87 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 9-3-15”

  5. I had typed out a long good morning message but I hit a button and erased it all. I am finding out what I don’t like about Window 10. I didn’t intend to upgrade when I did, but here we are and it has some issues.
    This afternoon we see the neurologist for BG’s tremors in her hands. I am not as worried as I was. I have done some research and there are inherited tremors and I feel like that is what this is. My hands shake sometimes and my mother’s hands shook. Still I need the doctor to tell me that is all this is and would appreciate prayer.

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  7. Good morning, or evening, depending on your location, National and International Blog Family&Friends&Wannabe Lurkers♡
    Did I cover everyone with that? Oops, maybe not. Perhaps Drill is from Outa this world!

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  12. It’s 79○ here for now. Many trucks on the street today, but not so much noise as before.

    I am having an intestinal problem so feel a bit weak from that and not wanting to try food yet. Miss Bosley is happy to have me home and I haven’t told her it is the commode I am being fond of today and not her. What she does not comprehend just keeps her happy! Ignorance is bliss for cats, too! 🙂

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  13. Well, here I am, still in town so I guess I still have to show up for work today.

    I’m going in around noon, will start pre-writing whatever I can, make sure my phone(s) (we have work phones, too) are fully charged but I’m hoping there will be enough outlets to plug both the phone & computer into at the theater (I’ll have to use the “hot spot” internet connection on my phone for the computer as there’s no — or only sketchy — wifi in the 1930s theater).

    The meeting goes from 6-8 and my deadline for print is 9 p.m. Plus I will have to live tweet throughout the event (groan). Glad another reporter is coming along, she’s handling one of the news conferences/protest marches before the meeting & probably will do more live tweeting than I will be able to do.

    After it’s all over, I’ll come home and collapse.

    Then I’ll have to figure out a weekend story to do for Friday.

    Sometimes not working sounds awfully nice …

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  15. We had “writing for mobile” training yesterday where they went over some pertinent (to us) trends. Something like 80% of people now use their phones to access breaking and local news.

    And since people spend an average of 15-20 seconds per story, we have to write differently (and most of our traffic is now coming by way of mobile devices). Think shorter, more casual, using lists, subheads, short-short-short.

    Hard to keep pace with the fast-changing habits of the “reading” public. The tablet trend everyone thought would be more dominant hasn’t panned out. Desktop use, of course, is declining dramatically.

    Phones are the go-to reading and news devices (for now).

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  16. Well, if the mice are gone …

    I dreamed Annie brought a bird in the house (that has happened — a live, flying-around bird).

    I was trying to shoo it out an open door, but having trouble.

    It all means something. And I probably don’t want to know what.

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  17. One of the commenters on the World article that Janice posted last night had a good point. Do the people who refuse “service” (whether issuing a marriage license or baking a cake or arranging the flowers) to same-sex couples also refuse their service to divorced people?

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  18. and here I sit at my desktop, waiting for nine year old to try again to wash the table properly…slowly reading things…that are written so briefly, I don’t think I learned anything but the title.

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  19. Karen O, I think the point that those who refuse to do business associated with the weddings do not want to be considered as participating in an event that is by God’s word an abomination. These people do not refuse service to the general LGBT, etc., population. It is just the marriage involvement they don’t want to be a part of. So the divorced people comment is not really relevant as I see it. The service industry is not being asked to be at the “ceremony” of divorce.

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  20. Headlines are all you need mumsee.

    But they have to be short, and written so they’ll “display” well on a tiny vertical screen (and we writers now all have to write their own headlines since editors are few and far between). It’s a scary world.

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  22. Donna, editors are overrated. Not necessary, really.

    The way people write it the first time is the way it should stay (no self-editing, either). That’s quicker, cheaper, and it duznt mattar if its rite anyway its’ all jest words

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  23. Exciting morning around here. BG was running late to school, tried to park in the grass but drove over a log that was there to keep her from parking in the grass. Couldn’t move her car, called her mother hysterical, Mama to the rescue. Tow truck got the car off the log. I drove it to the repair place (a family friend). The are fixing the front bumper for free and SHE will have to pay for the new front end alignment.

