“Who is trying to force their beliefs on whom?”

November 2, 2011 | Filed under Gay Marriage,Leftist Tolerance | Posted by

They really don’t just want our tolerance:

Rose Marie Belforti is a town clerk in Ledyard, New York who refused to sign a marriage license in August for two women after the state enacted the Marriage Equality Act in July. The two women, Katie Carmichael and Deirdre DiBiaggio, don’t even live in New York; they own seasonal property in a nearby town and actually live in Florida. One is an attorney and the other is a filmmaker.

Rose Marie, a mother of four and a grandmother, decided she could not in good conscience sign a same-sex marriage license, so she instead arranged for someone else to do it. The two women chose to come to Ledyard, this small farming town where they don’t even live and where Rose Marie has been the elected clerk for the past ten years, and pressed her decision. Rose Marie did not back down. True to her word, she offered to arrange an appointment for someone else to provide a legitimate signature. There are only around seven licenses a year to even sign at all, and she has since turned over the responsibility of signing (all those!) marriage licenses to another clerk.

So in a rational world, everyone should be happy, right? If I asked someone to do something for me and they told me that it violated their conscience, I’d respect that. If that person offered to find me another person to do what I wanted, I’d appreciate that. I’d even say, “Thank you.” That’s how I raise my own children. This is how reasonable people behave.

Not so in this case. The two women are threatening to sue the town of Ledyard, and the situation has become national news. Rose Marie, whom I completely support, said that she has been “battered over this in the media” and she can’t answer her phone anymore. She could lose her job because the law changed overnight with no consideration for conscience rights. And rather than just “getting married” now as they so wanted to do, the two women have declared they won’t stop until they get her to sign the license. Yeah, that sounds like true love to me.

Who is trying to force their beliefs on whom?

Seems clear to me… and to Mark Shea who gets the tip of the fedora for the find:

Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve! And you must pretend that gay “marriage” is not an attempt to create a legal justification for smashing consciences.

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Posted by on November 2, 2011.
Filed under Gay Marriage, Leftist Tolerance.
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  • Anonymous

    I was actually against the clerk until I got to the part where she arranged for someone else to sign the license. If she was putting her own beliefs above the law, then she would clearly have been in the wrong.

    But here she made arrangements so that the law would be honored, but her own conscience would remain clear, so she did her duty. And this lawsuit should not only be dismissed, but dismissed with prejudice and the plaintiffs assessed court costs. They were offered what they were legally entitled to, but wanted more. They need to be smacked down.

    J.

    • http://www.brutallyhonest.org Rick Rice

      Your initial reaction mirrored my own Jay… then I read on… and was more and more pissed… 

      • http://twitter.com/pggfpu Patrick Grady

        My initial opinion was held in abeyance until I knew all the facts.  So, not only do I agree with you both, I win.

  • http://www.rustedsky.net Anonymous

    It’s clear that it’s not the license that’s important in this case.  If so, the couple could have gone – ‘Thank you, we understand you don’t approve, but we’re grateful you were willing to find someone to sign the license.’

    As Mark Shea said, it’s not enough to tolerate.

    (I wonder if this is why the left shows such little tolerance for differing ideas – because to them, tolerance is defined by ”whole-hearted approval’, so to tolerate an idea they don’t like is the same to them as standing up and cheering for it actively. Which they wouldn’t do, of course, so far better to not be ‘tolerant’ of the things they don’t like…)

  • Anonymous

    This never seems to end.  Generally the shoe is on the other foot with the Dems forcing their beliefs on everyone else.  Certainly is the case just outside of DC in Maryland where a certain Democratic Governor is running roughshod over the GOP – although he may have lost his playbook on taxes & gerrymandering … http://www.ombudizen.com/

  • http://otisthehand.blogspot.com/ OTIS the hand

    They’ve been forcing their beliefs for some time. I’m actually even more disturbed by rampant animal anthropomorphism and giving animals priority over people. It is no accident that these things are included in the same place in Romans.

    Gay marriage also leads to monstrous cases of government sanctioned child abuse and experimentation.

    On a tangential matter, I just discovered that Pepsi Co. employs a subcontractor which uses aborted fetuses for “flavor research”. It is surreal. One barbarism leads directly to another. If this is supposed to be “enlightenment” I want no part of it.

