Esco, I see that you have achieved your goal of [del]t[/del] provoking comment here. I mean, it’s amusing that a person who, in their first comment said they are not religious at all, to now say spirituality is where it’s at. Just declare victory and move on. If it works for the WBC it should work for you.
Sorry folks, I will now quit providing fodder for the…provoker.
Jesus loves you, Baker
So long as its vodka, I’m okay with the spirits
Right, really, when it comes to actual sacramental/doctrinal acts like consecration of marriages, ordinations, etc. any such suit would be a waste of the Court’s time, under the current understanding of the Free Exercise/Separation doctrine.
Especially in American religious culture, where schism/apostasy is not considered a problem. Your particular church/congregation won’t perform your ceremony? Change to another one or start your own, it’s the American tradition.
That’s an entirely different matter from complaints in regard to secular/lay employment/contracting or to accommodation and services by church***-owned*** or affiliated independent entities, which have existed for a while already on a number of different issues (e.g. the Healthcare Insurance contraception mandate).
That there’s the ocassional person saying that if churches won’t accommodate on everything they should lose their tax exemption or something like that? Sure, we even run into some even on these boards, but IMO that’s mostly those who would not mind divesting all church privileges anyway.
I’m sorry, that’s not correct. The correct response is:
Friendly? Just listen!
Churches are already allowed to not marry whoever they want. Some churches refuse to marry divorcees. Some churches refuse to marry people with different religions.
No one considers that a problem because they don’t need to get married in a church. They can go get married in the courthouse, and it will be exactly the same legally.
That’s what gays want, and that’s what they’re being denied in states like Kansas.
Churches aren’t being used in the US to perform same sex marriages. Where did you get that idea?
There is NO exclusion in the law as-written. Police, EMTs, doctors, and firefighters can all refuse to serve.
I’m part of the activist effort in Kansas to stop this bill. There is hope - many in the Senate are appalled at this bill, and it is possible it will never be brought to a vote, or the government and public institutions will be exempted from the law by the time the Senate is done. I don’t know though.
Crud, was on my phone when I wrote that. Was supposed to be sued, not used.
But could they possibly be sued some time in the future??
Same way if a restaurant refuses to serve a black customer (for example)
.
Separation of church and state. They could sue, but they would not win. Have you actually looked into this or ‘just asking questions’?
Nope, I was just curious.
I didnt know it would fall under “separation of church & state”, but I guess it makes sense that it does
That actually raises an interesting point, though. Could a church, a private organization, legally refuse to allow blacks to attend? If not, hooray, but if so, are there any that do so?
As mentioned earlier in the thread, it would be the same principle that Catholic churches can refuse to marry divorced couples (some more conservative protestant churches do this as well), only marry their own members, denominations that already won’t marry same sex couples. Hell, there are churches that won’t marry interracial couples. For better or worse, churches are given very wide latitude when it comes to internal affairs.
I guess if they could theoretically refuse gays based on SOCAS, they could also refuse blacks.
But there would be no basis in the Bible to refuse blacks, they could make an argument that there is for gays
The Bible (particularly the story of Noah’s son Ham) was frequently used to justify treatment of Blacks as
second-class citizens in US history. Saying “there’s no basis in the Bible to refuse blacks” ignores a lot of history.
That was used by the Morman church (until the 1970’s) to exclude blacks from the priesthood, meaning the couldn’t have a ‘celestial marriage’ and were therefore excluded from the top tier of heaven. Just for being black.
There are still golf courses that don’t allow women. The justification is that they are a “private association” and not a “business.” A lot of us don’t like it, but as long as they can provide the fig-leaf of not actually charging admission for providing a service, they get away with it.
It’s the “free association” clause of the Constitution. If you’re holding a birthday party for your kid, you can choose to exclude the black kids from his school class. It’d be a small-minded, nasty, racist, ugly thing to do…and perfectly legal and constitutionally protected.
If you’re a business, hosting birthday parties for kids – Chuck E Cheese’s, e.g. – this won’t work.
You are correct Una. There is no exclusion, and the bill’s potential scope is astonishing.
Here’s my analysis of the politics:
The bill got this far because the whole Kansas House is up for reelection this year, and the conservative Republicans are pandering to their evangelical base to avoid even more conservative primary challenges. Lance Kinzer, who is chair of the House Judiciary committee and seems to be preening himself for a run for Kansas A.G. in 2018, may have written the bill, although I don’t think he’s claimed it publicly. The House also figures, even if the bill gets passed, the courts will immediately enjoin its implementation.
Governor Brownback is also up for re-election this year, but his problem is he can’t afford to further alienate moderates and win in the general election, so this bill is the last thing he wants to see on his desk. I’m betting he’s told Senator Wagel to kill it or at least water it down significantly.
None of the Kansas Senate is up for re-election this year, and given that voters memories are so short, the Senate will pay no price for watering it down or even killing it.
I wonder how much of all this was scripted from the get-go; sort of the Kansas Legislature’s version of Kubuki.
There’s also a rumor he’s dead. Buried in the back yard or something.