Posted on 09/28/2011 2:45:23 AM PDT by markomalley
Rose Marie Belforti is a 57-year-old cheese maker, the elected town clerk in this sprawling Finger Lakes farming community and a self-described Bible-believing Christian. She believes that God has condemned homosexuality as a sin, so she does not want to sign same-sex marriage licenses; instead, she has arranged for a deputy to issue all marriage licenses by appointment.
But when a lesbian couple who own a farm near here showed up at the town hall last month, the women said they were unwilling to wait.
Now Ms. Belforti is at the heart of an emerging test case, as national advocacy groups look to Ledyard for an answer to how the state balances a religious freedom claim by a local official against a civil rights claim by a same-sex couple.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bottom line, these women want to force this woman out of her job because she has a religious aversion to their lifestyle.
She has every right to have her job and she has every right to have a religious aversion to their depravity.
The city made legally allowed, reasonable accommodations to issue marriage licenses. These women are making it an issue because this clerk had the audacity to voice her religious beliefs.
That is the long and short of this entire story!
KLBJ in Austin has a topic about gay "rights" today. One lady called in and talked about their trip to a movie theater last weekend. She and her husband were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary and two women started kissing. She made a comment of "Look at those two lesbians kissing". She and her husband were asked to leave.
Do you or have you ever lived in New York? (I have - that’s why this ticks me off so much)
Her supervisors stabbed her in the back. The policy, if applied uniformly, fits easily within the boundaries of the law. The lesbian pair demanded an exception from policy, and the clerk’s supervisors appear to have not sided strongly with established policy.
She did not relegate it to another “entity”. A policy that marriage licenses are signed by appointment only and gave responsibility for fulfilling those appointments to a senior member of the clerk’s staff. The clerk herself and the clerk’s staff are (or should be) the same legal entity, as the position is not considered to be an individual, but an office.
It is also possible that the courts themselves decided they knew better, and disallowed the policy argument.
The reason for the policy is the first amendment issue. Therefore, if the policy argument falls flat, one argues the reason behind the policy.
I’m not ashamed to admit I grew up in New York State, but it’s getting close.
Well, it's good that you don't care about polygamy because make no mistake, it's coming, and there's not a damm thing anyone can do about. The simple reason is this, Polygamy is logically inferred from same sex marriage.
Consider:
Traditional mariage is the union of a man and a woaman. It is therefore based on dissimilarity, gender. Since there are only two genders, male and female, then the qualitative infers the quantitative. If you alter the qualitative, you also alter the quantitative. Gay marriage is based on similarity, and therefore, the qulitative yields a quantity that is variable since there is no inherent limiting factor.
To say that gay marriage should be limited to two people is completely and undeniably arbitrary without any rational reason whatsoever.
And that applies to my statement how?
Such nice looking girls....
The town clerk should fight it, as her Constitutional rights are being violated, not least of which is Article1:9 re ex post facto laws.
Don´t give up.
I agree. There are some very disturbing news articles here today. That one abouf facebook tracking is one. A caller to the local talk show said he found FB tracking files in his TurboTax folder.
You have stated in the above sentence that she was not following the law. That's not true. She just wasn't following the law in the manner that the lesbian pair expected.
The law requires the office of the clerk to process the licenses. It does NOT specify an exact manner or time frame, and therefore a standard policy that requires an appointment with an individual on the clerk's office staff is a reasonable approach to satisfaction of the actual requirements of the law - even if it isn't the expectation of the applicants.
That is how the existence of this standard office policy is related to your original post.
I sympathize with everything you said, but your quote above is the heart of the problem. If she was the only one there, who at the time, was authorized to perform this duty, then she should have, distasteful as it was.
So you don’t agree that the standard policy of requiring an appointment is legally valid?
That is the crux of the matter. The pair of women were in so much of a hurry they could not be bothered to comply with the required appointment making. Therefore, your answer is the woman should break the clerk’s office policy (of requiring an appointment) and sign the license.
Either the clerk’s office can require an appointment or not. If you do not believe they can establish such a policy for everyone, please say so. But to require the clerk’s office to not follow its own policies because of the status of the patron is inherently discriminatory.
That is exactly what you are arguing for, absent your issuance of a blanket indictment of the appointment policy.
I understand your point. It’s no different than a municipality listing the time when a dog license can be procured or a recycling center being open.
It’s also a newsrag inserting an editorial statement, the town clerk’s religious beliefs, into a story about a marriage license. Again, an unnecessary piece of information.
Finally, would the marriage license have been granted if the couple were heterosexual? That information is not provided either.
My comment was regarding one aspect of the story, the clerk summoning a deputy to fulfill a task which was required by her position. You addressed a different issue, unrelated to my original response. If said couple were to appear at the proper time to acquire the license, one should presume a reasonable time frame based upon the laws of that state.
I was about to make the exact same argument. Talk about a statist point of view; csense not only wants Albany to force same-sex marriage on the unwilling people of New York, they also want the state to be able to write the operating manual for each local town, city and county!
Csense isn’t happy that the local town has implemented the law; csense is upset that the local town hasn’t bent to the COMPLETE will of these mentally-challenged people.
If you don’t like the way that office is being operated, then run for office or get hired on to be the office manager, etc... but until that time, neither you, nor these diseased woman, have a right to DEMAND that they change their hours and change their method of operation, simply because a new law is written.
Such nice looking girls....
My guess is the older one on the right has the money and calls the shots. The younger one looks nice enough and pleasant enough for most men the same age as her. The younger one foolishly allowed herself to get sucked into this lesbian relationship. She gave up on men
If the clerk herself were the only available person at the time of a duly made appointment, then your position would have merit. The issue with that argument, however, is that the lesbian pair decided they had the right to skip the making of an appointment.
With regard to the hypothetical hetero couple, ALL licenses required an appointment with the deputy clerk, according to the article.
My argument is not “unrelated” to your original post. I am pointing out that your argument requires that the appointment requirement be waived or deemed illegal to be valid.
Depends....can you make an appointment with her?
I'm assuming that this "standard" policy is a recent one, itself predicated upon a refusal to discharge her duties because of personal opinions. Counsel is going to have a field day with this. You may not like the law, and I may not like the law, but it is the law nonetheless, and she is a public servant.
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