Leaving aside what happened with this thread, my record in Great Debates isn’t half bad…if you had bothered to check. The only closing of one in the last few years was at my own request to start a new one on the same subject, and moves to the BBQ Pit? I’m still looking.
Presumably it’s a final order for appellate purposes because it adjudicates all the rights of the same-sex couple. I’m sure the judge has retained jurisdiction for re-placement purposes but if it’s not a final order then I would assume the child would stay with the lesbian couple until a final placement was made.
Thanks to Kennedy’s fence-sitting, I think it’s too early to say for sure what the overall implications of Obergefell will be for adoption proceedings. What bothers me about this case is that (AIUI) the judge was not weighing alternatives. This wasn’t a custody dispute; it wasn’t a competition between two couples to adopt the child; it was a unilateral adoption proceeding. In other words, the judge seems to have categorically ruled that same-sex couples can never be fit parents.
Assuming reliable research on same-sex parenting exists, I would not personally be opposed to courts using that as a factor in making custody decisions.
We’re just wondering why you opened a debate on a subject that wasn’t likely to have much support for one of the sides. It does sound like more of a Pit subject than a debate. But there was something to discuss about the follow-up and how the state and justice system would handle it. So it’s like, you know, hot-button issue, Dopers, low hanging fruit, etc.
Is that enough to legally keep him from being sanctioned? Or is the original order enough to move forward with a review?
I’m hoping it doesn’t go any further than this. The last thing we need is for this doofus to become a cause for the religious right and certain politicos to rally behind, much like what happened with a certain county clerk and her “gay marriage license” fiasco.
Not enough to keep him from reversing it, though.
It depends on the relevant rules of procedure, but in most jurisdictions this will moot the issue that would have been on appeal and the appeal would be dismissed.
Did you see their picture? Two more normal looking people in the whole world? I think that’s what undermines the evil message more than all of our efforts to scold people into accepting “not normal” as normal. They could be any two moderately frumpy housewives at Wal Mart. Scary, they are not. Good. Good for them, good for the rest of us, good for the kid.
Sometimes, the good guys win.
They haven’t won yet. As I understand it, the judge has merely rescinded “the removal of the child within one week.” The issue of final adoption is still up in the air.
Mormons marching against the Church’s stance.
I’m posting it because the sign all the way on the left is hilarious: “My gay son said there would be donuts.”
From the Reddit post:
How much this actually, practically means I have no idea. It seems to be a genuinely popular thread with serious up-take. I mainly just find it interesting.
I’m going to say, “see, I told you” about the speed of the stay. They wanted to get this off page one as soon as possible.
Legally, there is no need for an attorney. Once a person resigns from a church, they have quit. This was no always the case, they used to no allow resignations, but a Supreme Court cases ruled against another church which refused to allow a person to resign and instead excommunicated them.
However, it can be a pain in the ass to resign from the Mormon church. Although you are technically no longer a member once they receive the letter or email from you, they have long steps which they claim are required, including wanting you to talk to the leader of the local congregation and a “waiting period.”
So while having an attorney write the letter isn’t necessary, it removes the hoops which they attempt to force uninformed members to jump through.
On news about the church changing some of the new rules, they have “clarified” a few of them to make them seem softer, but didn’t change much. As I posted earlier, these rules are receiving a lot of criticisms from many members.
There has been an increase in resignations lately which is working to offset growth. The Mormon church used to be one of the faster growing religions, but it’s close to flat lining now. Despite the 80,000 missionaries and having a higher than average birth rate, the percent of members isn’t growing any faster than the population growth in the US, is actually declining in some countries such as in Western Europe, Japan, Korea and only sees high growth in Africa and some other third world countries.
In news about the adaption,
It goes on.
The bolded bit almost disturbs me more than anything else about that post. There’s such a thing?! :eek:
His point is that you wrote a OP that would only fit in the Pit, and seem surprised that it was moved there. Your OP is a rant, not a call for debate.
