So some nice lady in some little burg in New York can’t, in good conscience, sign a marriage license for a couple of lesbians who want to pretend they are married and who insist that everybody in the universe approve of their narcissistic charade. Nice lady doesn’t want trouble, so she arranges to have somebody else, who doesn’t have a problem playing along with overbearing narcissists, to sign in her stead.
Not good enough for the gay fascists who insist that all MUST approve of their metaphysical delusions or face their persecuting wrath:
The two women are threatening to sue the town of Ledyard, and the situation has become national news. Rose Marie, whom I completely support, said that she has been “battered over this in the media” and she can’t answer her phone anymore. She could lose her job because the law changed overnight with no consideration for conscience rights. And rather than just “getting married” now as they so wanted to do, the two women have declared they won’t stop until they get her to sign the license.
Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve! And you must pretend that gay “marriage” is not an attempt to create a legal justification for smashing consciences.
All the “gay fascists” are demanding is that a civil servant actually does their job and upholds the law they swore to do in their oath of office. Apparently we’re supposed to grant any Christian a blanket exemption to any laws they don’t care for, along with an entitlement to state welfare for not performing a job and for actively obstructing a legal process. This characterization is not, of course, as sexy as the narrative of jackbooted gay PC police in brownshirts harassing a “nice lady,” but when we boil away the melodrama, it’s what we’re left with. An assertion that all religious people (or perhaps just Christians), are a law-giver unto themselves.
If you’re championing the cause of this ersatz “freedom fighter,” I would presume that you would also be okay with, say, a Muslim liquor commissioner who refused to grant licenses based on his own beliefs and not the local laws? Or a Hasidic health inspector who closed down all gentile restaurants in his jurisdiction not for violations of state law but for being “ritually unclean.” Or for that matter, why shouldn’t an atheist city worker have the right to refuse building and zoning permits for a church or Catholic school, if doing so would violate their conscience? Logically, you would have to, unless you are proposing to create a special set of theocratic privileges for Christians only, a special First Amendment exemption that only applies to them.
Rose Belforti is not a victim. She is a public servant who is refusing to do the job she was hired to do – to administer the law and to treat citizens equally before the law. Nobody, and certainly not her oath of office, ever said she had to “approve” of gay marriage or anything else. Just do the job, and if your conscience won’t let you do the public’s business, quit taking the public’s dime.
Bullshit. What they are doing is trying to crush somebody’s conscience out of vindictive persecuting spite.
Double bullshit. The “nice lady” arranged for someone else to sign the license, so the public function was fulfilled. If this were about public functions, that would have been the end of it. No. They want to break her.
What a bunch of crap. Their “marriage” license got signed, and your attempts at creating paradoxical analogies are pathetic. First of all, the only function of a liquor commissioner is deal with liquor. So unless you can prove to me that Rose Marie was hired SOLELY to deal with homosexuals and homosexual “marriage,” then the two aren’t analogous at all. But let’s just ignore logic and pretend that they are. In that case, no, I don’t have a problem with a Muslim liquor commissioner who refuses to sign off on liquor licenses, provided that he gets someone else to do it for him, JUST AS ROSE MARIE DID. Ditto to the rest of your painfully ignorant scenarios.
She arranged for someone else to sign the license, at taxpayer expense. This town didn’t have any deputy clerks laying around. They have to be brought in and paid on a part-time/contract basis. In addition, those deputies are available by appointment only, so that most of the time, the government services residents pay Belforti to deliver are not available.
The arrangement partly mitigates the practical effect of Belforti’s decision, but the fact remains that the idea of a nation of laws is meaningless if public officials can refuse at any time to administer those laws as they see fit. In addition, to the extent Belforti is getting paid not to perform a key duty of the job, that’s called goldbricking.
I would also question the consistency of her moral reasoning. If gay marriage is such a disordered/evil thing that she cannot take part in it by signing a license, isn’t she still complicit in the act if she’s hiring and overseeing others to do that very thing?
Right. The persecuting furies bringing the lawsuit are concerned about “taxpayer expense”. Bullshit. You do a fine job of illustrating, with your excuses, my point. Gay ‘marriage’ is all about inventing a legal mechanism for rooting out and crushing Christian conscience about the immorality of gay sex. You are an enabler of persecution.
