"Donald and Evelyn Knapp, ordained ministers who oppose gay marriage, own the Hitching Post wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene. Early in 2014, a federal judge in Idaho ruled the state’s same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional, but the ruling was put on hold while the case was appealed. When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, the ruling stood and went into effect." (read more)
89 comments:
It's not just "taking a step many opponents of same-sex marriage feared would come" –- it's a step that that many proponents assured us would never happen. Now they will have to answer.
OTOH, the couple might consider going to jail for their beliefs, just to embarrass their opponents. It worked for MLK. This is pretty well timed for the election.
X-ray -- I noticed that too, but...
If a church loses its tax exemption, it becomes, in the eyes of almighty government, a "for profit business." Right?
Let us add another datum. The government periodically threatens taking the tax exemption from those it disapproves of.
So...how meaningful is the lack of tax exemptions?
I don't think that the real end of the struggle for gay rights by the Left is simply for gay rights. Why all this hubbub over the right to marry of just 2.5% of the population? I'm beginning to wonder if the real political purpose of gay rights is to be a useful stick with which to beat believers (mostly Christians). Since its birth in the French Revolution, the modern Left has been at war with Christianity. That there is a large & vibrant community of Left-leaning Christians doesn't change this history.
It's amazing how an ideology which so carefully puts those who disagree with it into "histories of oppression" (e.g. patriarchy, white privilege, hetero-normativity, etc) seems to be so clueless as to the skeletons in its own closet.
I don't doubt the camel's nose under the tent analogy but I'm not sure this is the case upon which to go full sail.
The case seems to differ in that the ministers are targeted, rather than the suppliers of cakes and photography services. I've seen ministers perform rites outside the walls of their churches. Do they receive recompense for these services? How are they different?
Richard Epstein's take is that freedom of association is the constitutional rule in any competitive market.
The exception of note was serving blacks in the South. There were lots of people wanting to serve blacks but it was illegal, either publicly or privately ("nice business you have here shame if anything were to happen to it").
In that particular case, businesses were forced to do what they wanted to do anyway. The threat was removed.
Not serving a customer is losing money. Competitors come up and take it.
So serve anybody you want.
"nice business you have here shame if anything were to happen to it"
With the threat of closure or jail time, guess which side is acting like petty thugs?
it's a step that that many proponents assured us would never happen.
Andrew Sullivan?
Not naming names?
I always thought it would a kind of hollow victory if people, like pastors and priests weren't going to be compelled to marry same sex couples.
That's the ultimate goal.
That's the ultimate goal.
The ultimate goal is force religion into a closet. It's a revenge game for the bigots out there litigating. And I also think it's a tiny minority of the LGBLT crowd -- most of them are decent people.
I don't think this will survive legal challenge, but it's sad that this poor couple of pastors even has to experience this.
It's my hope that sometime soon the gay leadership will figure out that allowing shit like to happen not only doesn't help the cause, but it has the potential to bring the country perilously close to civil violence. It's amazing that folks on the Left who talk about how bigoted, violent, & gun-loving right-wingers are seem to love to poke the bear with a stick. You want to see right wing-nuts go on a bender & start finding gay activists floating in the river with the tops of their heads missing, all with the passive connivance of the rest of the community? Go after their churches & that's what'll happen.
It'll be slow motion civil war.
Andrew Sullivan?
Not naming names?
I was thinking more of guys like Madison Man on Althouse, who explicitly said that this would never happen -- not in America.
As for Sullivan? One day he's claiming that the Holy Sacrament of Marriage is and always been and always should be exclusively M/F; the next day he's back to bitching about how "Ratzingerian" the Church still is.
@chicklit,
And I also think it's a tiny minority of the LGBLT crowd -- most of them are decent people.
I don't think so anymore. There has already been too many cases in Canada & Europe were religious freedom has been trampled in the cause of gay rights, and I haven't heard a peep out of these people about "Alright, we get civil marriage, and that's that. Stay away from the churches, ya hear! 1st Amendment rights are for everyone, and those rights are our defense as well as defense for the bigots."
How difficult is it to say something like that in public?
The left has no real principles beyond power and control. These they never waver from pursuing. There will be no logical or ethical reason to not force a vegan restaurant to serve veal, but that won't happen. It will just be how the double standard works.
Decent people, and by that I mean people who respect other peoples' rights (known as wingnuts and libertarians) would never force the vegans or the Christians to do things they find morally wrong, but somehow they are the intolerant ones.