  • Anonymous

    As a Democrat who strongly supports marriage equality, I mostly agree with Mr. Rice’s post.  (Sigh.)  I do think he makes a bit much of the fact that these women are residents of Florida … as he notes they do have a seasonal property in a nearby town and given that they can’t get married in Florida, it is rather obvious they would handle marriage arrangements in an area of NY where they live part-time and are allowed to get married.  And I do disagree with Ms. Belforti’s discriminatory beliefs, and it irks me that she is bringing added costs and inconvenience to the citizens of Ledyard as a result of those discriminatory beliefs, though I admit the costs and inconveniences involved are pretty negligible.  Bottom line though is that delegating specific responsibilities to deputy clerks is neither illegal nor uncommon in NY.  And requesting people to make appointments to get marriage licenses is neither illegal nor uncommon in NY.  Were she doing this only for same-gender couples, it would be a direct violation of the new Marriage Equality Act … but that is not the case.  The process applies to all couples seeking marriage licenses, so there is no violation of the law there, either.  Belforti’s reasons for arranging things in her office as she has the past couple of months may be discriminatory … but the processes she has set up and her actual actions in fulfilling her duties as Town Clerk are not discriminatory.  From a legal standpoint, it is the processes and actions that count … not the individual’s beliefs and motivations.  In the end, I suspect the threats of a lawsuit by the couple have been to bring attention to the their cause, but I doubt they will follow through as they really have no case as far as I can see.  (Which from my viewpoint makes the threat of a lawsuit a rather ineffective way to raise awareness for the cause … especially since they have had to transparently twist some facts of the case to justify the lawsuit in the media.)  And given the minimal impact of the new policies Belforti has set up in her office on the citizens of Ledyard, and the fact that it is a pretty conservative area … I actually suspect she will win reelection pretty easily.

    • http://www.rustedsky.net Anonymous

      “And I do disagree with Ms. Belforti’s discriminatory beliefs, and it irks me that she is bringing added costs and inconvenience to the citizens of Ledyard as a result of those discriminatory beliefs, though I admit the costs and inconveniences involved are pretty negligible.”

      Yeah, because asking somone else in your office to sign a piece of paper sets such a terribly high bar…  probably took all of, what, two minutes?

      “Bottom line though is that delegating specific responsibilities to deputy clerks is neither illegal nor uncommon in NY.”

      And that’s the money quote right there.  She did nothing wrong, she didn’t hinder them getting the license. She even facilitated the process by arranging for someone who WOULD do it.  What she didn’t supply was her whole-hearted approval, and that’s what they didn’t like.

      And apparently what you don’t like, either. I support marriage equality also (seeing gay marriage leading to gay divorce as a completely untapped legal market) – and see this woman as doing her duty and upholding the law. Her personal preferences didn’t have anything to do it with – and these idiots decide she needs to be sued?

      Tolerance is certainly a one-way street for the left, isn’t it?

      • Anonymous

        Actually the Deputy Clerk involved is part-time and isn’t on duty every day, and wasn’t there on the day in question.  The couple was told they’d have to come back on another day when the deputy clerk could be brought in.  So we’re talking day(s) rather than minutes … doesn’t impact the bottom-line issue though that ALL couples, if they want to be sure of getting service when they come in, should now make appointments two or three days ahead of time in Ledyard.

        • http://www.rustedsky.net Anonymous

          Sure wouldn’t hurt to do that, though if they’re like the governmetn offices around here, you’re still going to have to wait.  And wait.  And wait… oh, the person I’ll need to see will be back next week?  WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT THREE HOURS AGO!!!1!

          Sigh. Not like that’s ever happened to me or anything…

  • herddog505

    Carmichael and DiBaggio: what a couple of a**holes.  Bah.

    Rose Marie [Ledford], a mother of four and a grandmother, decided she could not in good conscience sign a same-sex marriage license…

    A bit of a thorny problem: where does duty to upholding the law end and duty to one’s conscience begin?  If I may change the above a bit…

    Heinrich Baum, a father of four and a grandfather, decided that he could not in good conscience sign a deportation order / order to sterilize a mentally handicapped man / order to euthanize an incurable ill infant…

    O’ course, I might change it again:

    Postal worker Rose Marie [Ledford], a mother of four and a grandmother, decided she could not in good conscience deliver any draft notices…

    At what point – if any – must our consciences give way to our public duty to obey the law?

  • Oysteria

    I’ve been saying for years that “tolerance” is NOT what many leftists are looking for.  You must publicly embrace, even laud, whatever they say you should.  In their eyes, anything less should be punishable by law. 

    • jim_m

      Indeed.  The left does not believe in real tolerance.  They demand full acceptance and support oft heir lifestyle and beliefs.

      The obama administration has made a concerted attack on Christian beliefs in particular removing conscience exemptions from laws that previously protected churches and other religious institutions. 

      • Anonymous

        Just curious … what conscience exemptions have been removed from laws protecting churches in how they conduct their faith practices??

        • jim_m

          The Obama administration is taking heat from religious groups,
          particularly Catholic leaders, upset that new federal health regulations
          may force them to pay for employees’ birth control, a violation of
          church tenets.