So, what’s the solution? Fire her? Or merely force her approval? Why is it not sufficient that she arranged the outcome that the women said they wanted, namely, a signed marriage license? It sounds like you want to crush her, too.
Your examples fail because this is not a question of a clerk getting hired and then refusing to enforce some law already on the books. The law has been changed and is now contrary to right reason and right action. Imagine your atheist city worker’s surprise when the law is suddenly changed to require, say the registration of all Christians, or all atheists for that matter. Tough break, buddy, now enforce this crazy, immoral law or hit the bricks. Just follow orders.
It sounds like you want to crush her, too.
That’s exactly what Kenneth is arguing for. He is an enabler of persecution.
If a demand for an elected an oath-bound public official to follow the law of the land is persecution, than Christianity on its face is incompatible with plural democracy. It’s not about crushing anyone or forcing anyone to accept anything. She is free to take a stand against gay marriage. I support her right to become the cause’s greatest celebrity. She can stand on a corner with a bullhorn and say anything she wants about gays. If her conscience won’t let her do her duties as an elected official, do the decent thing and step aside. Living by one’s conscience and civil disobedience is meaningless if its contingent on having the government pay your way to do it. You’re asserting a right to violate the law, at whim, for anyone, or at least any Christian, who can cite a reason of conscience, and then to get paid for not doing a job.
Yes, I’m pretty sure the $10/hour, seven times a year, is going to be a back-breaking expense for the county. The lawsuit will of course costs at least $20k-$50k in legal expenses, meaning it would take on the order of half a millennium for that money to be recouped.
I don’t purport to speak for the motivations of those bringing the lawsuit. They might dress up in pink SS uniforms each night and stroke their pet kitten with a gloved hand maniacally while plotting the end of Christian civilization, for all I know. All of the gay people I have known have much better things to do than cruising for small towns to use as litgation battlefields in some grand scheme against Christianity. Most of the “gay agenda” I’ve seen amounts to a desire to get a house in the suburbs, serve on the PTA and worry about their jobs and 401K like the rest of us. But I concede I may not be privy to the high-level secret meetings of Gay America.
For me, the bottom line principal here is that someone volunteering to uphold and administer the law needs to do so or not take the job. The early Christians knew that much of their conscience would be at odds with Caesars. They never thought to assert a right to Caesar’s paycheck on their own terms.
And I see you’re using the same language that IL courts are using against Catholic Charities agencies and the federal HHS is using against USCCB et al for the human trafficking contract. “You have no right to a contract to provide services on behalf of the government.” Which is yes, true, but that Catholic agencies are being deliberately discriminated against b/c they won’t play ball is another story.
It’s interesting to note, however, that I haven’t seen any courts say the same thing to Planned Parenthood agencies when states cut off government funds for contraception and other women’s health issues.
In other words “I was just following orders.”
“Most of the “gay agenda” I’ve seen amounts to a desire to..”
Then you must be blind, or at least willfully blind…
Right. And according to Kenneth’s reasoning, civil servants in military uniform who refuse to obey orders to either torture prisoners or to shoot unarmed civilians deserve to have the book thrown at them.
Because of “Might Makes Right” attitudes like Kenneth’s, the Nueremberg defendants would have walked off scot-free. Why? Because they were “civil servants”, and they were “following orders” to massacre unarmed prisoners.
At Nueremberg, the Neanderthal Allied prosecutors insisted that “civil servants” claiming they “following orders” was not a good enough defense. Men and women serving in the military or in the civilian public sector are still sentient, rational beings with operational consciences. If they see something being done that is wrong, they are expected to act like sentient, conscientious beings and either speak up about it, or, at least not comply.
Kenneth, however, has a different view. In spite of any qualms of conscience that the Nueremberg defendants may have experienced when ordered to butcher civilians, Kenneth’s sympathies would have been all on the side of the “Final Solution” Commanders, and with the underlings who complied with their monstrous orders.
Thus, the Nueremberg defendants, under Kenneth’s oversight, would have walked off scot-free, and would have ended their days sipping daiquiris on the Riviera.
Brave New World! Thanks, Ken!
Before wasting too much effort, read the first sentence of Kenneth’s 1st and 3rd posts here.
