Merlyn_LeRoy

Unless BSA's discrimination against gay adults is unlawful' date=' it is not "invidious" under the law. [/quote']

 

The KKK excludes non-whites legally. I don't think your analysis is correct.

 

Merlyn ... You still trolling around here?

Hey fred, you still badmouthing atheists? By the way, I posted the original link, so my appearance shouldn't be a surprise. Also, you aren't using the term "trolling" correctly.

Fine line you are walking. Blanket exception for religion, but then you decide what religious expression is?

I don't, but the court does. Deciding exactly what does and does not apply in a particular situation is what they do for a living, after all.

Many people believe that sexual orientation is a value decision. First amendment is about "freedom". Freedom of not just "religion" but also "religious expression."

There are people who sincerely believe that their god made blacks as inferior humans, or meant to keep the races separate. Why didn't you complain about the CA court barring KKK membership a year ago when you were discussing this when the courts were asking for public comments on this change?

​

The fact is you don't like BSA's expression. That is exactly the issue in BSA v Dale.

Oh, I don't like their expression, but what I really didn't like is the fact that the BSA dishonestly got government entitites like public schools to unlawfully charter their private, discriminatory groups. After I helped ax those, I haven't commented as much, because now the BSA is mostly just another bigoted group, instead of one actively inducing my own government to discriminate against atheists.

The Boy Scout of America defines “duty to God†as: Your family and religious leaders teach you about God and the ways you can serve. You do your duty to God by following the wisdom of those teachings every day and by respecting and defending the rights of others to practice their own beliefs.

Doesn't the above mean that the youth MUST follow the religion of his parents? "Your family and religious leaders teach you about God...You do your duty to God by following the wisdom of those teachings". What if, say, he's become a Christian and his Jewish parents strongly object? He isn't following the wisdom of his parents' teachings.

Some California judges are not happy about this.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0125-boy-scouts-judges-20150125-story.html#page=1

Looks like the BSA's defense in barring gays has come home to roost:

...

Yet in a five-page letter to the court, Angela Bradstreet, president of the Bar Assn. of San Francisco, cited a January 2001 report by the Judicial Council that said that "significant numbers of gay men and lesbians have experienced discriminatory comments or actions in the court system."

"We believe that, in light of the statements made by the BSA national leadership in recent litigation that gay men and lesbians are 'unclean,' 'immoral,' and subject to exclusion solely by reason of their sexual orientation, it is important to the Bench, to its members, and to the public it serves that its commitment to fairness, impartiality and respect be reaffirmed."

...

Now' date=' the CA says to be a judge you can't freely associate.[/quote']

 

They said that decades ago when they first created rules against belonging to clubs that practiced invidious discrimination, like the KKK. An exception was carved out for the BSA nearly 20 years ago; removing that exception brings it in line with the rest of it.

 

Targeting BSA without targeting specific faiths is ridiculous.

 

There's still a blanket exception for religions.

 

​It's a political action. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

That's what it was when the exception for the BSA was added. I didn't hear you complaining about that.

"Before a judge joins a group must membership be pre-approved by a judicial committee?"

It looks to me like they just can't join a group that practices "invidious discrimination".

Both are gone despite the stated constitutiional reasons!

The military exemption is gone because it's no longer needed after the ban on gays was lifted.

However the religious exemption is still in effect. A California judge could still be a member of a religious group that preached/practiced discrimination!

 

??So is there a judge and common sense shortage in California??

When I brought this up back when the BSA exemption was created, I pointed out that people didn't seem to care that CA judges couldn't join e.g. the KKK.

http://www.sfgate.com/lgbt/article/C...ay-6036874.php

The state Supreme Court has voted to prohibit judges in California from belonging to the Boy Scouts because the 2.7 million-member youth organization bars gays and lesbians from becoming troop leaders.

The court announced Friday that its seven justices had voted unanimously to accept a February 2014 recommendation from its ethics advisory committee to ban Boy Scout membership. As of Wednesday, judges affiliated with the Scouts were in violation of the state Code of Judicial Ethics, which the court oversees, and could face removal from office.

...

[basically, they removed the exemption for youth groups that was inserted a few years ago just for the BSA]

Here's the code with changes in strikeout, the BSA changes start on page 12:

http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/ca_code_judicial_ethics.pdf

Ah' date=' no. Michelson and Morley remained advocates of the aether and did not trust the results of their failed experiments, along with others who continued to check for the aether until 1930, 25 years after Einstein's Special Relativity, and 45 years after the experiments to prove the aether failed. Let alone that scientists invented then assume aether existed for a century before deciding to test for it.[/quote']

 

So, do you have a suggested experiment they could have done a century earlier?

 

Again, you are criticizing them for simply being wrong, which is idiotic.

 

Why is that? Because' date=' as TAHAWK said, scientists are humans and they are invested in things like anyone else. Some physicists refused to accept Einstein's work because he was a Jew, in Britain because it meant a blow to national pride, etc.[/quote']

 

Well, you didn't use those examples earlier, you simply pointed to scientists being wrong, as if that's some kind of "sin".

 

What it boils down to is that Rick thinks that scientists are impervious to subjectivity' date=' and they simply are not. That is a Falsificationist/Popperian view of science, and it's as real as the Garden of Eden. [/quote']

 

As Rick has said, you're just being disingenuous now.

 

Party affiliation didn't stop these dogmatic dopes from centuries of belief in the aether' date=' an indiscernible subtle fluid dreamed up (very anti-scientifically) to fill the gaps in Newton's mechanical universe, which denied the existence of vacuums, and was still championed in the 1920s.[/quote']

 

Since light appeared to be made up of waves, lumininferous aether was proposed to explain the medium that held it, as waves (as they knew them) needed something to "wave". It wasn't a stupid proposal, and it wasn't anti-scientific, and was discarded soon after the M-M experiment.

