Up Front: Are We There Yet?
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But forcing people into participating in gay adoption..
Wha...?
You know, gay adoption. You come in, and are assessed as to whether you are fabulous enough to be allowed to adopt a gay baby*.
*This is ridiculous, of course, we all know gay people are made. In China. In the same factory where they make all those fake fossils.
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I wanted to make a pun re tenants/tenets but it was beyond me. I was hoping Ian Dalziel would turn up and do it for me. :)
Islam should be forced to treat people equally, right?
Yep. I don't know how you do it, but in for a penny, in for a pound. I think they're all equally a crock of shit, so it's only fair. (The oldest religions have the prettiest churches and art, though. I'll give them that.)
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Was sex illegal in NZ prior to 1984? Interesting!
You missed the double negative.
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Tricky at the point where the law changes while you're doing the job, yes.
Indeed. It's not as though the State has said that all floobing agencies must be open to everyone. And that's the benchmark for floobing from the beginning. Everyone knows that no one can be stopped from floobing.
Instead we've had these ingrained institutions regarding a natural family, note I said natural not nuclear, and the game is changing.
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But forcing people into participating in gay adoption or solemnising a gay marriage is okay?
Both adoption and marriage are public functions under law. You either perform those functions according to the law, or you don't do them at all.
(And to Steve: I think the question of whether public officials should obey the law is rather different from whether private individuals should)
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You know, gay adoption. You come in, and are assessed as to whether you are fabulous enough to be allowed to adopt a gay baby*.
Fine, fine. Participating in _facilitating_ an adoption of a child by a gay or lesbian couple.
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(The oldest religions have the prettiest churches and art, though. I'll give them that.)
If we get to pick on the basis of art, it's Greek or Russian Orthodox for me. There is the most beautiful little Orthodox church in Chch, on a busy street in an industrial area, surrounded by garages and the like.
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Steve, I know it's dragging on tediously but...
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It's not as though there is a cabal of folk doing this on purpose you know.
Well, yes and no. Yes, in that there's a lot of borrowing from crazed US evangelicals, who have built their persecution complex to a fine art. And no, because as I said, it's CULTS101 - an obvious tactic for any totalising memeplex.
I think there's a fantastic sociology thesis in the importation of religious rhetoric and tactics from the US. But I'm not doing it. For a start, it would be Caring Too Much.
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In New Zealand the Catholic Church has it easier. We don't have Catholic hospitals, or Catholic adoption agencies (as far as I know about anyways). At most we have Catholic hospitals and rest homes for the elderly. And abortion and contraception isn't an issue there. Although euthanasia may be in the future.
So for us here, the dabate is less nasty.
We also don't have that nasty litigiousness that America has.
The closest hoo haa I can think of was a few weeks ago when the Sisters of Mercy allowed a group of gay or lesbian couples to have a retreat at one of their centers - they let them hire it out, they weren't involved in running it.
In the end I think we'll come to a political arrangement that makes most people happy because we aren't an in-your-face culture.
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I/S: the issue isn't whether public officials should always obey the law -- obviously we can imagine circumstances where ones moral duty is to disobey. The question is whether there should be consequences for disobedience. Eg in the case of the judge in a criminal case who can't impose the correct sentence out of personal moral convictions, that judge might have to surrender the office, or recuse themselves. The pharmacist who won't dispense pills might have to find another pharmacist or face professional sanctions.
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Thanks for the advice/warning Steve. Who would want to go there?
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The pharmacist who won't dispense pills might have to find another pharmacist...
See that's fair enough. Provided the pharmacy knew to always have two pharmacists on duty, one who was happy to dispense things like Mifepristone, then it's fine.
Just out of interest that would be the only thing I could not dispense were I a pharmacist. And to be honest, I personally wouldn't ever go into pharmacy because my religious beliefs would be an issue.
I personally wouldn't want to be in a situation where I had to exercise my concience in that way. Likewise I would never become a civil union celebrant.
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You know, gay adoption. You come in, and are assessed as to whether you are fabulous enough to be allowed to adopt a gay baby*.
I was thinking more "It gives the baby to the queens, or it will get the hose again."
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I was thinking more "It gives the baby to the queens, or it will get the hose again."
Golden opportunity! Sorry to display my ignorance, but where does that phrase come from? Been hearing variants of it everywhere lately.
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I was thinking more "It gives the baby to the queens, or it will get the hose again."
And that sound, ladies and gentlemen, was a mental picture making my brain explode. Or as we call it here, a Craig Special.
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I personally wouldn't want to be in a situation where I had to exercise my concience in that way.
What take your conscience for a walk but dont let it off the leash!
Spine chilling... -
none of them took the opportunity to link tenants of the faith with the exclusion of gays from Catholic church housing, or some such way of borax-poking cf. tenets of the faith.
I was so nearly there! Faith: a nice place to live, but I wouldn't want to live there.
But yes, maximum kudos to Tess for being the Christian among the lions. I had no idea that this discussion would run so long and (mostly) productively, simply because I presumed that the general reaction among the PAsphere would be "Yay Emma! Go for it! Now about that gin...". Having another perspective here is invigorating.
Mind you, I've just about had enough of discussing a repugnant, inhuman and degrading act: committing to a lifelong monogamous relationship. Shudder!
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Well, I wouldn't want my conscience to savage anyone, it is a vicious thing.
Grrr....
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SamF: Silence of the Lambs.
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There's a reason why I'm uncomfortable with religious groups running social services....
I also think that it's a really good idea to figure out whether a career is likely to require you to act against your conscience before you enter the field.
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Because everybody, regardless of religious affiliation, has the same level of obligation to obey the law?
That’s what you said: “Everybody must obey the law, regardless of their religion.” I took Tess to be effectively saying there was a “conscientious objection” aspect to her position. To which you seem to be saying “everyone must obey the law”. I think that’s a problematic response.
Which leads me to:
Obviously, there is civil disobedience and civil disobedience .
“But, but, but…That’s different! It applies to me, but not to the people I disagree with…!”
[My emphasis] Back home, I refused to go in the army and was put to work for a year in a hospital instead (got off easy - my grandfather spent quite a bit of time in jail for the same 'crime'), but arguably nobody was getting hurt by my decision. Refusing to perform an abortion or prescribe a day after pill obviously are decisions that affect others.
Performing the abortion “affects others” in the view of the anti-abortionists. Everything’s arguable. At least be consistent: if you are going to say “stick to the law of the land”, then don’t make exceptions when it’s not convenient.
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the issue isn't whether public officials should always obey the law -- obviously we can imagine circumstances where ones moral duty is to disobey.
Sure - but those sorts of limits are things along the lines of participation in genocide, gross human rights abuses or murder. But what Tess is advocating isn't that sort of "conscientious objection" - it's simple bigotry and hatred.
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That’s what you said: “Everybody must obey the law, regardless of their religion.”
No, that's not the same. The same level of obligation , which is not absolute. I think the obligation and the consequences should be the same whether you break the law for religious reasons or not. I don't think, for instance, that protesters who trespass or do physical damage should be treated differently on the basis of whether or not I agree with their cause.
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Performing the abortion “affects others” in the view of the anti-abortionists. Everything’s arguable. At least be consistent: if you are going to say “stick to the law of the land”, then don’t make exceptions when it’s not convenient.
If you can show that my working in a hospital for twelve months (for free) instead of being trained as a soldier for ten affects anybody negatively, I'd be interested to hear the explanation. We don't need to be moral absolutists just because we are arguing with moral absolutists, you know.
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