I’d wait for an honest interlocutor.
Furthering the proof that this entire situation (I’m speaking of just this one clerk) is about FORCE, is that these women don’t live there. They heard that the clerk came up with this solution and then purposely flew up from FLORIDA to come visit the clerk during her hours that she works.
They’re so insulted that she would not approve of their actions that they’re willing to go that far out of the way to “root out” anyone who dares take issue with gay “marriage”, even if they’re willing to step aside and let someone else sign the papers.
The point is that we are in a situation of major conflict of ideas that is leading to major conflicts in people’s lives. While I reject the idea of forcing clerks to act against their conscience, we need to realize that it has come to that. The question is, how will we Christians support the people who will find themselves in this situation? What can we offer to Rose Marie so she can respect her conscience, keep some means of livelihood and fight the good fight?
Roberto asks: “What can we offer to Rose Marie so she can respect her conscience, keep some means of livelihood and fight the good fight?”
Good thinking, Roberto!
Although, we don’t know anything about Rose Marie’s financial picture (she may have married into a rather well-to-do family; she may herself come from a well-to-do family; she may have saved her nickels all her life, and could now buy and sell you or me; or all three may be true.)
I will pray for her. And I will write to her a letter telling her so. And I will ask her what, if anything, she needs from “The Resistance.”* And I will post any requests she asks me to pass on, if Mark will agree to allow it on his blog.
_____________________________________
*”The Resistance” vs. “The Dark Side”
“Right. And according to Kenneth’s reasoning, civil servants in military uniform who refuse to obey orders to either torture prisoners or to shoot unarmed civilians deserve to have the book thrown at them.”………..
She is not being asked to follow an unlawful order or commit a war crime. She’s being asked to faithfully administer laws enacted by the legitimate mechanisms of a democratic and constitutional government. Likening that to the Nuremberg defenders or calling me a Nazi is an admission that you have no logical legal or moral arguments left from which to work.
The law was administered. The gay fascists don’t care. They targeted her, specifically, for punishment for obeying her conscience. You make excuses for that because you enable persecution.
“She is not being asked to follow an unlawful order or commit a war crime. She’s being asked to faithfully administer laws enacted by the legitimate mechanisms of a democratic and constitutional government. Likening that to the Nuremberg defenders or calling me a Nazi is an admission that you have no logical legal or moral arguments left from which to work.”
First off, I never called you a Nazi, nor did I imply that you were a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer.
What I said, and repeat is this:
Given that Nazi Germany had the Final Solution on the books – it was the duly enacted law of the land – and given that German military personnel who refused to comply with what were then lawful orders of the German Army – to butcher civilians, perfectly legally . . . you, Kenneth, are the one who is without “any logical legal or moral arguments left from which to” find the Nueremberg criminals guilty.
You, Kenneth, have told us perfectly explicitly that whatever law is on the books, all civil servants must comply.
Therefore, Kenneth, to which resort town would you have sent the Nueremberg defendants, and what hotels and airlines would you have recommended to them on their way out the door?
I’ll entertain this assinine analogy if you can demonstrate that performing same sex civil unions is a war crime or crime against humanity under any international treaty or the International Criminal Court. If you’re going to assert that the action is morally the equivalent of genocide, you ought to re-examine your hero in this narrative. By refusing to dirty her own hands but ordering and enabling others to do so, Belforti is as morally complicit in the actions of her office as was any SS colonel who “merely” gave orders.
Incorrect answer.
I’m asking you to IDENTIFY the “logical, legal, or moral arguments” from which YOU would be able to impose a sentence of guilt on the the Nueremberg criminals for butchering civilians, which was then legal under German law.
My point: I don’t think there are any.
I don’t think you could.
I think you would be forced to let them walk.
No analogy. Hypothetical.
Prove me wrong.
The principles of international law under which the Nuremberg defendants were prosecuted were formally enumerated as early as the Hague Convention of 1899 and subsequent revisions prior to World War I. That wasn’t a complete basis, of course, for our modern definitions of war crimes, but they spelled out who was to be treated as a belligerent, how prisoners should be cared for, and outlawed the use of poision gas – the main instrument of the holocaust.
