Posts by Chris Waugh
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Angus Robertson,
The only answer I can think of
But, no. See, religious movements and organisations play host to a wide variety of personalities, opinions and attitudes, and that diversity extends to the clergy. So try this on:
A gay catholic couple wishes to get married. Because their catholicism is important to them, they wish to have their marriage celebrated in church. They approach their priest, who they know to be of a more liberal, openminded persuasion. Aware of what church law says on the subject of homosexuality and gay marriage, they begin to negotiate. Maybe the priest takes a risk and officially blesses their marriage in church, maybe it's decided that the priest will bless their marriage in a private capacity outside church, maybe the priest politely declines to be involved... All of this is done in mutual respect for each party's beliefs and position. Nobody needs to force anybody to do anything they or unwilling or unable to do, and nobody needs to be a hateful anything.
And yeah, I'm with Bart, the language is getting a bit strong.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Lilith __,
Wellington buildings are not earthquake proof. When that fault-line moves it’s gonna be wrecked
Wellington's CBD terrifies me. Should the Big One hit at lunchtime or rushhour on a weekday, an awful lot of people are going to be shredded by all the glass falling off all those buildings. And look at all those buildings sitting on sediment - Kilbirnie, the flat middle part of Miramar, the Hutt Valley, downtown Porirua.... Wellington's going to give Christchurch a run for its money in the liquefaction stakes.
But name a better harbour at the bottom of the North Island. It may be a pretty silly place seismologically to put the capital, but there's always going to be something there.
In any case, it doesn't matter where in NZ you are, if you're there you accept certain geological risks. We can prepare for those risks like, for example, as Islander suggested, not building cities on swamps, but those risks are still there. Or I suppose you could all bugger off to Australia and I could stay in north China. But neither north China nor Australia has anywhere near adequate water supplies (despite Beijing and neighbouring regions being on the second straight day of constant rain and bearable temperatures. 25 degrees! So cold (for July here)), Australia has lots of animals that like to kill people, and north China's winters are brutal.
So, I dunno, I guess we just drop the technological hubris and adapt ourselves to our environment instead of trying to force our environment to adapt to our petty and petulant demands. 无为 and all that.
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I grew up in Wellington, and the thing that has always, uh, amused me, shall we say, about the Big One is counting the number of roads and railways that lead out of the city. There aren't many. Then looking at how many of those roads and railways are almost certain to be blocked by landslides when the Big One hits. And look at the airport - how useable is the runway likely to be? Especially if the Big One is accompanied by a tsunami (quite likely)?
Isn't Rangitoto the only one of Auckland's volcanos to have erupted twice? My impression was that the next eruption will form a new cone or caldera.
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Good work Geoff.
I'm curious about the Dunedin cinemas, particularly the Rialto. I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when I lived in Dunedin.
I had lots of good times in the Metro town hall. But I think film festival films in the Regent Theatre had to be the best - something about the sheer grandness of the venue multiplied the cinematic magic 10-fold.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Tess Rooney,
To get married you still have to go and see a civil celebrant.
Which is no great hardship, in my experience. A simple matter of preparing the right documents and photographs in advance, trundling down to the office, and filling out the right forms.
Everyone has to get the official marriage registration at the Registrars Office and then have a wedding as they see fit.
Which is precisely what my wife and I and many another couple did, and it works, and I argue for this or a similar system because it gets couples legal recognition and allows religious/cultural recognition without mixing church and state. The only improvement I would make to the system under which I got married would be the marriage equality bill Louisa Wall has put forward.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Angus Robertson,
What problem?
Religion is still mixed in with the state, in that people whose jobs are primarily religious are also discharging a civil function.
Try wearing a burqa in Paris or being a scientologist in Berlin. And you say China has “absolutely no overlap in religious and civil functions"… umm… just wow.
Not saying any of these places are perfect, just that quite a variety of countries (I would add Turkey to the list) do a better job of separating church and state than NZ does. Yes, they do all take a step or two too far in their restriction of religion, but they do all (vagaries of local officials aside) maintain a strictly secular state.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
It already is.
Not entirely. Ministers of religion are also marriage celebrants, are they not? That church wedding has both cultural/religious and legal significance, does it not?
This is where I (and I believe TracyMac also) see a problem. To give China as an example (and I believe the same principle holds true for Germany, France and others):
There are 'official' (People's Organizations, not government departments) bodies that govern Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, and the Protestant (all united under the Three Self Patriotic Movement) and Catholic Churches. There is also the State Council's Bureau of Religious Affairs, the government body that overseas such things. There is also the branch of the Ministry of Civil Affairs that registers marriages and divorces. You're free to marry in any official mosque, church, or temple (although I do believe a religious wedding outside any official place of worship would be technically illegal), but that doesn't have any effect on your legal status as a couple, as your imam/abbot/Daoist master/pastor/priest is not a celebrant in the civil/legal sense. Your marriage is not legally recognised until you and your spouse have gone into the registry office in the relevant branch of the Ministry of Civil Affairs with the requisite documents and photos, filled out and signed the necessary forms, and been presented with your marriage certificates (two, one for each spouse) with the necessary stamp.
In other words, in properly, fully secular states there is absolutely no overlap in religious and civil functions. In New Zealand we do have such an overlap in marriage and in our head of state being head also of the C of E.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Lilith __,
You seem to be talking about Auckland.
Or Beijing. No lack of monumental, intimidating, but ultimately soulless architecture in the centre of this city - and the CBD and scattered around many other areas as well.
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I think marriage, along with our head of state also being head of the C of E, is one area in which religion is still a bit too entangled in the state. I'm sure I've said it before, but I like the French and Chinese* approach where the civil ceremony is entirely separate from any religious or cultural ceremonies. I liked going to the registry office and filling out the forms and then being legal, then almost a year later having a basically Chinese wedding with a few NZ Christian elements mixed in for my family.
Well, basically I like the idea of a fully secular, tolerant state.
*Although China falls way, way behind when it comes to recognising the rights of anybody who isn't plain, vanilla hetero.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Stewart,
If/when the bill gets passed and same-sex marriage is legal in Aotearoa, will churches be forced to enact the ceremonies?
My impression was that Louisa Wall had stated clearly that the churches (and hopefully mosques, synagogues, temples, etc as well) would not be forced to conduct same-sex marriages.