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  24. I pitched in (part-time) on the editing desk for about 2 years — I had a light touch, but the editor once asked me to rewrite a story (from an intern) and I actually found it pretty easy once I dove in (and there was a definite need there).

    Poor BG and poor car. That’s probably the last time she’d drive over a log, though.

    A co-worker said she did that when she was trying to learn how to drive a stick shift. There was major damage, something underneath, some major gizmo, Chas will know the name, broke. Big deal.

    She stuck with automatics.

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  26. Karen,

    It’s a distraction from the real issue, a red herring. As Janice said, it’s not relevant and is meant to distract from the real issue.

    And I must say I’m amused by the hypocrisy of many on the left screaming about the clerk in question. There is nothing more amusing than a liberal who posts in caps that if she can’t follow the law and do her job, then she needs to quit. Yet they have no problem when Obama ignores dozens of laws and won’t enforce what he doesn’t agree with. Immigration being the most obvious.

    What the clerk is doing affects what, maybe a couple dozen gay couples in her county? What Obama’s is doing is having a negative impact on millions of American workers, yet he gets a pass, simply because they agree with him. Laws need to followed! But only the ones liberals like.

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  27. More on smartphones:

    http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21663260-haredi-rabbis-face-impossible-battle-digital-temptations

    ________________________________________________________
    “THE Council of Torah Greats, a forum of some of the most distinguished ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) rabbis in Israel, gathered on June 30th to discuss a ‘great spiritual danger.’ WhatsApp, a messaging app for smartphones, it turns out, has become a popular method for their followers to form groups for exchanging gossip and even ‘immodest’ images and video clips. …

    ” … The rabbis tried banning computers from homes. But they were forced to concede that these were necessary for work purposes, so they next tried to forbid them from being connected to the internet. In recent years, though, these prohibitions have become irrelevant; mobile web-connected devices have largely replaced the earlier generations of cellular phones. ..”
    ________________________________________________________

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  30. I see my QOD, posted two hours while I stood in line at the bank, did not appear. Just can’t operate that smart phone!

    Here’s the promised answer to the question, “Why does the bank only have two tellers for 10 people in line?) (which was an improvement–last time there were 17 people in line)

    Fascinating reason why we all feel so rushed all the time, because we ARE put upon!
    http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/08/31/shadow-work-and-the-rise-of-middle-class-serfdom/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArtOfManliness+%28The+Art+of+Manliness%29

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  31. I have to go meet Forrest’s bus in a couple minutes, & haven’t yet read any comments since my earlier one, but I wanted to throw this in here lest I forget…

    I really wish young, youngish, & some not-so-young pastors & preachers would quit the hair style of having their hair sticking up on top of their head. It doesn’t look cool, it looks like they’re trying to be cool.

    Off to get the little guy. Be back later.

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  32. Karen, I don’t know what you’re talking about concerning hair styles.
    But Elvera watches TV preachers a lot on a station out of Greenville.
    I think the time is past when preachers have to holler their sermons. This generation doesn’t need to shout.
    And they can learn the end sentences with something besides “Uh”.

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  33. AJ here,

    Update on the clerk in Kentucky.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2015/09/03/kentucky-clerk-who-refused-to-issue-marriage-licenses-after-scotus-ruling-sent-to-jail-for-contempt-of-court/

    “An interesting detail from BuzzFeed: Lawyers for the gay couples who want her to issue the licenses asked the court to fine her, not send her to jail. Since when do gay-rights supporters ask for leniency for a Christian who’s defying them on gay marriage? Since, I think, this case started picking up national media attention. They don’t want to make a martyr out of Davis. Locking her up does that in a visible way that hitting her in the wallet doesn’t.

    The judge ordered her locked up anyway. For a reason:

    The court assumed, not unreasonably, that sympathizers would shower her with cash to cover the fine, which means there’d be no real pressure on her to comply with the order to begin issuing licenses. The only way to pressure her was jail.

    David told Todd Starnes of Fox News that she was prepared for that if it came to it:

    “I’ve weighed the cost and I’m prepared to go to jail, I sure am,” Mrs. Davis told me in an exclusive interview. “This has never been a gay or lesbian issue for me. This is about upholding the word of God.”