This leaves us with the unfortunate fact that Lefties, are knowingly or not, indecent and untrustworthy fellow citizens, which gives them a huge advantage. Cheaters always have that, and there are only three ways to deal with it: ridicule, ostracism or violence. They seem immune to the ridicule, and ostracism is not available so far, because of the stupidity and ubiquity of lazy thinkers, and you have to be pretty damned lazy to try less than me.
I rack up their support to laziness and selfishness, but that may be foolishly naive. Modern history is full of such movements which usually end up ugly and violent. Unfortunately, I think the indecent crowd is more motivated and as always, more willing to do what it takes, regardless of the morality of it. That is the legacy of the left. The decent are left to a strategy of trust, leading to disappointment, then disbelief, and eventually martyrdom before pursuing victory with the required vigor.
Most here know that I hosted a gay wedding at my home last year. Yesterday was the 1st anniversary of that couple. They are awesome people that I believe anyone here would respect and like if they knew them, but they would not want anything to do with forcing religious people to perform weddings against their will, because that is clearly just wrong, and every decent person knows it.
This is why marriage, like most things, should not be in the realm of government. People don't need the state to justify their love or commitments. That's all about special favors. People need to stop looking for favors from government. That includes being tax exempt. You live here, you share the infrastructure, then you pay taxes like everyone else. Pastors make a living, dog rescue people do too, none of it should be tax exempt. Get out and push the damned wagon like the rest of us.
What a horrible test case. But there it is.
I see it as bullying. (As in the Houston mayor ...)
But as for the cake decorators, the photographer ... there are always other options of people who would love to be creative for the gay couple. (Look for civil suits against providers who fold but fail to please the "happy couple ...")
But no, these people must be punished by putting them out of business (something they love and which feeds and clothes them) for disagreeing in their deepest hearts about gay marriage.
But no. In the mind of the gay couples they are taking the mantle of the black civil rights struggle. Not.
I too, grow weary of the arrogance and lack of tolerance and lack of appreciation of true diversity. Hypocrites.
Who are these mean gay people pushing this stuff. I don't anyone like that. Humans have this fault in our collective functioning where the biggest assholes get more than their share of attention and power. That is a fatal flaw, we never seem to outgrow.
I worked at a small corporation for several years. One of the married VP's had several gay people in her division. The VP felt it was very unfair that the gay employees who had partners could not have the company health insurance for those partners because they were not 'married.' It was very upsetting for that VP to not be able to compensate her staff equally. And now here we are with government forcing churches to marry same sex couples.
I don't doubt the camel's nose under the tent analogy but I'm not sure this is the case upon which to go full sail.
Is somebody mixing metaphors?
It always starts out with some good intention.
You can't mix metaphors in a same sex couple thread ;)
@bagoh,
Who are these mean gay people pushing this stuff. I don't anyone like that.
I know tons of straight SSM supporters who support crap like this. My FB friend list is full of them, many of them with advanced degrees.
Nowadays, there are very few topics where the PC-left lets the ugliness show in public like SSM.
Sometimes one must hold one's nose to defend a greater principle than that held by those who must defended despite their lesser sense of principle.
It's a shame. But there it is.
Where you are wrong is when you say most gay people are decent. How many will step up and say that it is wrong to force a church to perform same sex marriages?
None.
There are about as many decent gays as there are Moderate Muslims.
Talk about cheapening Christian marriage.
My just-previous comment was not directed at Trooper's comment.
However, it was indeed directed at cheap-Christian "marriage"-chapels.
Which sort of thing, over many decades, has never gotten anywhere near the sort of disapproval it ought have got, if the notion of cheapening marriage, especially Christian marriage, is the point.
Some people don't have money. Or good taste. So these chapels serve a legitimate purpose.
It is no less Christian. I think we should take these people at their word since they seem to be ordained ministers.
The reason they were sued was not because they were tacky and cheap. It was because they were Christians.
@rcommal,
Did you go read the legal complaint filed by the ADF? These two pastors have been ordained & pastoring for decades. It's not up to you to decide if someone has reached the proper threshold of religious decorum to be able to exercise their 1st amendment rights. It's not up to any of us.
Luckily, on another 1st A. matter, liberals with a conscience are finally stepping up to the plate.
Chapel Of Love
50 years ago, even. I should have frontpaged that instead of that execrable Foreigner song.
The reason they were sued was not because they were tacky and cheap. It was because they were Christians.