If we want to get real technical, the idea that civilian atrocities are legally and morally uncool is a very old one and, ironically enough, a very German one in some respects. In 1474, a knight, Peter von Hagenbach, was tried and executed by a Holy Roman Empire tribunal for atrocities committed in a town under his occupation. He too tried to argue that he was just following orders, and that didn’t fly. He was deemed to have a responsibility not only to refrain from such behavior, but to prevent it among his own troops.
The Leipzig War Crimes trial in 1921 convicted a double handful of military men for atrocities, mostly POW abuse. They even tried to extradite and charge the Kaiser himself, but he managed to hide out in Holland the rest of his days.
By the end of October of 1943, the Moscow Declaration signed by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill formally recognized the widespread and systematic nature of German atrocities and specifically called for their punishment following the Nazi defeat. That was the foundation for the London Charter which created the rules and categories of crimes in the Nuremberg proceedings.
Our mid-20th century ancestors can be called primitive on a lot of counts, but no educated person of the day could claim that the wholesale slaughter of civilians was a legal or moral gray area regardless of whatever the National Socialists spelled out for themselves in memos and domestic laws.
Kenneth said, “Our mid-20th century ancestors can be called primitive on a lot of counts, but no educated person of the day could claim that the wholesale slaughter of civilians was a legal or moral gray area regardless of whatever the National Socialists spelled out for themselves in memos and domestic laws.”
On what grounds could “educated persons” claim that? If you’re pointing something along the lines of “objective truth,” the same line of reasoning can be used for the objective truth of marriage, and that “educated persons” can reject the erroneous and false notion that homosexuals could “marry.” In addition, “educated persons” can also recognize that such “objective truth” such as marriage takes precedence over laws which attempt to falsify that truth. Those who defend truth, like Rose, should be commended by “educated persons.”
So, your own line of reasoning contradicts your stance, Kenneth.
Here’s a little thought experiment. Suppose that the State of Utah’s legislature passes a law permitting plural marriage (something which, after all, the state has a sort of history with). Suppose that an atheistic graduate of women’s studies has been working in the county clerk’s office issuing marriage licenses, but when this law is passed makes a statement that says, “I can’t issue marriage licenses to groups, because I’m aware of how much most women suffer in polygamous situations, especially given the overwhelming patriarchalism of societies in which plural marriage flourished. Also, the main reasons being given for the new acceptance of plural marriage refer to the large number of Mormons in our state, and I’m an atheist, so I shouldn’t have to uphold a Mormon value even if duly elected secular authorities have decided to make plural marriage legal. I’ll happily send groups to a clerk that doesn’t mind issuing group marriage licenses, but please don’t ask me to issue or sign such licenses myself.”
Would the posters here who are tearing apart Rose Marie’s conscience rights do the same for my fictional atheist/feminist objector to plural marriage? Would they insist that, whatever the legislature’s reasons for passing plural marriage laws, it wasn’t her job to oppose plural marriage? Would they say that despite her deeply held non-religious but personal beliefs against polygamy she’d better get her hindquarters behind her desk and start signing licenses for John Smith and his six wives, all aged 18-22? Or would they respect her conscientious objection to having to do any such thing?
This poster would tell your hypothetical (or real life) Utah clerk the exact same thing: If your conscience precludes you doing your sworn duty, step aside and find another livelihood.
There are many, many situations in life where a reasonable person’s conscience can place them at odds with the perfectly legal demands of their job. Plenty of soldiers come to a point in the development of their consciences where they become pacifists. Or the nature of a war they’re sent to fight is deeply at odds with what they signed on for to defend our country. I respect that, but that doesn’t mean you get to keep your front line combat position and pay. Sometimes it happens that abortion doctors have a radical change of heart. Can they sue to keep (and not perform) their old job at Planned Parenthood?
My own code of ethics, much of it stemming from deeply held religious conviction, precludes me from working certain jobs, some of which are very lucrative and for which I would be very well qualified. There are certain marketing practices in the pharmaceutical industry which I could not be party to. I could not involve myself in most of what the energy industry does in, say, natural gas exploration and recovery. Or payday loans. I could not serve properly as a Catholic priest or even as a CCD teacher. Yet, I would never presume to take such a job, refuse to teach the catechism and the claim a right of conscience to keep my position, pay and benefits for refusing to do the work.
