Pope Give Kim Davis A Pass

[Baruch]

Is the thread about the Pope or the misapplication of freedom of conscience or both?

[stromboli]

Is the thread about the Pope or the misapplication of freedom of conscience or both?

Lol. Choose one. He is siding with the conservatives on the Kim Davis issue to play that side, yet still promotes liberalism in terms of global warming and other issues. He is playing to the house. Definitely smarter than his predecessor, but its kind of a rock and a hard place situation. I honestly think he is an evil man and likes the Machiavellian aspects of the game, and I think he sees it as such.

Conservative Catholics hate him but he's trying to get the liberals back in the churches. So he has to play to one side of the aisle and then the other. A year or two down the road, we'll see. That's the thing about the information age- events unfold at a much faster speed than previously. He shits at 7:45 and the world knows about it by 8:00.

[Baruch]

If he were a Machiavellian version of Pope John XXIII ... he would declare Papal Infallibility, arrest all the Catholic conservatives, and burn them at the stake.  There are positive aspects to being evil, just depends on whose ox is being gored.

[josephpalazzo]

If he were a Machiavellian version of Pope John XXIII ... he would declare Papal Infallibility, arrest all the Catholic conservatives, and burn them at the stake.  There are positive aspects to being evil, just depends on whose ox is being gored.

He doesn't have to declare Papal Infallibility, it comes with the job, after all, he was chosen by God to be the representative of Jesus on this planet. So there.

[Munch]

If he were a Machiavellian version of Pope John XXIII ... he would declare Papal Infallibility, arrest all the Catholic conservatives, and burn them at the stake.  There are positive aspects to being evil, just depends on whose ox is being gored.

Palpatine didn't show his true evil at first, hiding behind the mask of a kindly senator

Ironicly this pope might be like senator Palpatine, while the last pope LOOKED like the emperor.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

What is left out is it's fine to object,  but Davis wasn't drafted and forced into service. She, unlike many soldiers has a perfectly viable option to resign as a form of protest. She doesn't have the right to break the law and prevent others from legally getting married.

[Munch]

Thats just it, she broke the law, and all fundies want the law to be twisted around their pathetic beliefs.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

My thoughts on this: yeah, she should have had the right provided there were reasonable accommodations for the same sex couples coming in. If she allowed her deputy clerks to do the filing I wouldn't give a shit if little miss bigot wanted to sit in the corner. Whatever, her problem. She crossed the line not when she refused, but rather when she actively obstructed her deputy clerks from filing the licenses. She didn't passively practice her faith, but rather actively pressed it onto others. And that's the part fundies like to omit. To them, Kim Davis is some poor old lady who simply didn't want to take part in something that went against her faith, but then the big bad government came down on her. That is simply not true with any reading of the facts. The government instead came down on her after she refused multiple times to stop preventing the deputy clerks from acting. That is not practicing your First Amendment rights, that is actively forcing others to abide by your religious beliefs.

In short: fuck her.

[stromboli]

I think Kim Davis needs a pressurized water enema.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

I think Kim Davis needs a pressurized water enema.

If you gave her an enema she'd be microscopic afterwards.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Franky didn't "give her a pass" at all and I do agree that you should have the right to object because of your conscious,but you DON'T have the right to break the law and try to force others to do the same. 
There are many things that I object to and would willfully break the law, but on the same hand when I do that I also accept that by breaking the law I'm subject to whatever punishment the state deems.  I don't get to willingly break laws then claim that god says it's ok then get paid for it.

No wait ..that's religion in a nutshell.

[Johan]

Franky didn't "give her a pass" at all and I do agree that you should have the right to object because of your conscious,but you DON'T have the right to break the law and try to force others to do the same. 
There are many things that I object to and would willfully break the law, but on the same hand when I do that I also accept that by breaking the law I'm subject to whatever punishment the state deems.  I don't get to willingly break laws then claim that god says it's ok then get paid for it.

No wait ..that's religion in a nutshell.

Well yeah that's it in a nutshell. If the pope wants to talk about rights and say that she has a right to follow her conscience regardless of the law, then yeah, sure. She most certainly has a right to do that. The exact same way that ANYONE most certainly has a right to shoot their neighbor for being a dick, or the same way that anyone most certainly has a right to refuse to pay taxes they don't personally believe in. You have the right to do those things. But you also have to expect to be required to pay the consequences of your actions when you exercise that right.

I have the right to murder someone in cold blood for looking at me wrong if I happen to think its the right thing for me to do at the time. Which is to say I can consciously make the choice and do it. But unless I am a complete psychopath, I also have to expect that I will be required to be held accountable for those actions due to the pre-established laws of the geographic location in which I choose to reside.

IOW, the pope my well be infallible in the eyes of god, but his ass is out of line on this one in the eyes of me.

[Baruch]

The breakdown of the Social Contract ... is part of the tendency to ignore the laws that you don't like.  But then that is just another name for complete sociopathy.

[GSOgymrat]

As I anticipated, the pope met with Kim Davis to express his support.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-in-secret-meeting-with-pope-francis-report-says/ar-AAeWq4N?ocid=spartanntp

[SGOS]

I have the right to murder someone in cold blood for looking at me wrong if I happen to think its the right thing for me to do at the time. Which is to say I can consciously make the choice and do it. But unless I am a complete psychopath, I also have to expect that I will be required to be held accountable for those actions due to the pre-established laws of the geographic location in which I choose to reside.

The way I define right, I would argue that what you describe is a choice, but not a right, although I know what you mean.  You might be describing a vague kind of "inalienable right" as referred to in the Declaration of Independence.  But I think the framers of that document used a god awful meaningless term from a legal perspective.  To me, a right is something that is allowed, usually defined.  To describe a choice as a right, an actual conferred right, doesn't make a choice a right.  The two concepts are very much unrelated. 

Conscientious objection is a concept understood by law makers, but as you pointed out, it does not mean "free license" to do whatever you want.  I'm perhaps being a bit pedantic at the moment, but perhaps not.  Much of the controversy surrounding this particular case is being conducted in a semantic fog, with Christians saying, "Yeah, but it's her right!"  Sorry, it's not her right, nor is it within her legal rights, and I suspect that Judge Bunning understands this much better than the Pope, whose Christian religion feeds on just such semantic gibberish as it works to bend reality and invent it's own truth.

Gay marriage, however, is a right, but there is no legal right recognized by law to prevent gays from marrying.  Legally there is no room for Christian or media equivocation here.  What right is and is not conferred here is very clear.