Probably also because they were a small business without deep financial pockets. This is why none of the bigots have dared take on a larger denomination -- yet. They're waiting for favorable judicial winds to sustain them.
As rcommal says -- this is a test case.
Still, as it has come to pass, one can't choose the ground on which one must stand.
SO unfortunate that. If only people before one had been more principled, less opportunistic--even so-called religious people--with regard to marriage.
But that's not how it went, and for that reason, now, so it goes.
I will defend that husband-wife team on account of their being the wedge. What I will not do is forgive those who made that possible (out of neglect? out of cynicism? out of cowardice? out of lack of principle? who knows).
Full stop, other than shame on you.
@rcommal,
SO unfortunate that. If only people before one had been more principled, less opportunistic--even so-called religious people--with regard to marriage.
You think that if Henry VIII had stayed faithful to Catherine of Aragon none of this would have happened, or somethin'?
Gay activism is a part of the post-Marxist Left. Do you think that the Left's historical disdain for Christianity has ANYTHING to do with the fact that somehow the Christians just weren't rigorist enough in their marriages, or anything else for that matter?
The Left hates Christianity because it's a) the opiate of the masses, b) a standard-bearer for the patriarchy, c) hetero-normativity, & d) based on the teachings of dead white people.
Other than stop being Christian, there's nothing we can to please them.
I see that Powerline has picked up this story. I wonder if Althouse will too. She should. I'd like to see Mad Man's reaction.
Good Lord, Trooper, did you not read what I wrote?
Also, you're Catholic. Aren't you? And haven't you, over and over and over again, proclaimed that.
Even gotten irritated, when questioned (especially w/r/t whether or not, theologically speaking, it is or is not important to be seen with ashes on one's forehead, publicly).
How much more, then, is it important to consider marriage as a sacrament, in terms of one's own self and one's own religion, not to mention ALL of what one defends and ALL of what one condemns?
I ask you.
YoungHegelian:
You think that if Henry VIII had stayed faithful to Catherine of Aragon none of this would have happened, or somethin'?
What crap.
... It's not up to you to decide ... .
How not shocking. Of course it is not.
We certainly paid for our traditional church wedding. It's expected. It's not a *lot*, but you pay the organist and you also give the Pastor a check and probably a bit to the church because they'll have to clean up after you.
It's not as clearly set out as a list of expenses at a "wedding chapel" and it's not like hiring a special wedding venue like having a dinner and reception at a fancy hotel or resort. A "bill" is not presented and the check is passed with little fanfare. Bottom line though... no matter who marries you, they get paid for it.
Go to the court house and you pay them, too. In fact, that's a separate trip and separate charge even if you do get married by a pastor in a church and not a judge.
Do you think that the Left's historical disdain for Christianity has ANYTHING to do with the fact that somehow the Christians just weren't rigorist enough in their marriages, or anything else for that matter?
Yes, in fact, I do.
@rcommal,
Yes, in fact, I do.
Thanks for that answer, rc.
Let's quit right here, because clearly you've never read any history of the Left or any left-wing authors. There's no point to discuss this any further.
What the fuck are you going on about? Stop your play of offended piety "oh, if only we had..." & answer my question --- do you really think that the Left's historical disdain of religion has ANYTHING to do with how Christians just haven't been perfect little Christians in this world?
Well, screw me. I thought I did answer your previous question--and quite clearly, explicitly, directly and in few words.
You keep wanting to bring more schtick into it.
Fine. I've attempted, tonight, to actually try to address and discuss actual issues.
I failed.
Therefore, here's my reaction:
F* off and F* you.
I think that this is pretty much the case...
"The Left hates Christianity because it's a) the opiate of the masses, b) a standard-bearer for the patriarchy, c) hetero-normativity, & d) based on the teachings of dead white people."
e) all of the above.
That Christianity is populated by humans and thus doesn't quite live up to its principles is just an excuse.
I'm all for decoupling Marriage and State... the main reason for it was assigning responsibility for children in any case, and for that reason it's entirely inadequate anymore. We don't need to depend on legal fictions to define paternity, we can run a test.
Property can be divided by whose name is on the mortgage... or not on it.
There's not a single thing I can do, anymore, to engage.
It's over.
The Left hates Christianity because of Jesus Christ.
They say it's because of us uptight hypocrites. But it isn't.
If it's about the tacky wedding chapel cheapening Christian marriage why would the gay couple want to be married there?
If it's cheap and tacky.
There's not a single thing I can do, anymore, to engage.