    “This is a heaven or hell issue for me and for every other Christian that believes,” she said. “This is a fight worth fighting.”…

    “I would have to either make a decision to stand or I would have to buckle down and leave,” she said, pondering her choices. “And if I left, resigned or chose to retire, I would have no voice for God’s word.”

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  35. The left is quick to distort the truth and make false claims that people won’t serve LGBT folks. That sounds more reasonable to take issue with than the more limited issue of marriage which many LGBT people don’t want to take part in for themselves because it would cramp their sexual style.

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  36. I don’t believe I have ever seen ten people in the bank. Except when my children are there with me. There are usually a teller or two, a notary, a helpful lady in the back corner and sometimes a computer tech. And me. Once there was another lady and three shrieking children. We left and went back another day.

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  39. Janice – I meant people who were divorced, & are now remarrying someone else (unless the divorce was for biblically-allowed reasons.) The Bible says God hates divorce, & those who remarry after (an unbiblcally-allowed) divorce commit adultery. So, wouldn’t it follow that a Christian would also refuse to use their service to facilitate a biblically-condemned remarriage?

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  40. Kim Davis (the clerk in Kentucky) is refusing to issue any marriage licenses, & she is not letting her deputies do so, either. Many Christians see this as not quite the same as standing up for her own beliefs. They see her not allowing the others to issue the licenses as falling into “forcing her beliefs on others”.

    As for what I discussed with Janice, I never thought of that before, but doesn’t it make sense that if a Christian business owner or town official wants to uphold the sanctity of marriage, that would include more than same-sex couples? One of the things said against Christians who talk about the sanctity of marriage is that we don’t seem to make as much a fuss about divorce. (Some do, some don’t.)

    As for what the left says, despite their motivations, not everything they say is wrong.

    As for me, I think Christian business owners should be allowed to choose to not offer their services for same-sex weddings, but I don’t necessarily think that doing so would be a sin. But town officials/employees may have to make a choice of whether they can do the job they were hired to do or not. Sadly, that will be a part of standing up for our beliefs more frequently.

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  41. Had a good visit with a dear friend, and got to meet her new little one.

    From yesterday, I noticed the comments about R. C. Sproul Jr. and letting men ‘enjoy the scenery.’ I’m aware that was the attitude of former generations. The WWII era had a lot of pornography, judging from the many references to it in films from that era. My father was a bit of a hippy before he became a Christian, and he looked at porn. When he became a Christian, he left all that behind, deliberately turning away from things like the pin-ups on the wall of his boss’s office. So, I did not grow up thinking women were there for men’s viewing pleasure.

    Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, pointed out that a man who looked at a woman lustfully had already committed adultery in his heart (Matthew 5:28). Recently, it occurred to me that a Christian man who makes a habit of looking at women for sexual pleasure is disobeying Paul’s instruction to treat younger women as sisters with all purity (I Timothy 5:2); since, a man who lusted after his own sister would be considered a pervert.

    I feel concern for R. C. Sproul Jr., as I think, from his teaching that he set standards higher than the Bible’s (from what I’ve heard, he believes he should not marry again after his wife’s death); and in trying to live to those standards by his own strength, he fell into real sin. Nevertheless, I am grateful for his admission of guilt and the increasing conviction in the church, that ‘just looking’ at pornography is sexual sin that needs to be repented of.

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  42. Karen, as I understand it, her name is on the marriage licenses whether or not she personally issues them . . . in that case, it’s fair enough to say “No, my name isn’t going to be on such a thing.”

    Divorce and remarriage really is a different thing, though, and thus a red herring. For one thing, virtually all people believe there are some circumstances in which divorce and remarriage is valid. It makes no sense to say a person issuing a license has the authority, responsibility, etc. to determine whether this specific remarriage is legitimate. That is for the couple, and those marrying them, to decide. Homosexual marriage is always wrong.

    A very good case can be made that the Supreme Court overstepped its authority. In a state that constitutionally refuses to allow homosexual marriage, a state employee should be able to say he had good reason to believe his job did not expect him to violate his conscience in this way, and he is standing by his state’s constitution.