I agree.
This would surprise me, if true. As a matter of First Amendment law, I would expect that any church would be completely free to excommunicate any person instead of permitting them to resign. I am always willing to be educated, though. What Supreme Court case was that?
Again, the First Amendment should protect any church’s claim that long steps are required against any law or government action that mandated no such steps. In turn, of course, no law could force an individual to undergo any such steps, long or otherwise.
In other words, the individual is free to resign and simply end contact with the church; the church is free to declare that anyone doing so is excommunicated, and I would be very surprised to learn of any US-based final court decisions to the contrary.
Re leaving the Mormon church – my understanding is that you need to write them a letter to be removed from their rolls, and that it’s easier to do this than it used to be. But it’s easy to quit. You can just stop going, stop calling yourself a Mormon, and stop giving them money. If you walk away like that, but you are still on the Mormon church’s rolls, they will send representatives to talk to you from time to time. You can tell those people to go away, or refuse to answer the door, of course. My local Jehovah’s Witnesses sends people to talk to me even though we have never had any relationship, and what the Mormons do isn’t any more intrusive than that. Many lapsed Mormons DO talk to the missionaries, (or teachers, or whatever they are called), though, because they bring cookies, are willing to chat with a lonely housewife about non-Mormon issues, and sometimes offer the help of the local Mormons if there’s been a house fire or some other catastrophe where a lot of labor would be useful.
I have talked to some rabid anti-abortion picketers. The ones that scream adoption until you put the word “gay” in front of it. Yeah, right, they only approve adoption to the “right” people. And I’ve been told that gay adoption is child abuse because “children need a mother and a father.” When I asked one of them how he was raised, he said “By a single mother after my father deserted her.” So his mother is a child abuser?
Child need GOOD parents. Not perfect, but good.
*Touché! *
It looks like I had misremembered from several years ago.
It was an Oklahoma Supreme Court case where a woman sued for invasion of privacy and damage from intentional infliction of emotional damage from publicly announcing her excommunication and the reason for it in what had been her local church and several others in the area after she attempted to resign.
Summarized here
The case was actually remanded back to the lower court for a new trial to be confined to actionable postwithdrawal conduct.
From the file.
So, you are correct, the church can go ahead and excommunicate a former member who has elected to resign, but in doing so they no longer are able to perform public actions with impunity.
The key here is that the churches cannot treat the individual the same as they would a member without the risk of a lawsuit if that action harms the individual through public shaming, for example.
There was a similar case against the Mormon church in which an Arizona man facing church discipline attempted to resign, but the church went ahead and excommunicated him. The case was settled out of court and the church agreed to change his status from excommunicated. This incident also involved defamation of character.
Before this incident, LDS members were not allowed to have their names removed through voluntarily resignation, but that a church court was required. After the suit was settled, the policy was changed, allowing resignations.
In practice, what this means is that people submit a resignation letter, the local leaders will contact the individual to ensure they intend to resign and will often try to guilt the person into staying or will tell them that they must meet to demonstrate why they no longer wish to remain.
I read about cases where people who have lost patience then tell the leader to speed up the process or they will involve their attorneys, which seems to magically work. There are also times where local leaders follow the person’s wishes and remove their name, but this is really up to the local leader.
The attorney who volunteered his services was simply helping the individuals avoid local leader roulette. When the church central office receives these letters, they will flag it so that the local leaders know to stop playing games.
Naturally, if you decide you no longer want to be considered a member, you can simply decide that without any paperwork. That’s how I handled it. It did piss me off when they tracked me down in Tokyo, despite never informing them of my moving there. I would tell them to not bother me and then a couple of months later a new missionary would move in and see if he could convince me.
Once people have left a religion and have asked to be left alone, they really should be left alone. I don’t see why that is so hard to understand for the organization. Well I do, but I wish they could see beyond their narrow focus.