It's over.
Well, that's sad if true. We've had our differences, but they never cancelled everything.
I will miss you.
Unless you're just talking about this thread.
I don't see my sister marring same sex couples. If anything i see her sending them elsewhere. Aren't churches tax exempt?
Not for long Lem.
This is just another step in the plan to destroy religious freedom in this country.
Trooper York has left a new comment on the post ""Idaho City To Christian Pastors: Perform Same-Sex...":
This is just another step in the plan to destroy religious freedom in this country.
And I oppose that step, you son of a bitch--how about you stop claiming that opposition as only your own and of your own? Man, dude. How short-sighted, how unfaithful, are you, anyway.
Addressing the left's attack on Christianity.
It struck me driving to the Mosaic just short of Colorado Springs. You get off i-25 and head west toward the foothills that come up fairly quickly through a shallow valley.
A valley filled with little churches, with sparse cars on a sunday, and wonderfully large houses large as the churches all around a lake. The Mosaic restaurant in a modern stone building itself more substantial than any of the wooden churches.
All those separate churches just to be a little bit different.
It also would hit me when I drove to my parents house and passed by a new mega church built on a hill. Built to accommodate a portion of all the new houses popped up like mushrooms, boom, churches come with them.
All that money. All that organization, flowing into that activity. It's enough to drive leftist properly nuts. The thought of all those people sitting down and listening to the likes of... them. Those. The smash their eyes shut and pray guys.
[They don't get anything right. Last night this guy was preaching from Revelations. Good Grief.]
Instead of sitting down and listening to say, Hillary clinton, and dressing up besides, for the privilege to pay for it. All that money and energy and attention is felt as a serious misallocation of resources. Whatever is going through churches, and all that is going through churches should be going through government.
Their government.
Enter: Science! The antidote to superstition and religion. But the little dummkopfs are easily swayed, cannot have proper science, that's too hard too complex, so emotional science instead, human-science instead, quasi science instead, Neil deGrasse Tyson instead.
Whose got a bug up his ass about religion because he's dazzled by science.
Gays generally were more interesting to me in a "Begone, you have no power here" attitude, and got married themselves if they so wanted and so few actually did.
But that was before AIDS when six months in a gay relationship was the hetero equivalent of three reincarnations with the same mate.
The present caterwauling about acknowledgement from government is a thing I do not know. Purely political presented as emotional. This particular reversal is jolting. From demands government stay out of the bedroom to demands government get all up in gay's and women's bedrooms.
Oh, now you want me to use the dildo for you too, not just buy your contraceptives and bring the force of law onto your Christian employer provided health insurance, your bakeries, photography studios, sermon pulpits and wedding huts. Well that's gong too far. I'll take the jail time. I feel I'm in jail already.
But I'm telling you, it's a bit hard defending the sanctity of Christian wedding when the case study arises from a Wedding hut operation.
Do they have drive-through service?
Does it come with pizza?
Wedding chapels that provide a cute wedding-on-the-go already cheapen the ritual of Christian weddings as intended, I'm imagining all this, at the wedding hut level refusal looks more like bigotry than it does damage to Christian values.
*click*
Ewwwwww, nice. Women are being fitted for wedding dresses. The whole thing is outrageous.
I had no idea. Curated by a ... wait for it...
very effective wedding dress matcher. Psych! You thought I was going to say gay guy. Most important question. "What's your limit?"
"$5,000"
Good. Do you have any designers you like?
This is what marriage is for them.
For they live in another world. I enjoy these glimpses into other peoples' worlds they make for themselves.
But one that interphases mine.
I mentioned I discovered 2 huge puffy lacy white wedding dresses hanging in my bedroom closet at my parents house. As if the closet, the whole room was made for them. What a shock. I could not place them.
That was Mum, she took over everybody's closet when we moved out.
First Amendment, pure and simple.
It's gonna be fun watching Roberts squirm on this one.
YoungHegelian said...
Why all this hubbub over the right to marry of just 2.5% of the population?
More like 1.3%, according to the Census.
And marriage has never been a right.
(a rite, maybe)
Hey rcommal please be advised that nothing I say refers to you or your thoughts or beliefs or actions in any way whats so ever. Everyone should speak for themselves.
Get over yourself. Thanks.
I appreciate all of that, Trooper, and I thank you. Also, I am working on the getting-over-myself part. It's a slog and slow-going, which I doubt would surprise anyone.
I hope all gays get married. Then they will know what real pain is.