    Surely at some point some state is going to get the backbone to say, “The Constitution does not allow the Supreme Court to force states into submission on every issue they choose, and we are standing our ground on this. In this state, nobody will be (aborting babies, issuing licenses to homosexual couples, etc.).” It hasn’t happened yet, but really this issue seemed a good contender for states saying, “No, you’ve overstepped your authority on this one, and we aren’t going to obey.”

    I’m not totally sure whether I agree with her 100% of her stance (I definitely do not agree with her reasoning, that somehow this is a heaven-or-hell decision for her), but I lean toward saying that she has the law on her side more than the Supreme Court does, and most definitely she was not elected to give marriages to homosexual couples, and she has every right in the world to say, “I won’t do this, and my name won’t be included on any forms if other people do this.”

    If the legal “remedy” for her choice is impeachment, then impeach her. If they choose not to impeach her, then they probably are stuck with her choice to obey Scripture and her state’s constitution, and the worldwide understanding of what marriage is. (I’m inclined to say I’d prefer she was continuing to give out other marriage licenses during this time, but I haven’t heard her reasoning for stopping all of them, so I can’t say that too strongly.) If they want to put her in jail, they probably need a crime to convict her of, and due process in prosecuting her, including a jury trial.

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  43. I guess here is another question: If the government can force an elected official to issue licenses (even though that was not part of her job when she took the job), what happens if they decide pastors are required to marry anyone who comes to them? It’s easy enough to say, “Do your job or quit” in this case . . . but what if the “job” is ministry? If the pastor can say, “No, I will not do that” (and certainly he can), then I am not sure why she can’t.

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  45. Phos,

    I think there is a difference between admiring God’s creation and lusting after it. Porn is lust. Walking down the street need not be but could be. Being unwilling to acknowledge beauty or prettiness or handsomeness or whatever is not necessarily a more godly attitude. Using another’s appearance to feed lusty thoughts is not either.

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  46. Somebody sent out me this video, I thought one or two of you might enjoy watching. It is about four minutes of rapid photography. Shows some of the beauty and the devastation of the recent fires around here.

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  49. Mumsee, I was not trying to say that admiration of another’s beauty is lust. We all love to gather around a baby and say how beautiful he/she is; and that kind of enjoyment of the beauty of God’s creation is pure. Lust is something different. Every woman has experienced that ‘once over’ look of evaluation from men whom they walk past in the street or the store. It might seem amusing at those times, but when the creepy old men in the retirement home decide the once over was worthwhile and settle back to gaze in further enjoyment, there is nothing funny about it (especially when you have to dodge the grasping hands while trying to give care and medicine).

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  51. Roscuro, it is interesting that his apology for his indiscretion said that he had been faithful to his wife “even after her death.” Scripture is clear that marriage is over at death. At the same time, there is a natural sense of loyalty that continues for many. One flesh is not easily torn into two. Is it possible he was saying something like he “didn’t feel right about remarrying,” not that he thought it was wrong, in principle, for a widower to remarry?

    I know of some people who are so extreme on “marriage is for life” that they don’t think a person can divorce no matter how extreme the provocation. Sproul seems to be directly addressing such a position in the link I gave above, and obviously disagrees with it, since he gives times when even the “guilty” party can remarry. So unless he has changed his position radically from this link, it doesn’t seem like he would believe a widow(er) can’t remarry. (I have heard of such a belief, but not known of anyone holding it; it’s extremely rare.)

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  52. Cheryl, since it was word of mouth, and I may not be remembering it correctly, I wouldn’t insist that this is what he teaches, but it seemed to have something to do with the phrase “the husband of one wife” in I Timothy 3, on the qualifications for an elder, and thus it may have been as an elder, he felt he shouldn’t remarry.

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  55. Cheryl – I’d forgotten about having her name on the licenses. And it is a good point that she was elected before the Supreme Court decision.

    BTW, I mentioned that particular comment about using ones services for divorced people merely as something to consider. But that is something that pastors need to know when marrying a couple. One cannot see on the surface that a particular person is divorced (or that they left their spouses for each other), but a same-sex couple is very obvious, obviously. 🙂

    But it still has me thinking that if a person is really committed to only serving biblically-sanctioned weddings, that maybe they would question the couple before agreeing to participate in the wedding. (Obviously, the couple could lie, but at least they would have made an effort.)

