How do you square this with what I mentioned above regarding Selective Service requirements and similar issues? Like I said, if there is ever a draft, we aren’t permitted to use mail-order ordinations to exempt people. We have to determine that the person in question is a clergyman as a primary occupation and not as a lark.
It is clear that government has to make this determination from time to time - no right is absolute in this country. And while I don’t like the way lines have been drawn in this instance that doesn’t mean I’m against drawing them.
If you want the really good cases, look to prisoner complaints under the first amendment. My old Admin Law professor spent time at the DoJ opposing these religious claims, such as the “church” that claimed filet steak was a required sacrament for its adherents.
The whole thing goes to show the ridiculous nature of special advantages for religion under the law. Few things smack of establishment more than a Supreme Court, more and more dominated by one particular religious viewpoint, determining what beliefs are sincere enough to constitute a religion.
I’m going to ask some stupid questions because this thing looks really retarded to me. Like Bush level moronic, and maybe there’s something I don’t understand that makes it not so brain damaged.
Okay the “problem” is people who may, or may not be ministers or religious authorities are performing marriages correct? If so why in Zeus’s golden nutsack does that matter? If a couple shows up to tell the government “yo dawg we be hitched”, and they’re not brother and sister or something, isn’t that good enough?
Yeah, because the way the rule seems to be written, a retired clergyperson from a mainstream religious organization would not have a congregation or building, and would therefore be prohbited from performing marriages.
Seriously, who the hell cares whether a clergyperson has a building or a congregation? There are all sorts of people who have, say, graduated from theological schools of various sorts who don’t have congregations. How does this make them any less qualified to perform a marriage ceremony than a justice of the peace?
Two of my friends were married in August 2007 by a mutual friend who is a ULC minister. We have all known each other for more than a decade, and the bride and groom are not active practitioners of any religion. So how is it that, say, a rabbi who doesn’t know either of them (they were both raised Jewish, but are nonpracticing) is in a better position to determine whether they should marry than someone who has known both of them for years? The whole thing seems silly.
There was a time, months or years ago. We had been driving all night and all day, listening to that same damned extended-play tape of the Doors Greatest Hits. The sun beat down upon the endless expanse, causing the cacti in the distance to dance. A hitch-hiker appeared on the side of the road; we had finished our last j, it was worth a shot at a resupply in exchange for the lift.
There was an article in the Times not long ago about how some elections for judgeships (in Texas, I think) were costing millions of dollars. This kind of thing might become a bigger and bigger problem. Wait until the religious right figures out that they can organize for judgeships, not just school boards.