Kenneth,
Firstly, by standing aside to have someone else sign it makes cooperate with evil, but only on a mediate material level, which is not always immoral. In her circumstance, it most likely was not. So that is answered. She can stand aside and still be okey-dokey.
Secondly, if all Catholics are not allowed to serve in public office or, say, hospitals anymore (due to abortions, sterilizations, and contraception), where does it end? Will you really celebrate a “free and democratic society” when you have ghettoized an entire (and large) segment of the population? Why are your beliefs better than anyone elses? By choosing to ignore the conscience rights of Catholics, you deliberate favor others over them. How is that “free and democratic”?
In other words, the delusional lesbians got their fake certificate. Rose’s conscience was not violated. Why is that not good enough…unless you have an agenda.
Its okay to admit it. You are a progressive, and progressives hate disunity and division and they see religion (particularly Catholicism) as the root of that disunity and division. The trouble is, your view is a religion too.
If Catholics, or anyone else, defines their “freedom” as the right to exempt themselves from any law and a right to a government paycheck for doing so, then they will have “ghettoized” themselves. No civil society can grant that sort of freedom and still be a society of laws.
The sort of “compromise” you’re demanding on behalf of this clerk is a demand that she be allowed to short-circuit, at will, our entire system of governance. You’re asking that she be allowed to exercise a personal veto over any law of the land that is formed by the people’s legislative will or determination of the Judicial branch. She would exercise a power in a way for which there is no appeal or recourse of any kind. She is to have the power to administer or not administer any law in accordance with her conscience and no other consideration, even if it has the effect of treating some citizens as second-class people in their own communities.
There are only a couple of logically cogent ways to justify this. One, we create a formal or de facto Christian theocracy in which bishops or some other religious authority have the final say on all matters of law.
The only other logically consistent way to let Rose ignore or obstruct the law is to assert that the First Amendment freedom of religion is absolute and subject to no other considerations whatsoever. That means if someone can demonstrate a bona fide religious or conscience belief, it trumps any other law. If their religion tells them they have the right to take six 12-year olds as wives or to board planes with no ID and covered faces, you can’t touch them.
It sounds absurd because it is. Our legal system has never treated any right as absolute because all rights have to be balanced against others. No court has ever construed religious freedom as an untrammeled right to hold any job and to do it or not do it on one’s own terms. If they do, the Church will be powerless to laicize any heretic priests or any bishop who decides to ordain women.
As to your Nazi analogy, there are two parts. One, if this clerk really wants to make the case that making her follow the marriage law is tantamount to genocide, she can certainly try to persuade a court to issue an emergency injunction to stop enforcement. Anyone has that recourse so long as we are a nation of laws. Of course if we truly slide into Nazi-like oppression, it will be because government officials have successfully seized for themselves the power to be answerable to no law beyond their own will and consciences.
What you are doing, Kenneth, is offering an apologia for the raw imposition of state power against informed human conscience. A law that contradicts the law of God is no law at all but an exercise of raw force. The gay fascists who are trying to punish this woman for her convictions (and your apologia for it) are not interested in the rule of law. They are interested in the worship of force–and so are you. You are a defender of tyranny.
Kenneth said, “because government officials have successfully seized for themselves the power to be answerable to no law beyond their own will and consciences.”
And that is what is happening. I’m glad to see that you’re finally getting it.
The bottom line is this: If one cannot take or hold a job in the U.S. because of religion, then the U.S. is not a free country.
In reality, some freedoms and rights are considered more important than others. The right to tickle one’s crotch with a person of the same sex is more important that the right to exercise one’s religion. It is really that sad and simple.
And Kenneth never answered the question of where it all ends. If civil servants (or hospital workers, or anyone else) must obey the law or get out, what if those laws are gross violations of human dignity and rights?
For example, say when an entire class of human beings is no longer considered human beings (Jews in Nazi Germany, or the unborn in the United States) and the government mandates their extermination, does a civil servant not have the right to refuse? Is his only choice to either comply or face termination (or even death)?
Where does it end, Kenneth? If you can’t accept compromise, such as in the case of Rose above, then you are playing an all-or-nothing game. Either everyone has to comply with the law or die (even if those laws are the laws of Nazi Germany), or everyone has to find a compromise.