    It is also possible that such a business owner could agree to provide his services for a wedding in which one spouse-to-be is transgender. Yikes. (Just spewing out thoughts here. 🙂 )

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  57. The other day Roscuro mentioned getting a coloring book. Then that night I saw an long advertisement for an adult coloring book, with intricate patterns to color. The offer included colored pencils and markers to use. I forgot the name, but did a search and found this article from the New York Times:
    Grown-Ups Get Out Their Crayons.

    Coloring is relaxing. Maybe I’ll take it up again.

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  58. Please notice that my comments have been based on the comments & views of other Christians I have read. Once again, I am tossing out other views for us to consider & ponder. I am in the process of making up my own mind of how I think about this.

    On the general matter of Christian business owners, as we well know, there are Christians (& when I say “Christians” here, I mean committed, biblically-thinking Christians, not just anyone who calls himself a Christian) who believe that they should not offer their services to same-sex weddings, but there are also those who believe that it would be a good witness of Christ’s love to offer their services, & do the best job they can do. I think both can be at peace in their consciences about their decision, & each “camp” should respect the other.

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  60. Karen, when it comes to transgender, the mind boggles at the possibilities for confusion. Imagine meeting and marrying someone who is seemingly of the opposite sex, but it turns out that they are transgender. Long ago, my mother’s family cared for an elderly couple who were childless. Something was wrong with the wife, and she had never developed as a woman (mumps occurring at puberty or a congenital condition may have been the cause). This couple would have married in the early 1900s, and after the wife’s death, the man had a stroke and reverted back to that earlier time. Apparently, the wife’s family had not informed him of her physical condition, and he had found it very difficult to deal with after marriage. I would say, in the case of accidental marriage with a transgender, divorce would be lawful, but the sense of betrayal would be hard to shake. Modern society would say that if you love someone, it doesn’t matter who they are; but the reality is, that marriage means more than fulfillment of passion. Audrey Hepburn is said to have decided not to marry William Holden when she learned he had had a vasectomy, as she wanted to have children.

    As to marriage officiates, pastors in orthodox congregations up here generally insist on giving marriage counselling before agreeing to marry a couple. Since religious marriage and civil marriage are given distinction, gay marriage has hitherto not been a problem for pastors. What civil servants, justices of the peace, or judges do has never come up. Whether that is because a compromise was reached, or no such civil servant is a committed Christian, or whether such individuals can reconcile it with their consciences, I do not know. One of the early court cases that led up to the Supreme Court declaring marriage as a right to homosexuals was actually based on a refusals of a clerk to issue a marriage license to a homosexual couple, but the clerk just wanted to know if such a issuance was lawful and seemed to be supportive of the idea.

    On the cake baking issue, I do not think that people should be forced against their convictions (the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a printer had the right to refuse to print material for a homosexual organization). However, neither do I regard the baking of a cake, which is an article of food, as necessarily showing support for gay marriage. When I sold corn at the vegetable stand, one of the regular customers was a gang (they hid their insignias, but the tattoos were hard to miss), who would order several dozen for their annual barbecue. We didn’t ask any questions, but neither did we consider that we were supporting (or profiting from) crime by supplying them with corn if they were whom we suspected them to be. Should a grocer refuse to sell food to a caterer of homosexual weddings?

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  61. Of course, the business my husband is in means he will have to do tax returns for same sex couples if ther marry. For that reason, I am glad I am not part owner. He has always done returns for whoever, but now he and the other preparers will have to deal with this. I do not think they will make an issue of it. I am glad I do not have to make a stand agaInst the others in the business.

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  64. Karen, a pastor could rightly refuse to marry someone he doesn’t believe can marry biblically, but that’s way beyond giving a license. Giving a license grants that this couple meets the civil definition of a couple who can marry. If we ever authorize incest, then presumably some clerk will have to decide whether she can in good conscience issue a license to a mother and her son, or two brothers. Thing is, you don’t have to be a Christian to recognize that none of these pairings are truly marriage. Remarriage after divorce or a polygamous union are debatable, but homosexual or incestuous unions have never in the history or mankind been recognized as marriage.

