You overlook the fact that Ms Ladele was not required to officiate at same-sex weddings, currently illegal in the UK, but to record a civil partnership in the register, a purely ministerial act, like recording a deed in the Register of Sasines, for preservation and execution.

I do not think she can do so against her moral conscience.

As Boonton pointed out, there are plenty of options for those who would participate in a ceremony that lacked either bride or groom. There is no good reason to press a conscientious objector into service as a witness to such a ceremony.

Public servants who are coerced to follow orders of this sort are given false choices: treat a falsehood as a truth or lose your job.

You said: “Since that position is created by all the taxypayers they should perform ceremonies for all taxpayers.”

Wedding ceremonies, Boonton, entail a bride and a groom, together, and that does not happen in SSM ceremonies.

The ‘officiant’ can be a clergy member either from an established Church or a ‘rent-a-minister’ who you can find in the yellow pages. There are also plenty of independent people of all types of convictions that can serve this role. If the couple doesn’t want a ceremony, though, they can often ask the registrar to do it which they will typically do for a fee (say $100).

This is why I say if this does create a cause to fire a registrar who wants to pick and choose. If he can keep the fee for himself, he has a nice little niche business for himself since every couple in town is going to him for the license…he gets ‘first crack’ at every couple whose not connected already to some clergy person. If the fee goes to the town then again this is a person who took a job doing secular civil marriages. How is that different than the vegan working at the steakhouse?

Of course, it would be a very different matter to compel positive obedience under a criminal sanction. Now, that would be a gross violation of the registrar’s rights of conscience.

I believe the Cross cases were rightly decided. Their most notable feature was in the case of Shirley Chaplain, where the court held that, on a health and safety issue, the court will not substitute its own judgment for that of the employer, acting in good faith. That has to be right.

The BA case was definitely correct. BA had no acceptable reason to require employees to remove religious themed jewelry. They later realized this, accepted it, and changed their policy.

In the US at least an employer has every right to establish a uniform, incl. ‘no jewelry’. If the policy was ‘jewelry ok but not crosses’ that would be a different matter.

Chairm,

I would agree only if registrars who work at the town clerk’s office have *always* had the option to decline to perform any civil marriage ceremony for any reason or no reason at all.

On the other hand if the registrars have the right to keep the fees they collect from doing ceremonies, then I’d say there’s a good reason to require them to do all ceremonies. As registrar everyone whose getting married in town has to come to them giving them a prime position to sell services as an officiant. Since that position is created by all the taxypayers they should perform ceremonies for all taxpayers.

The real problem from a public conversation perspective, in my view, is that many Christians — or, at least many Catholics — are confused about the relationship between their faith and liberalism. They think the two are compatible when they are in fact quite opposed. There was a brief rapproachment during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s topped off by Vatican II, something which neoconservatives (some of which write for First Things) are hopelessly trying to resurrect. But those days are long gone and won’t be coming back under any form of liberalism.

The BA case was definitely correct. BA had no acceptable reason to require employees to remove religious themed jewelry. They later realized this, accepted it, and changed their policy.

The hospital had a reasonable reason to require cross necklaces to be covered. Assuming it applied to all similarly hanging jewelry, this ruling makes sense.

The other too are a bit more nuanced. Not knowing the details I won’t comment on these yet.

The gay emphasis does not justify the government coersion against a registrar’s conscience. Besides, there is no same-sex sexual requirement for those who’d show-up to SSM. The real issue is marriage and not the gay emphasis, however, readers will note the use of the gay emphasis to rationalize the SSM side’s reliance on the heavy hand of Government to enforce the falsehood that is the SSM idea.

A registrar who does not choose to officiate at a ceremony is entitled to that choice, as a registrar and as a government employee, and is thus entitled to acting on that choice as a registra and as a government employee. Our entire system of governance depends on freedom of conscience rather than on the government owning citizens. We see here how SSMers have different priorities.

A ceremony for SSM is not a wedding, in fact, even when a government entrenches a fiction that is based on an utterly false equivalence.

As SSMers have argued, when something is not a legal requirement, it is not a legitimate basis for lawmaking on eligibility to marry (likewise, surely, for SSM, if their argument is to be applied evenly). A registrar who objects to the SSM ceremony is merely objecting to his or her participation in a falsehood. Our government employees ought to be free to stand against falsehoods rather than b coerced to pretend the false is true. Sexual orientation is irrelevant to the registrar’s role in officiating at actual wedding ceremonies.

But, as we see here, the gay emphasis (an emphasis on a political identity group rather than on sexual orientation) is supposedly the central issue for SSMers. But that directly contradicts…

Darel,

As things now stand, veganism isn’t considered a religion, and making nonreligious analogies to try to clarify issues of religious discrimination isn’t really helpful. The vast majority of workers in the United States are at-will employees and can be fired if the employer is tired of seeing their faces, or they root for the Mets and the employer roots for the Yankees, or just about any reason not having to do with race, color, creed, national origin, religion, and a few other factors. The owner of a restaurant can fire, or refuse to hire, vegans just because he disagrees with them.

There is a case in the works where the court has agreed to hear arguments that veganism is a religion, but courts in the past have found that veganism is not a religion.