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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
No tryanny is being forced to do something against your will or be punished. That's what the clerk is facing. Violate her religious beliefs or be punished in the form of losing her job.
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Oh, I see. Obey the law or be punished. So ... ? And ... ?
Isn't that how the system is supposed to work? What's the point of having laws if there are no consequences to breaking them?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Certainly there are laws that everyone disagrees with on some level, but we are talking about a moral law that causes a moral conflict.
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It's a moral "law" that is based almost entirely upon religion ... and we've said a million times that religion does not have the right or the authority to make itself the law of the land. Even the government can't enforce a religious law.
The conflict occurs only because people think their religion trumps everything else -- including not just the secular laws themselves but also it is more important than simply being a nice and courteous human being.
This is why I've said again and again why religion is so damned dangerous. It carries the erroneous notion that it is both all-powerful and absolute. Nothing can or should interfere with religious belief. Because of that, even the law, which SHOULD put an end to the conflict, isn't enough to make people understand that religion is NOT the final arbiter in this country. The Supreme Court might not be the Supreme Being (as that moron Huckabee likes to say) but the Supreme Court is the only "Supreme" that matters. If you violate the law you are punished.
To you, however, and many other fundamentalists out there, I guess laws don't matter unless they parallel the Bible. Okay, that's fine. But don't whine when the consequences arrive.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
A pain med law doesn't.
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Actually, it does ... but that's a topic for a different thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Imagine you were in the situation where you worked a job for a number of years, a new moral standard is put in place by law, and you are told to comply or get out. Would you eagerly and gladly say, "No problem, I will quit immediately!!"
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Well, if I were so uptight about gay weddings and I felt that I absolutely HAD to follow to the letter those immoral Biblical laws, then yes, I WOULD quit. If it was so important to me that I felt I had to disobey the law and shove my religion down everyone's throat, I would quit. Yes. Isn't pleasing God more important than having a job? Why should everyone ELSE suffer so that this idiot clerk can deliberately act as a roadblock to keep gays from legally doing what the law says they can do? Her job as a clerk isn't to pass judgment on who should or shouldn't get married. She is NOT the morality police. She's a clerk and her job is to grant marriage licenses that are sanctioned by LAW.
If she can't do her job due to a moral conflict, then it is her civic DUTY to vacate that position immediately. Then she can practice her faith and feel all warm and fuzzy inside because she refused to issue gay marriage licenses; she can imagine all of the nifty bright and shiny rewards she'll get in Heaven for "martyring" herself for the cause of bigotry, hatred, and good ol' fashioned religious fascism. But she has NO right to disobey the law because of her primitive superstitions and she can't sit there and deliberately not do her job and still hold the office.
How does that saying go? Something like "crap or get off the pot." Well guess what ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Tyranny on a minor scale is still a form of tyranny.
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Tyranny, loosely defined is "cruel and oppressive government rule." Yeah, I know. You're going to argue that making a religious anti-gay bigot issue marriage licenses is oppressive. Except it isn't. Know why? Because she has the choice to quit. The government isn't MAKING her issue gay marriage licenses. No one has a gun to her head. It would only be oppressive if she was being forced to issue marriage licenses because the government is saying,
"You have to issue those licenses. No, you can't quit. YOU have to issue them. If you do not, you will be subject to torture and execution -- and your family will suffer the same fate." THAT is oppressive. But she has the option to quit, free and clear.
Not getting your own way is not tyranny so, no, it isn't even tyranny on a minor scale. There is nothing "cruel or oppressive" about it. Otherwise, one could argue that anything the government wants you to do that you
don't want to do is "tyranny." That makes the word utterly meaningless.
You and others like you love using that word because it conjures up images of people who were TRULY oppressed -- slaves, Japanese-Americans during WWII, women, Chinese railroad workers, communists and leftists during the McCarthy era, and others in America. To say nothing of worse things like Jews during the Holocaust or blacks in South Africa during Apartheid. You want to include yourself and this clerk in with those groups which is just plain nonsense.
I think you're going to find that most Americans, even a majority of Christians, are getting a little tired of people using religion as an excuse to simply be a lousy human being.
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