 

Or then there's phlogiston' date=' the magical substance in everything but, ya know, never existed. [/quote']

 

If you want some human endeavor that gets everything right from day one, about all you can choose from are thousands of mutually-contradictory religions that make such a claim.

 

Science has millions of old and discarded explanations; that's how knowledge advances. You seem to think that's some kind of fault.

Who is taken more seriously' date=' Sharpton or Linbaugh? Let's see, which was invited to speak at a national convention?[/quote']

 

How is that a criterion for being taken seriously? They're both ignorant egoists.

It's been about two years, and even though it would seem to violate WOSM's requirements, I haven't found any reaction to the UK officially allowing atheist members.

Some other tidbits about Indonesia -- it has the largest WOSM Scouting organization in the world, because it's part of the government school system and all students join. It's also illegal to be an atheist in Indonesia (as shown by Alexander Aan). So I guess WOSM is OK with such a lack of religious freedom.

Packsaddle, Duke U. does WAY more for Christians and Jews (see my earlier post). Allowing Muslims to announce their services would be reducing the existing double standard, and cancelling it only increases it.

Speaking of ostriches, what "double standard" were you referring to, JoeBob?

Well that didn't take long:

[h=1]Duke University Cancels Plans For Muslim Call To Prayer[/h] http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/01/15/muslim-prayer-duke

 

Apparently some wealthy donors to Duke's endowment failed to tolerate the double standard.

How is it a "double standard"?

http://chapel.duke.edu/worship/music/carillon

In the tower of Duke Chapel is a 50-bell carillon, played on weekdays at 5:00 p.m. and before and after Sunday worship services and special events.

...

An entire Jewish Studies program:

http://jewishstudies.duke.edu

So what's the "double standard"?

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pinotable.html

March 4, 1825 -- John Q. Adams

• First president sworn in wearing long trousers.
  

Previous inaugurals were pants-optional.

"Well, the Bill of Rights only deals with the US government not establishing a national religion through an enactment by Congress."

Well, no. Not according to the supreme court. And I live in the real world where that makes a difference, even if I think some of their opinions are wrong.

"So why is it that people can't wrap their minds around the fact that the US Government's efforts surround themselves around atheism and the fact that in order to adhere to the Constitution as it is now defined, the US is a god-less nation."

Because your paranoid fantasy doesn't match reality.

"One nation under God, and in God we trust are now meaningless."

So you won't mind if they're removed, right?

"Oh, by the way, "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution"

Other phrases not in the constitution:

"separation of powers"

"right to a fair trial"

"right to vote"

Now you're just playing word games, which is utterly worthless. No court opinion depends on the phrase "separation of church and state" being in the constitution, because it isn't. However, they do depend on what "no law respecting an establishment of religion" means, because that IS in the constitution.

And the same can be said of Islam' date=' where each believer communicates directly with Allah and there seems to be no particular qualification for issuing religious decrees according to the author's understanding.[/quote']

 

Unlike the 30,000 or so sects of Christinanity. Oh wait, exactly like that.

 

So who gets the last word?

 

Why would it matter to you, tahawk?

 

Why so defensive' date=' Merlyn?.[/quote']

 

Sorry, you can't steal that after I've used it.

 

I didn't cite an opinion that has no controlling legal force as somehow dispositive.

 

I didn't notice you citing ANY opinion, apart from your own. And what I pointed out was accurate -- the Army allows soldiers to designate themselves as "Humanist", so the Army will be required to serve them equally, and having chaplains for Christians but not Humanists isn't equal.

 

That's misleading. There must be better authority for equal treatment in the cases on atheism being treated equally with religions' date=' although those decisions are a problem, are they not?[/quote']

 

No, they are not.

 

As for citing military practice' date=' the executive branch, from time to time, confuses itself with the other two branches. The military has been wrong on civil rights many times, and the ACLU has reminded them of that.[/quote']

 

What are you babbling about now?

 

You argument begs the question. That a form of atheism is entitled to equal treatment with religions does not make it a religion.

 

I haven't been saying that. Can you read?

 

Why does it matter? I dislike arguments based on false assertions of authority. They are a form of bullying.

 

What "false assertions of authority"? Who is being bullied? What are you babbling about? Do you think treating Humanists as having equal rights is somehow "bullying"??

Why so defensive, tahawk? Religions without a supreme being have been part of US jurisprudence for decades. Why should it even matter to you?

They'll have to be, though. The Army allows soldiers to put "Humanist" as their religious designation, and they are required to serve the needs of soldiers. Also, excluding a chaplain because of his religious views would be a religious test in violation of Article VI.

And just last month in American Humanist Association v. United States, a federal court ruled that Humanist prisoners are to get the same treatment as religious prisoners in forming things like study groups (which, in the prison where the plaintiff resides, prisoners' religious meetings have fewer restrictions compared to other groups of prisoners).

Ironically the BSA rules permit Satanism' date=' Voodoo/Vodu and UFO religions such as Scientology and Raelism. But a run-of-the-mill atheist is rejected? I don't get that. [/quote']

 

Do they really admit Raelians? It's one of the few religions that explicitly rejects gods, and instead says gods, angels, demons, etc were just aliens.

 

But we allow Buddhist who don't always believe in a supreme being?

SHH! You'll shatter illusions.

However' date=' now the government (Caesar) wants to impose religious rights to their decision. That is so totally anti Freedom of Religion it's hard to believe that the general population doesn't see it.[/quote']

 

Well, I don't see it. What are you referring to?