    Roscuro, I think the closer one gets to “celebrating” the wedding, and the more personal touch is put into the service, the more someone can state religious objections to providing the service. Frankly, the state has no right to tell a business they have to offer service if a customer is trying to buy soda for his wedding punch, and the store owner disapproves and chooses not to sell it. (What if the person buying the soda is the man his ex-wife committed adultery with, and is now marrying her?) But surely by the time you are offering customized service (such as a wedding cake) or a large time commitment (such as photographing a wedding) or use of your own premises (a wedding chapel or a bed-and-breakfast), you ought to have the legal choice to say no, as you do have the moral right.

    And yes, a person can make an immoral choice, too, and refuse to offer these services because a black man is marrying a white woman. But a truly free market allows people to make those decisions and take the consequences if they decide poorly, or their community believes they have done so.

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  65. My, my, my….where to start?
    1. I needed to take some photos of a building downtown. I convinced Mr. P and BG to go get pizza for dinner next door to the building. While taking photos I was walking backwards in high heels and fell. My left side hiney and hip hurt. The people watching me gasped. BG ran over to see if I was OK. Nope. It hurt.

    2. The photos that Mumsee shared do not do justice to the beauty that is Idaho. As I was riding up from Boise to her farmlette each place we passed was more beautiful than the last. As I was leaving and was on “the grade” I think I looked down on Kamiah. From my perspective the entire state was breathtakingly beautiful.

    3. As your resident divorcee’ . My divorce probably wasn’t a Biblical divorce. From my perspective I gave and gave and gave until there was nothing left to give. From G’s perspective he thought something else. He once told me that I “was no walk in the park”. I went through the reconciliation of the sinner with my former priest and G and I have made peace with our divorce. We are good parents together to BG and as he once told me it took two of us to make it and two of us to break it. Just last night I found myself in the position of giving him advice on how to get BG to like the woman he has asked to marry him.
    From my perspective I saw therapist after therapist (Christian therapist, mind you) and went home with ideas to make our marriage work. I begged him to go with me. Even after I told him I was filing for divorce. FINALLY he has agreed to go to a family therapist for his daughter. Today I told him that after paying $75 for the tow truck, $69 for the front end alignment, and $60 copay for the endocrinologist and the neurologist and several other things that I need to ask him to pay the $60 copay at the therapist next week. He told me not to worry about it she is OUR child. I don’t care what it took to get us to this point but our daughter needs help and he is finally willing to step up and do what needs to be done. I have often laughted that if I did nothing else by divorcing him I made him the best daddy he could be. I have also told people that he is the best big brother an ex wife can have.
    I could not have liked it if the Judge of Probate had refused to issue a marriage license to Mr. P and me. I am once divorced and he is twice divorced. We have both made a commitment to this marriage and he is a good man. My life and even BG’s is better because of him. I wouldn’t care what the reasons were. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of why G and I are divorced. It is between the two of us and is no one else’s business. We have talked and are at peace with the decision we made.

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  67. God lets the weeds grow alongside the
    good plants and sends rain and sunshine on both. At His chosen time they will be separated. Maybe performing the service for the same sex marriage couples falls under the rain and sunshine category that shows God gives to all until a certain point. I think this is one case where each person has to pray and discern God’s will.

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  69. We saw the neurologist this afternoon. I gave family history on both sides. I told him about my alcoholic mother whose hands shook. I told him that my hands shook but I figured it was because my alcoholic mother fried my nerves at an early age,but now BG’s hand and legs are shaking. After 15 or 20 minutes of talking to us and testing her strength, examining her, etc he determined that it is probably a familial tremor. He said each child born has a 50/50 chance and the further down the family line the earlier it develops. He suggested that my mother might have been self medicating her tremors and it led to the alcoholism. (alcohol is a sedative and sedatives help the tremors). I smiled and told him good try. He told her that as she ages if it becomes more of a problem that they can prescribe beta blockers to help or she can just sip a glass of wine ONCE SHE IS OF LEGAL AGE.
    I really like him and felt comfortable with his diagnosis. I told him it was a case of the first time a mother had searched Web MD and come away more at peace than before.

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  70. Kim – I hope you don’t think I was judging you & your marriage.

    Also, in case anyone thinks I am advocating people refuse service to divorced people remarrying, that’s not my intent.