But I'm not bitter...
Few people consider the complicity of attorneys in this gay marriage push. They have, in a Machiavellian way, been behind this. We should make gay divorce illegal. That will get those blood suckers out of the movement, pronto.
The first person to stop clapping for the gays will be shot.
Every possible bad outcome predicted by the opponents of gay marriage have successively come true.
We are heading toward an era of persecution of Christians, in the land they founded to escape persecution.
I can hear the old man laughing and stamping his cloven feet.
Pogo: I never said I was a diplomat wrote "...I can hear the old man laughing and stamping his cloven feet."
Yeah, but enough about Obama.
If it's cheap and tacky.
A.K.A., gauche and fun in an ironic way.
What did I tell you all. The church would be next in this battle. Once the velvet mafia gets its hooks via government fiat into the societal fabric and have their version of marriage sanctified by government, they will go after the church. Well, here it is.
Just wait till the last state loses the battle over how marriage is defined.
There are at least some people, pushing the redefinition of marriage, who realize this stuff doesn't help. But once the battle to rewrite statutes is past, then there will be less restraint.
That's when churches will be targeted more directly. This "for profit" chapel was a logical first step, precisely because of the "for profit" status.
This is just another brick in the wall. They will move on to the church and Jewish temples and the Mormons. I have my doubts that they will target mosques though so there is that.
Ultimately, an attack on religion is an attack on personal individual autonomy. The left have "religion;" they worship Big Government, the hive mind, The State, Gaia, whatever you want to call it. Remember "Government, it's the one thing we all belong to?" Yikes!! Conform or be cast out.
Nongovernmental religion poses a threat because it allows individuals to seek meaning outside the supervised government playpens. Is it a meaning that you necessarily agree with? Frequently, sadly, no. But who says it has to be? It is that individual's personal choice. Undermining nongovernmental religion is just a means to the end of undermining the individual.
So... military chaplains are sort of what religion looks like when run by the government.
A family with a new baby came to our service to get the baby baptized. I'm Lutheran... we do that. The congregation was NOT. Yes, there was a baptism, and it broke my heart, because not only was the congregation not celebrating, the congregation sat, politely stuffed, and utterly horrified.
Non-baby-baptizers aren't neutral on the subject. They think it is Very Bad. Extremely Bad. I made a joke once about being careful not to slip while carrying the new baby next to the swimming pool or it might accidentally get baptized... no laughter... politely stuffed, and utterly horrified.
Honestly, it's not about the money, not to me, this case.
And the business part of it isn't the main reason why I think it's a bad test case (though it is part of it, and in much the same way that I came to be persuaded, by folks with honest and well thought-out arguments--and yes, that was several years ago--that renting out a church as a mere pretty backdrop for a wedding ceremony is an abrogation of responsibility and that no donation could truly ameliorate that notion).
It's also not about the venue, in the *other* sense (this is I, acknowledging that I did, indeed, just write about venue, in a particular way, another sense). I do think that of course a Minister (which word I'm using as a stand-in for all the various permutations of clergy titles, for the sake of getting on with the point) can officiate at a wedding, a marriage in any place, and of course no official church building is required. However, there is *something* that is required, regardless of venue, isn't there? Shouldn't there be?
Something more than incidental trappings in terms of those being joined in [dare I say it in the following way:] Holy Matrimony? Because that really is the point, isn't it? Why and how is an all-comers, let's-do-this-quick marriage chapel, regardless of the bona fides of the proprietors, a great witness for the sanctity of marriage, that honorable institution... ?
---
I already stated, as clear as day I think, that I will defend that chapel and those ministers because all three are, in fact, a wedge to attack something far more important.
However, as I also already stated, I think it is a bad test case, and I sincerely hope and pray that it won't be the defining case, which--in my opinion--it emphatically ought not be.
But if it turns out to be, I do believe that I will still think that the fault for that lies not just at the feet of those who are secular (gay or not), but also those who are supposedly not mostly secular in their thinking.
The first person to stop clapping for the gays will be shot.
Oh, pooh. I have stopped clapping for the purely political positions of gays many times (as, for example, right now, w/r/t the very issue under discussion), Pogo, and I am no more in fear of being shot as a result of that than I was when I first started clapping for the notion 40 years ago that gays should not have to live a forced-closet life.
I am not clapping for "the gays" here. Far from clapping am I on the issue at hand. Does that count?
BANG!
Rcommal:
I appreciate your thoughts.