          Proposed religious exemptions to the new regulations, unveiled Aug. 1
          by the Department of Health and Human Services, are considered so
          narrow that even Catholic officials considered friendly to President
          Barack Obama argue that they should be changed.

          “I call this the parish housekeeper exemption — that’s about all it
          covers,” Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health
          Association, a 600-member umbrella group for Catholic hospitals, told
          The Associated Press.

          There’s lots more.  Assaults on churches over who they can employ in ministry.  The admin essentially says that unless the person is an ordained minister, the church cannot restrict their hiring based on their religious beliefs.

          In Illinois the state severed its relationship with Catholic Charities over their refusal to adopt children out to gay couples.  That’s 2500 kids a year that will not get homes over a leftist ideological dispute.

          • jim_m

            Regardless of what you think the merits are of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, the admin has argued that the EEOC can force a church to hire a person and that the EEOC is the final arbiter of whether or not any particular church doctrine is important enough to justify protection under the Constitution.  Further the admin lawyer argued that whether or not religious beliefs can be used in the hiring of any person is under the purview of the EEOC and they can decide whether or not that person spends enough time on religious activities.

            http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=21676

          • Anonymous

            Your examples — hospitals, schools, adoption agencies — all seem to me to belong more under the category of “religious institutions” … or perhaps “religiously-affiliated institutions” would be more accurate in some cases … but not churches per se.  I agree that it is tough to decide where to draw the line between private and public when it comes to religion, and sometimes things go too far in one direction or the other.  But generally religious-freedom rights trump civil rights when it comes to how churches operate within their own private worships spaces, and your post seemed to claim that there was a push from the administration to change that.  I don’t see evidence for that, though, based on your examples.

            As for 2500 kids per year in Illinois not getting homes, there are plenty of other adoption agencies in that state with capacity to serve those kids … including religiously-affiliated ones like Lutheran Social Services of Illinois.  Just because Catholic Charities chose not to place kids with same-gender couples, doesn’t mean that the kids they were serving are out in the cold.

          • jim_m

            Read the article about the SCOTUS case.  The admin did indeed argue that the government should be the arbiter of which religious doctrines should be allowed constitutional protection.  The admin did argue that the government should be able to determine whether or not a religious organization could use religious factors in hiring a person based on the government’s determination of how much time that person would spend on protected religious activities.

            So you have a government arguing that it will determine what is protected and that it will determine whether or not a person’s job is sufficiently occupied with those activities to deserve protection. The admin just argued that the first amendment is a nullity because the government will decide whether religious practice is protected or not on a case by case basis.

            The issue about obamacare does not apply to just hospitals, but it applies to every religious organization that provides healthcare benefits for its staff.  The government is forcing these organizations to pay for healthcare services that are against their beliefs. 

            If you think that Catholic Charities services can be seamlessly absorbed by the remaining agencies you are sadly mistaken.

    • Anonymous

      This is exactly correct. Gays don’t seem to care about something substantive, like the fact that the Democrats would not repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into law by Clinton). That’s because the see Democrats as already embracing their “cause.” Instead of abandoning the Democrats, they try to punish people like Ms. Belforti, because she disagrees with their choice.

      • Anonymous

        Gays don’t care that the Democrats have been slow to support repeal of DOMA??  Really??  I didn’t know that.  I actually had the impression that gays — and supporters of same-gender marriage in general — had been working hard the past 15 years to get the Democrats who supported DOMA to reconsider their views … and doing so with a fair bit of success.  I even thought Clinton himself had come around to favoring the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA.

        • Anonymous

          The Dems had control of everything from January 2009 to January 2011, and, despite the fact that they failed to repeal DOMA, gays still supported Dems over Republicans 69/31 in the midterm elections. Gays may “care” that DOMA is still on the books, but they don’t seem to give Dems any blame for it. Otherwise, they’d be spending their energy by putting more pressure on the Dems instead of trying to beat up Ms. Belforti. But, the Dems like the gays, so they’re OK.

          http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/07marsh.html?ref=weekinreview

          Even though Clinton signed the DOMA, he’s “coming around” so he’s OK, I guess. Clinton, as you recall, no longer has the authority to repeal DOMA. Clinton’s point of view is irrelevant except that it somehow makes gays feel good about themselves. Gays should be more interested in whether Obama is “coming around” and why he didn’t exercise his political power in the two years after his election to accomplish repeal of DOMA. They aren’t, though, because Obama approves of them, so he’s OK.

