If that comes under the definition of operating a charity hall. Does it? Do you have a cite?
No, they are saying that an organization cannot operate a charity hall in a residential zone. The same way I cannot operate a shoe store out of my home.
They can do it all day long in a commercial zone.
Yeah, and then hang around, vandalize property, litter, aggressively panhandle, publicly urinate… I don’t get the impression the homeless are being targeted just for funsies, but for what they do.
So every church prayer breakfast is operating a charity hall? You do realize that most churches have events like this on a regular basis right?
Ok, so then the cops should come around and roust the homeless rather than telling the church it cannot host a breakfast unless it tells poor people to fuck off.
I have no idea how a charity hall is defined under city ordinance. That’s why I asked for a cite. But I’m going to assume that the hearing officer, a retired Arizona Supreme Court Justice, does know, and applied it accordingly. Do you know anything to the contrary? Do you know how it is defined?
If you like, but wouldn’t it be more efficient to impose some rules on when and how the church can host its breakfast?
Well, clearly the appeals court thought it fit that definition. As such they should just tell churches that they are not allowed to host any sort of mealtimes where they give food to anyone who shows up. Homeless people go to AA meetings, so they should stop hosting those as they often have coffee and donuts. Other churches should stop hosting breakfasts/lunches/dinners lest the homeless show up there too.
Yes, more efficient. Lets destroy community so the bourgeois can be kept away from the smelly homeless problem. Lets legislate everything! Stop those evil churches from feeding people, it’s a nuisance!
Do not leave your pod! If you leave your pod you might subject someone else’s pod to the proximity of your presence!
It’s clear that you don’t know how it is defined, so what makes you think that those examples fit the definition? No one quoted in The Fucking Article seems to think that AA meetings and such will be affected.
This is the issue, if the zoning ordinance says “no feeding of the homeless here,” then the church shouldn’t be above the law.
The chuch can comply, or work to change the ordinance, or deliberately flout the board and pay the consequences, or some combination of the three. But the zoning board shouldn’t stop simply because the infringing organization is “doing a good thing.”
Which has nothing to do with freedom of religion whatsoever.
I’m guessing you never actually had to live in a neighborhood with lots of homeless people around. It’s easy to be tolerant when you don’t actually have to tolerate.
:rolleyes: I live in Manhattan and have lived in New York City for more than a decade.
Sure it does. They are saying that people are not allowed to build community at their churches by communal breakfasts with the congregation. That is certainly about religious freedom.
Of course zoning laws are the primary way by which we are atomized and separated from one another to create good little atomized capitalists/socialists.
But the ordnance isn’t against feeding the homeless as per the article in the OP. The ordnance is against operating a soup kitchen or some other mechanism whose PURPOSE is to feed the homeless. This church wasn’t doing anything of the kind. It hosted a breakfast around worship services and the homeless and hungry showed up to partake.
No homeless feeding organization was organized on this property.
Hmm… I was under the impression that the First Amendment prohibited legislating an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Yoi’re saying that a religious group that believes itself commanded to help the homeless is not exercising its “freedom of religion” in the way that one conducting a Mass or prayer service or listening to a sermon is?
Although I suppose that’s getting into the religious aspects o the case, which I wanted to avoid.
But still, suppose a morning meeting with breakfast is being put on by the local Humanist Association, and they end up feeding the homeless as well as themselves. Does this change the picture any?
If a charity hall is such an organization then yes, one was.
The article doesn’t say much about the particulars of the event, but I daresay that the church didn’t just have a pancake breakfast for it’s members and suddenly find itself feeding a bunch of homeless folks as well. Hosting such an event requires way too much planning. I say this as someone who used to work as a professional caterer.
If everything else is essentially the same, then absolutely not. Why should it? Why should any organization get a free pass with respect to zoning laws?
Wow, churches really are like alien creatures to you aren’t they? You have zero clue how they actually work.
Maybe they have a professional caterer in that church and maybe they don’t. But generally the way these things work is that members of the congregation volunteer to do the work, and so you might have a rotating cast of cooks manning the griddle, you might have Bob bring the paper plates and Susie bring the cups. Churches are organized BY THEIR MEMBERS. Sure sometimes those members happen to be professional caterers, but the idea that every large pancake breakfast at every church across the country is served by a catering company is laughably absurd.
No it isn’t, because the same rule would apply to the local Packers’ Fan Club, High School, Elks, or Klan. The Church isn’t being stopped from doing something other people are allowed to do because they are a Church. They are simply not being given an exemption to a rule of general applicability. To do so would be constitutionally problematic in and of itself. But clear Supreme Court precedent shows that religions are not exempted from such laws.
And what that says essentially is that churches are not allowed in residential neighborhoods. Because hosting congregational breakfasts or other meals is something that almost every church across the country does.
It might be helpful if you would refrain from making shit up. I never said that a professional caterer was required. I said the based on my experience, such an event requires a lot of planning, and suggested that suddenly serving many more folks than just the membership would overwhelm them absent such planning.
Again, stop putting words in my mouth.
Until you can come up with a cite for what constitutes a charity hall under Phoenix ordinances you need to stop making these claims. You have zero evidence that this is true.