My response is this. Whether these folks in this story are a good witness for the sanctity of matrimony is a good question, but irrelevant as far as the law is concerned. That is essentially a theological or religious question that the government has no competence to evaluate.
I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is this: that when a venue has a "take all comers" policy, then it is vulnerable to a discrimination complaint. You can't take only "some" comers, you must take all. Whether this is sound reasoning, it seems to be prevalent in law.
Now, I'm guessing the couple here conducts weddings that are, more or less Christian in orientation. I'm guessing if two Hindus came to them, and wanted Hindu rituals, they'd decline. This couple -- if I'm correct about them -- fit into a long tradition of what may be called "general Protestantism." They don't take all comers, but they'll take all "Christian" comers, all the while applying an ambiguous understanding of what Christian means.
Lots of Protestants and Evangelicals operate this way, including Protestant ministers regarding baptism and marriage. You don't have to belong to their denomination (if they even have one), or their church. You hire them; they will provide more or less counseling or preparation, provide the ritual itself, and send you on their way. It's a "business" in the sense that they earn their living this way; and it's a "ministry" inasmuch as they genuinely see themselves ("genuineness" being something only God can judge, finally) as helping people as a Christian minister should.
Here's the problem. This "take all comers" approach spares a lot of religious bodies, such as Catholics, precisely because we don't marry you unless one party is Catholic. We don't make our churches available, as a rule, for any but Catholic rites. But we do this not for legal reasons, but for theological reasons. Those who do it differently, likewise do what they do for theological reasons...
Which means they may be disadvantaged, in years to come, for theological reasons. And how does that square with the First Amendment?
Now, here's a thought about the "for profit" angle.
Liberals tend to think this is a huge distinction; notice it figured prominently in President Obama's contraception mandate, and in the Hobby Lobby case.
But it's not a reasonable distinction, and it poses a question I think is important: what exactly in our Constitution says that you lose your religious freedom when you run your business?
The Hobby Lobby decision certainly tilted toward business-owners' religious freedom; and a case like this might end up taking us further, if it gets that far.
I could see Justice Kennedy "splitting the baby" in that fashion: he creates, ex nihilo, a constitutional right to anyone marrying anyone; but then rules in favor of business owners' being able to run their enterprises according to their religious beliefs.
word verification?
Fr. Fox:
what exactly in our Constitution says that you lose your religious freedom when you run your business
Nothing says that, either exactly or otherwise. Not by my lights, and never has it.
But it's not a reasonable distinction
I agree with you, with the reservation that I agree with you w/r/t constitutional rights, which ought go a good way to explain why--without reservation--I am on the side of defending the wedding chapel and its pastors to operate in accordance to their religious beliefs.
However, in a different arena (and I care about that one, too) I do not and would not defend them on the notional grounds that they are promoting Christian marriage, much less that they have *not* been part of the cheapening of "Minister"-led marriage and commitment to that "honorable estate" for ye, these many years. Because, of course, they have been.
By my lights, and this is not a new view of mine, either.
Also, indeed I do refuse to accept the notion that was has caused the long-term degradation of the notion of "marriage" in the U.S. ought be laid at the feet of gay people, to state it plain and to not be disingenuous about it. I refuse to accept that notion both on secular and religious grounds.
In addition, I have little respect for those who are attempting to establish the precedent that every little business owner ought toe the line of cynical activist cant at every marker along the pike to "let's have a society where everyone must conform to my vision, or else)! In fact, I hold those people in contempt. As well.
It is my opinion, stated plain, that cynical test-case attacks on small-biz photographers, bakers and even drive-by Christian marriage chapels are not just cowardly, but also devoid of the very much larger and more important principles at stake.
This is also a strong part of my POV, and as with all parts of that I stand by it.
Rcommal:
I have noo quarrel with anything you wrote.
Thanks, Fr. Martin.
I appreciate the respect you have paid me in considering [what I was trying to explain in terms of] my objections to cries of "squirrel!" all the way around and your allowing of the possibility that I might hold sincere, seriously thought-out positions w/r/t different realms, whether or not my view of things makes sense to or is liked or embraced by people who disagree.
----
TBC, I'm not suggesting, much less assuming, that you agree with me on any particular point much less all points, or even any one of them at all. What I am saying is that I am truly thanking you, and am thankful for you, because of what I already said ^ .
There are a number of things with which I keep finding myself struggling, in relation to the issues at hand, however.
I wish it were possible to discuss those, as well the others.
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