So which is it, Kenneth?
We need the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
And we need judges who will support it, not oppose and subvert it.
“The sort of “compromise” you’re demanding on behalf of this clerk is a demand that she be allowed to short-circuit, at will, our entire system of governance. You’re asking that she be allowed to exercise a personal veto over any law of the land that is formed by the people’s legislative will or determination of the Judicial branch. She would exercise a power in a way for which there is no appeal or recourse of any kind. She is to have the power to administer or not administer any law in accordance with her conscience and no other consideration, even if it has the effect of treating some citizens as second-class people in their own communities.”
Except that is not what happened, and you know it, Kenneth. That is a fantasy, a fever dream. The clerk stepped aside in *one narrow* instance and allowed the “law of the land” to plod joylessly on… only without her help.
But that is not enough for you, or for these Gay apparatchiks whose actions you defend. You do not want any faithful Catholic to be able to work for the government in any capacity without them being forced to comply with every last letter of the law against their conscience, or be terminated. How very fascist of you. This *would* cut both ways… except that enforcement of this “zero tolerance” standard is limited – admit it – to ideological enemies of the Rainbow Rangers, and not to their friends. Those who so benignly ignored or refused to cooperate with strict government regs in an effort “save” the environment, or in the cause of World Peace or to promote the advancement of Womyn would never, never, *ever* be singled out for such attacks.
Ever.
What does “seperation of Church and State” mean, when the State is everywhere, and in everything?
Equality and freedom for them, not us. It’s the totalitarian way!
Kenneth, and others who think like him, are actually religious adherents to progressive secular humanism. They truly believe that they can form a utopian and egalitarian society by force of totalitarian government. They believe that anything which divides us is inherently evil – especially religions like Catholicism. Therefore, they will stop at nothing to impose their religion on Catholics and anyone who disagree with them. Instead of allowing a simple compromise which does not affect the common good of all parties involved (Rose or the lesbian brownshirts), men like Kenneth seek to crush all opposition. No one is allowed to think in any way that is not approved by law or government.
Oh, and that law and government must agree with Kenneth’s religion. If the law should do something he disagrees with, then its okay to fight it. That only includes access to unbridled sexual pleasure and the ability to destroy the consequences (such as unborn human life). It also includes the ability to camp out and defecate in public and private parks, yelling about corporations from whom they buy their clothes, computers, and phones from.
Nice try, Kenneth, but your religious beliefs are showing through, and while we are willing to compromise where we can, you are unwilling to do the same. It shows who the real “theocrat” is, and it is you.
This woman has held the job for ten years, during which she has occasionally had to sign licenses for the civil part of real, actual marriages, between men and women. That was the job she signed on to. Now a law has been passed, a law which is really no law because it violates Gods law and because what it legislates is sheer absurdity, that two men or two women can “marry” each other. The world has gone mad around her. She would just like to keep her job in the mostly normal and non-mad little community she lives in, and all her normal and non-mad community would like her to keep her job. So she finds a way that these women can obtain their “marriage” license which does not involve her, expecting that they will take it, go away happy in their self-delusion, and leave her alone. But no! She in particular must consent, must sign to agree that they are “married.” They will not be content unless they have destroyed her livelihood.
Well, I do not consent either. The word marriage means the union of a man and a woman. In fact, it means a permanent unbreakable union of a man and a woman for the purpose of establishing a family. I wont’t trouble any two men or two woman in their companionship, and I don’t need to know what sort of mutually stimulating activities they engage in in private, but I won’t call them married. If I had had the chance of voting in a referendum, instead of having the law shoved through the legislature in violation of its own rules, I would have voted no, and we don’t really know how the whole state would have voted. I don’ t appreciate living in a state that is trying to repeal natural law. They could repeal the law of gravity, and apples would still fall down, not up. although I supposed people could be put in jail or fired for saying so. I consider this whole thing to be pretty close to that level of absurdity.
At this point though, the poor clerk had better resign, or see if she can get a different job with the town. My sympathies are with her.
Susan Peterson
What Susan said…!
God King and Eric Holder, if you can’t defend DOMA as you had sworn to do, please step aside and arrange for someone else to do it. Oh, also please make sure it does not cost tax payers extra dollars, please.