          • Anonymous

            Sorry but you’re not being entirely coherent.  Democrats, in spite of their slow pace in coming around on DOMA, are still far more supportive of gay rights than Republicans … and they’ve shown themselves to be much more willing to listen to arguments and evolve in their views on same-gender marriage than Republicans.  So of course they are going to generally support Democrats over Republicans. Your perceived conflict between the slow growth of Democratic support for DOMA repeal, and support for Democratic candidates by gays and pro-equality supporters, just doesn’t make any sense.

            As for Ms. Belforti, there has been far more effort put into trying to get Democrats and moderate Republicans to support repeal of DOMA (and support for the Respect for Marriage Act), that there has for turning Belforti out of office.

            And as for Bill Clinton, you were the one that brought him up … I was just responding to your comment.  You statement that his views are irrelevant is mostly you contradicting yourself.

          • Anonymous

            What’s incoherent is that gays give a pass to the Dems who failed to repeal DOMA when they had the White House and huge majorities in both houses (when a repeal would make a substantial difference in the lives of gay people), but decide to make a big stink about the fact that the clerk of some tiny town doesn’t want to sign a license (an act which will make no difference in anyone’s life, except for the clerk’s). Don’t they know how to pick their battles? This story makes the gay rights movement look petty, vindictive, and hypocritical. Don’t you see that?

            Dems may be ”far more supportive of gay rights” but it seems that none of them is willing to do anything that will actually help gay people. Some friends they’ve turned out to be. Hell’s bells, even Barney Frank doesn’t support repeal of DOMA. Why don’t Carmichael and DiBiaggio go up and picket his office if they want to actually accomplish something?

          • jim_m

            Dems may be ”far more supportive of gay rights” but it seems that none
            of them is willing to do anything that will actually help gay people.

            The same can be said of every minority group and the dems.  The dems seem to take the cynical view that if they really did anything to help any particular group to overcome things then that group would no longer be beholden to the dems to get what they want.  Only by promising, but never delivering, can the dems assure themselves of the perpetual allegiance of minorities. It’s the strategy of over promise and never deliver.  No one else will promise what the dems do so they can safely fail to deliver and never suffer the repercussions.

  • Anonymous

    “Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve!”Exactly!  No doubt, if it were up to these two, Grandma should be sent to a re-education camp.  The whole gay “movement” started out wanting ‘tolerance’.  Today, everything they want is a demand.  Recently The People’s Republik of Kalifornia passed a new law – history teachers will mention the contributions of gay people.  Of course, if there are any gay individuals with negative contributions, they won’t be mentioned.  Somewhere, I believe George Orwell is laughing his ass off.

  • Tanuki Man

    As the great Kathy Shaidle is wont to say: Dear gays, This is why people hate you.

  • Anonymous

    Unfortunately, Mrs. Belforti belongs to the wrong religion.
    She’ll be afforded no tolerance, respect, or compromise.

    As for the 2 getting married, they deserve each other.
    The eventual divorce will be a lawyers dream.

  • Anonymous

    Unfortunately, Mrs. Belforti belongs to the wrong religion.
    She’ll be afforded no tolerance, respect, or compromise.

    As for the 2 getting married, they deserve each other.
    The eventual divorce will be a lawyers dream.

  • http://lissakay.myopenid.com/ Lissa

          [26] For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; [27] and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. [28] And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. [29] They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, [30] slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, [31] foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. [32] Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32 ESV)

    It is not only a sin to commit such acts as homosexual sex, it is also a sin to condone or approve ….

    So, these women are demanding that Mrs. Belforti commit a sin against God. 

  • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

    Rick,

    This (DEMANDS of acceptance/approval) has been painfully obvious for decades now.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    The goal of the Left is to destroy all vestiges of what made Western Civilization great and lifted billions out of poverty and saved even more from certain death – capitalism, marriage and family, Christianity – so they can remake society from scratch.

    The difference between American Leftists and Pol Pot is mainly one of patience.

    • jim_m

      So Pol Pot was more patient?

  • Anonymous

    I have seen the argument made that because she is a government employee, she must obey the law and sign the license or be fired for not doing her job.  I counter that with the argument that when she was hired, this law did not exist.  If it had, she would not have taken the job.  Since the law changed overnight and thus the job requirements changed as well, she should have been offered reasonable accommodation, i.e. the delegation of another clerk to sign marriage licenses.  Where is CSEA on this?  They should be standing right beside her, defending her.

  • Anonymous

    I find it sad dueling is now illegal.  It would be an elegant solution.

    • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

      Indeed it would.

  • http://www.locomotivebreath1901.blogspot.com locomotivebreath1901

    “This is how reasonable people behave.”

    Obviously, you are dealing with people who do not understand the concept.

    I’ve known a few homosexual couples such as this. They live in a state of perpetual outrage and indignation against all who do not accept, condone or facilitate their ‘lifestyle’.

    Now, many demand the state give their perversion legal sanction.

    How sad.