Posts by Idiot Savant
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I wonder if they meant religious counceling, religious programs, religious courses, religious retreats or religious housing though. There are groups who live together as married couples, as well as with monks and nuns. The Beatitides for example.
Indeed there are. But that's not the provision of a good or service, and you know it.
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Shit. I have cake to bake.
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One of the few deeply shitty things about the CU legislation was that a marriage celebrant needs a separate licence to be a civil union celebrant - they're different things. They have pay twice, file paperwork twice. This is patently fricking ridiculous, but in there for a fairly obvious reason.
For those who don't find it obvious, the reason is that all priests of specified religious bodies are autmoatically celebrants unless they don't want to be. Part historical baggage, part handy timesaver, it'll become less important as they die off.
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But they can refuse to administer the rites, no?
They're not a public function. The public function - the legal part of marriage, as opposed to whatever fluff and quack people choose to wrap around it - is watching the parties say the words ("I AB, take you CD, to be my legal wife or husband") and signing the piece of paper. And that would be all they were legally obliged to do if anyone ever bothered to challenge it.
The availability of alternatives, the desire for a nice ceremony, and general sanity means that no-one has bothered AFAIK. And our society is probably better for it.
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But. If a church wants to be an employer, or run adoption agencies, or run hospitals, they MUST comply with all state laws in that area, including human rights law.
...which includes an exemption in relation to employment matters for religion in relation to priests. Which is fair enough.
(OTOH, the same clause allows any private school - not just the religious ones - to discriminate in employmentonthe basis of religion. Something else to get rid of...)
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So long as churches are empowered to perform a legal function - joining people in matrimony - you could argue that they should not be allowed to discriminate
And legally, in NZ, they're not. Quite apart from the ordinary provision of goods and services clauses in the Human Rights Act (muddied by the question of whether the couple are employing the celebrant or whether the celebrant is providing a service), marriage celebrants are performing a public function. And that means the BORA applies, which in turn rules out discrimination (oh, and that's not just discrimination against gays - its also religion. So Catholic priests cannot legally refuse to marry non-Catholics).
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Tess: the amendments the New hampshire House rejected weren't just about performing marriage ceremonies, but about the wider provision of goods and services related to marriages or the promotion of marriages. Including - and this was mentioned explicitly - housing. In other words, a broad based "except for married fags" exemption to state anti-discrimination law.
That's just wrong. you can stand on your faith if you don't want to marry people (and they'd be pretty odd people if they wanted to marry someone who didn't want to marry them) - but you can't hide behind it for ordinary, everyday bigotry in refusing to sell them something. If you participate in the market, you do so equally. if you can't stomach that, you don't offer the service. EOFS.
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Its easier to rent a house in Tawa when you have a marriage certificate.
This is illegal. You should complain to the HRC about the landlords responsible - or better yet, name and shame them as bigots.
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I think to advance this progressive liberal/secular humanist legislation will require you and people like you to extoll the virtues of progressive liberalism to people who are bigots.
Indeed. But at the same time, we can let its vurtues extol themselves, though (in this case) the example of civil unions, while on the other hand waiting for demographics to take its course.
Demographically, bigots tend to be older, and hence about to die. meanwhile, the young are far more accepting. So history is on our side, and we will bury them. Literally, in many cases.
(You'll just have to imagine me banging my boot on the desk for extra effect)
My point is that by introducing this legislation, Labour risks losing votes from people who are bigots. This is New Zealand (not America) intensely spiritual people with strong traditional family values (bigots) are not found on any particular side of the spectrum. Also we are a proportional representation country so every vote matters and alternative parties can easily form.
As you note, this is New Zealand - where religious based parties do abysmally badly, because apart from a small lunatic fringe, people don't want to live in a theocracy.
The s59 debate saw the formation of two parties last election. Combined, they got all of 0.8% of the vote. I don't think we have anything at all to fear from them.
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For those with political agency who were regarded as citizens in good standing and had the power to build the dominant narrative in Western European culture, marriage had an understanding consistent with the Catholic Church, where reproduction and marriage were intertwined.
It may very well have. But we killed that culture in 1789 9and much earlier in the UK).