provide that service to someone who’s refusing to obey GOD’s commands and behave the way GOD tells you such folks ought to behave, I mean, who’s more important, some pissant company and/or agency made up of mere mortals or GOD?
If you think GOD is telling you stuff, you also probably don’t need that job. You probably need long-term medical treatment. You’ll not see the Pope claiming GOD has literally spoken to him, and if not the Pope, why would GOD talk to any other schlub?
Why are they only letting clerks object to same-sex marriage if it’s against their beliefs? If you’re gonna grant CO status for one belief you need to grant it for others. Like if a clerk’s a devout Catholic and refuses to marry a divorced couple. Or if a clerk has religious objections to interracial marriage. Or insists that all women promise to obey. These are civil servants, not clergy. The only reason they should decline to perform a marriage is if they have reason to believe the couple’s acting illegally (lied about age, bigamy, etc).
It looks like the text of the bill is broader than just for officials who object to same-sex marriage:
so if I’m reading it correctly, a devout Catholic court clerk would be able to refuse to perform a marriage ceremony for a divorced person. i’m sure other examples might come to mind.
Actually, even more so. A court clerk is an employee of the government; s/he has absolutely no ethical or moral right to refuse to uphold the law of the land.
With pharmacists, at LEAST you have the argument that they’re privately employed, and most businesses are within their rights to not offer services they don’t want to offer. (Not that I buy in in that case, since pharmacists are state-licensed.) But a court clerk doesn’t have any right to decide what services his employer (the Province) will offer.
Not only that, but the Province has no choice in providing same-sex marriage, as federal law mandates it, and Ottawa has no choice in mandating it, as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms requires it.
Whenever this comes up I wonder if Catholic clerks are allowed to decline to perform marriages for couples where one or both have been divorced. I suspect not, but I never hear them whining about it. Personally, I wouldn’t care if any specific clerk who objects to performing same-sex marriages passes those couples off on a colleague to avoid doing them. But if he’s the only one available and a same-sex couple comes in and asks to be wed, he’d best buck up and get to marryin’.
Except if this bill were to pass, the clerk would have the legal right to refuse - the Legislature would be changing the terms of the office to permit it. That’s what I found interesting about it (that, and the quick turn-around from the AG.)
As long as the second part of the text Northern Piper quoted is upheld, I’d be happy. What matters to me is access to services, not demanding someone in particular provide the service.
Like with the pharmacist issue, I think it would be a complete non-issue that an individual pharmacist refused to dispense a drug, as long as the customer could still get the drug from the pharmacy without unreasonable delay.
So, go ahead with your law, go ahead and let individuals refuse to provide services, but you better make the service fully available to everyone who should legally be served.
In Spain there was the expectable problems when same-sex marriages were legalized.
Civil marriages can be performed by judges (not elected) or by city councilors (elected). Most municipalities asked those councilors who performed marriages to indicate whether they’d perform same-sex marriages and so long as one would, the function was considered “covered”; if someone who was in the list for “performs marriages” would rather not and someone who hadn’t had that duty was willing to take it up, they reorganized. Most of the news I’ve seen have actually been about “this guy is from a party that voted against same-sex marriage and he just performed one!” or “this woman voted against same-sex marriage in Congress and she just performed one!” Since I find the notion of “I voted against it, but it’s the law now and therefore I follow it” perfectly logical, I’m kind of amused that the flagbearer newspaper of their main rival finds it such a scandal. I imagine they’d rather be able to complain about the ones who’ve said they won’t perform same-sex marriages, but there’s cases of that from pretty much every party.
We have cases of councilors who refuse to perform marriages because they consider marriage an outdated institution and an invasion by the government of something that should be completely private. Does “being an anarchist” count as religion? And no, I don’t know how do you match up being on record as saying that government shouldn’t exist with being a full-time politician and getting your income from said government.
Haven’t heard of a Spanish judge refusing to perform same-sex marriages.
There were two Spanish magistrates who refused to issue licences and started constitutional challenges, but the Constitutional Court rejected both challenges, apparently on grounds of standing - magistrates didn’t have the standing to challenge the law they were required to uphold.
