Posted on 08/12/2012 7:55:55 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Phoenix officials have until next Friday to apologize for the actions of a code enforcement officer after he stopped Christians from giving out water bottles to city festival participants on a day that reached 112 degrees.
A legal team that fights for religious and civil rights is also demanding a commitment that the city will no longer interfere with the Christian group’s acts of charity.
According to a letter to the city from the Rutherford Institute, the case developed in July during a “First Friday” festival when Dana Crow-Smith was giving “free bottles of cold water to passersby” on the public sidewalk “as a means of exercising her Christian beliefs.”
She “was moved” to offer the refreshment “to people at the festival who were braving the desert’s scorching 112-degree heat,” said the letter to city attorney Gary Verburg.
“According to Ms. Crow-Smith, her group was approached by Neighborhood Preservation Inspector Dwayne Grierson, who told them that they were violating the Phoenix City Code by giving away water without a vendor’s permit,” the letter explains. In fact, Grierson insisted that giving water away was “prohibited.”
The ban, however, violates several significant precedents, such as the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Arizona’s Freedom of Religious Exercise Act, Rutherford officials wrote.
A woman in the city attorney’s office declined to respond to WND’s questions, and phone calls requesting comment from the city’s public information office were not returned at the time of this report.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
I wonder who represents Phoenix up Washington?
Wow. I can only imagine Comrade “Neighborhood Preservation Inspector” Grierson’s response if this poor lady had been running a lemonade stand.
Dwayne Grierson needs a good old fashioned righteous ass kicking. Just saying.
OK to give to illegals though, [sigh]
Things like this just make you want to bang your head against the keyboard.
If private individuals are allowed to give anything away, it will keep the government from saying they have to take our money away in order so they can be the ones who appear to give out freebies.
People helping other people is competition for what the government thinks should be the job they alone are allowed to fill: to be the sole provider of everything, as if they were God.
It probably says you can obtain water with the permission of the government's water authority for your own personal use or that of members of your household ~ but you can't pass it on to someone else who doesn't have a permit.
Like Oregon, or Colorado, or Texas, or New Mexico (as mentioned) you need a permit to even give it away ~ 'cause it's not really yours to give away, only to use.
Again, the first scene in Lawrence of Arabia has Omar Sharif shooting a couple of guys to death for giving his, Omar's water, away to their sheep!
Everyone in the Rub Al Khalid applauded the action ~ presumably shocking to Westerners who live in well watered environs.
Can all you people grow up?
Phoenix is strict with vendors. Lots of food poisoning from the heat and illegal aliens with stolen shopping carts walking the neighborhoods selling odd things.
He’s just some little person trying to do his job.
He doesn’t have the authority to NOT enforce the law. That takes an elected politician!
Render unto God what is God's, and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Sometimes Caesar is due an ass kicking.
Thanks for chiming in with the old “He was only following orders” shtick. That worked out well at Nuremberg.
He’s a little power crazed martinet throwing his weight around making people miserable because he can
nd)Giving something away is not "vending".
If they think giving someone a drink of water makes you a vendor, they have problems at a much more fundamental level than that.
Can we grow up?
How about you GROW SOME first.
(Pssst!) Government does think it is God (in a whisper)
How dare you peons give water to the thirsty without our say-so?
Nanny State PING!
Perhaps they should have said that they were not passing out water but trying to promote the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. Therefore, it’s not a selling issue but an environmental one.
Sounds like she was giving out bottled water. That’s something you buy from a store, rather than collecting it from your sink.
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