Okay. . . I have said all I am going to say on this ridiculous subject. . . Really? Geez!
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A small-town judge who says her religious beliefs prevent her from presiding over same-sex marriages was publicly censured by the Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday.
But while the court said her conduct undermines the integrity of the judicial system, it does not warrant removal from the bench. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Kate Fox wrote that Judge Ruth Neely violated judicial conduct code but removing Neely would "unnecessarily circumscribe protected expression."
"Judge Neely shall either perform no marriage ceremonies or she shall perform marriage ceremonies regardless of the couple's sexual orientation," Fox wrote.
Neely has never been asked to perform a same-sex marriage, and Fox said that the case was not about same-sex marriage or the reasonableness of religious beliefs. ...
(T)he dissenting justices argued that Neely didn't violate any judicial conduct code. "Wyoming law does not require any judge or magistrate to perform any particular marriage, and couples seeking to be married have no right to insist on a particular official as the officiant of their wedding," Justice Keith Kautz wrote in the dissent that was joined by Justice Michael K. Davis.
4 comments:
Congratulations to this judge and to the (repugnant) LCMS as a whole. You must be doing something right when the libs thus label you. Well done!
Fr. D+
Wyoming lawyer Patrick Dixon, as the counsel for the Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics, was the one who stated:
"Personally, I find the position of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, which is the opposite of the other synods of the Lutheran Church -- I find that every bit as repugnant as I found the Mormon Church's position on black people, but we have not cited her for being a member of the Missouri."
Recall that not long after reading Ned Donovan's December, 2014, articles in the Sublette Examiner and Pinedale Roundup about his interview with Judge Neely and his demand that she be removed as judge, Ann Cuprill, Chairman of the Wyoming Demonicrat Party, travelled to Cheyenne to attend a 2014 Christmas party, advertised as a Demonicratic Party event, at the house of Wendy Soto, the Executive Director of the Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics. Also attending was Jaren Artery, President of a Wyoming LGBT advocacy organization, of which Soto was a former member, but still active with the organization. Cuprill, Soto, and Artery discussed Donivan's article about Neely at the party, and soon after, the Commisison investigation of Judge Neely commenced. (based on information in the Statement of Undisputed Material Facts in Support of the Honorable Ruth Neely's Motion for Summary Judgment)
"Repugnant" was also used in the Wyoming Supreme Court Judge Ruth Neely v. Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics decision and it ironically came in the dissenting opinion of Judges Kautz and David (p. 53, ¶149), who supported Judge Neely and asserted "There is no clear and convincing evidence that Judge Neely violated any of the rules of the Wyoming Code of Judicial Conduct."
In their dissent, Kautz and David had argued that there is no compelling state interest in shielding a person from taking offense at Judge Neely's stated position. In part they refer to "Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities.” Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 402, 83 S. Ct. 1790, 1793, 10 L. Ed. 2d 965 (1963).20
However, Sherbert v. Verner (in deciding in favor of a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church who was denied a claim for unemployment compensation in South Carolina because she was fired from her job for not working on Saturday) used "repugnant belief" in the context (p. 374):
"The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any governmental regulation of religious beliefs as such, Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 310 U. S. 303. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488..."
That 1961 Torcaso v. Watkins case actually dealt with the refusal of Torcaso, an atheist, to declare his belief in God, which was required by the Maryland State Constitution, because of which he was denied a commission to the office of Notary Public in Maryland. Nowhere in the decision is the word "repugnant" used.
Since Article VI of the U.S. Constitution does not specically apply to state constitutions, the SCOTUS majority then referred to the 5-4 decision in the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, which had ruled in favor of a New Jersey school district that reimbursed parents of students taking public transportation to school, regardless of whether the school was public or private (e.g. parochial). Unfortunately, the SCOTUS majority, in a fit of judicial activism, stuck in the following malinterpretation of the First Amendment (which violates the 10th Amendment; the 14th had not yet been passed):
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance.
And that is why it is necessary nowadays to walk in the judicial cow pasture wearing hipwaders.
Apparently Dixon has never heard of WELS. And who are these many synods that embrace sodomy? The ELCA, now, is but one synod.
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