Posts by Angus Robertson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to tussock,
Tussock,
Almost agree, I think when discussing religion it is better to ignore belief. Belief makes no functional difference to religion.
Which means local religion is a meaningless social clique where membership demands only that no one mention the emperor has no clothes, and even the church officials don't actually believe in God as anything more than a large common mythological story you can cherry-pick to fill in a sermon.
Not meaningless, it is a means of providing immediate and ongoing earthly benefit to religious officials and where it occurs their state supporters. Religion is for the benefit of the clergy and can be beneficial to a state.
Religious extremists are just people who really do believe God is real, and all those old bronze-age laws about being careful and timely about who you murder for Him are His word and must be followed. Dawkins says soft-religious people are a problem precisely because they enable those true believers every time they refuse to call bullshit on the whole God being real and the ancient stories being correct thing.
No, they are people who derive benefit from choosing to "cherry-pick" things you and I do not like. Them having a sincere belief in those pickings, or not, is irrelevent.
-
Hard News: The question of Afghanistan…, in reply to tussock,
+ 1
-
Why Whanganui? Why not utilise Stewart Murray Wilson for the good of society?
Auckland is suffering from a housing affordability crisis, move him back in.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Emma Hart,
The change I would like to see (which is not a part of the bill we were once discussing) is that Christian ministers do not automatically become civil celebrants on ordination. That, I think, would make it much clearer that being a civil marriage celebrant is not a religious function, ergo not a matter of religious freedom. There's nothing to stop them applying to become celebrants just like anyone else, of course - what they'd be losing would be a privilege, not a right.
By "nothing to stop them applying to become celebrants" I assume you mean they'd be free, whilst acting as a civil functionary, to refuse to marry those that do not conform with their religious beliefs. Because otherwise that whole religious belief structure thing would be stopping them from applying.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Which is a flat out lie. Sorry for being a scratched CD, but that really needs to be repeated every time McCroskie and his pals trot it out.
Yeah I think it is Bob - blowing smoke - McCroskie trying to red herring the debate.
Except I/S say it is likely that Bob is perhaps onto something here. And then a whole lot of people chirp up to say we need to secularise the state to accomodate this. And its like wait a second, this is important.
Bob McCroskie can't be right, because our laws protect religious freedoms from being trampled on.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Nowhere, nowhere have I said this. Or anything even remotely like it. Can you not find something I actually have said to disagree with?
Okay.
So, a Catholic priest or an Anglican minister can say, "No, we're not going to bless your union with our sacrament, in our church." But currently that person is also, automatically, a civil celebrant. And in that capacity, they can't refuse to perform the state function (witnessing the marriage certificate) on the basis of sexual orientation.
Who would request a Catholic priest to witness the marriage of a gay couple and require the state force the priest to comply?
The only answer I can think of is a "total hateful fuckwit". The fuckwit is undertaking a course of action that will result in somebody being forced to violate deeply held religious beliefs. The fuckwit is doing this despite there being a plethora of other options to marry that do not result in said violation.
I genuinely believe this level of hateful fuckwittedness is not empowered by NZ human rights law.
I/S disagrees and thinks it probably is. From the above I assumed you agreed with him.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Megan Wegan,
The question people have been asking is if a church does refuse to do so, on grounds that they don't approve, could that conceivably be a breach of human rights legislation?
It is a question which is pretty fundamental to the debate.
The question has been answered. By myself saying that no it does not constitute a breach and they could not be legally forced to. By Emma and Idiot/Savant answering to say that yes it does and that they could be legally forced to.
If Emma/Idiot S./Bob McCroskie are correct then this legislation is clearly an attack on the religious freedoms of NZers. And this becomes a debate of which is the greater wrong.
But that lot are incorrect, this legislation is merely an extension of an existing right to include all NZers that does not infringe on any other existing rights. Its a piece of legislation that should have been done years ago.
The "problem" is that while we don't actually believe in our rights to be "hateful fuckwits", the church DOES.
I don't believe we have the right and you don't believe we have the right, but I/S states that this legislation will result in the church getting badly burned so probably he does believe we have the right to be total.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Emma Hart,
"Religious freedom" ends, like other rights, at the border with other people.
Yes it does, if you go to a church and force them to witness a marriage that violates their religion you are being a total fuckwit to them. You are trampling on their religous beliefs and spitting in their faces.
You seem to believe that civil law grants us the right to be total hateful fuckwits to religions we do not like and force them to violate their beliefs for our own petty amusement. I disagree and think the law protects their rights.
As has already been said, "mosques" (churches, synagogues, etc) do not grant marriage licences.
Indeed. So what is the problem?
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Good point, that is what I should have replied to Steve with.
-
Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
But I'm still not seeing how the claims that marriage equality is some kind of "attack on religious freedom" is anything other than pure bullshitanium.
The only way it gets construed as such is by interpreting of the Bill of Rights as meaning that changing the civil law will legally force mosques to defy Allah and grant marriage licences to same sex couples. People of such diverse opinions as Emma Hart and Bob McCroskie concur that it is indeed an attack on religious freedom.