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  71. Cheryl, a while ago, my name was listed in a music store for any potential students looking for a teacher. A coordinator for party entertainment got my name from the store and contacted me because a couple getting married wanted a violinist a the wedding. Being without a regular job, I accepted the offer. Afterwards, I thought, “What did I just do?!”, because gay marriage was now legal. I prayed about it, and determined, fearfully, that I would have to refuse if the couple were homosexual (this was before I knew much about the laws we had). My reasoning was that I was part of the actual ceremony, and thus could not participate in a mockery of marriage. The couple turned out to be heterosexual (gay marriage isn’t that common – I remember a gay man in my nursing class saying he had no interest in marriage). However, I wasn’t completely comfortable with the wedding. From the conversation, I gathered that the couple had lived together before marriage [one of the groomsman said carelessly to the groom during the rehearsal, “After all nothing changes except now you’ll be wearing a ring.”] and I wondered if it wasn’t just as much a mockery of marriage. The woman minister did seem to take seriously, though. I did it to the best of my ability, but I don’t think I want to do it again for total strangers, whatever their orientation.

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  72. No, Karen, I didn’t. I just offered another perspective.
    I guess I come at it from a different angle because as a REALTOR (trademark) and following the REALTORS Code of Ethics, I cannot discriminate against anyone based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin,

    http://www.realtor.org/rmoquiz2.nsf/pages/FairHousing

    So I think as an officer of the court no, matter what she thinks and believes, she has to follow the law.

    I could not suggest to you and Lee that having a grandchild living with you, you may not want to live in this “More Mature Community”
    I don’t know how it happened but a real estate agent suggested to her clients that they drive back by a property after dark. They saw a drug deal happening and somehow the agent was sued for discrimination.
    I could not suggest to you that having a child living in your home you may want to live on the first floor or closer to a park.
    I was once flagged for noting that a property was next door to a (well known) Chinese Restaurant.
    I have taken “At Home With Diversity” three different times. I know that in Hispanic households you speak to the man, but you make sure the woman hears you because while the man may appear to be the decision maker behind closed doors the wife makes the decision on the household front.
    When dealing with Asian people who put a lot of faith in Feng Shui that there cannot be a seam in the carpet in any room, It creates disharmony. I cannot refuse to show a gay couple property in a certain family oriented neighborhood.

    So while I may or may not agree with “gay marriage” I cannot discriminate against a gay couple when showing property.

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  73. Roscuro – On the other hand, it is a good thing that the co-habitating couple decided to take the step of getting married rather than merely continue to live together.

    The couple will probably find that what the groomsman said is wrong. I’ve read of people who lived together for quite a while before marrying say that marriage added a depth of commitment that they didn’t have before, even if they’d thought they did.

    I found it interesting that Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie’s children urged them to marry, although the children had never known anything different than their parents living together.

    But I’ve also heard of a few times when a previously long-term co-habitating couple wed, then divorced within a few months.

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  74. Kim – That code seems to be more than a bit overboard.

    Our real estate agent (I don’t know if she was a realtor), urged us away from one home to the one we ended up buying. She saw the downsides of what I thought was a beautiful home, & knew that this one, although plainer, was a better fit for us. We were grateful for her advice. (And she was right.)

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  77. Kim, I wouldn’t think that helping someone buy a home is encouraging sin any more than selling someone a car or a gun is encouraging sin. They might choose to use the car to fornicate or the gun to murder, but that isn’t its proper purpose. And I know people (not homosexual as far as I know) who bought a house with a friend; while you might strongly suspect two women or two men are homosexual, you aren’t making a legal decision to encourage them in sexual sin.

    Again, what happens if the pastor is “required” to perform a homosexual wedding? In terms of weddings he is seen as an agent of the state. (That can be problematic, because he is actually not supposed to be acting as an agent of the state when he performs marriages, but as an agent of God . . . but as he conducts the wedding, you will hear him say “By the authority invested in me by the state of Tennessee . . .”)

    Should a doctor who accepts medicare be required to perform abortions? or, in a few years, euthanasia? I don’t think we give up freedom of conscience just because we work for the state–or we shouldn’t.

    The idea of real estate agents not being allowed to make such suggestions is ludicrous. Now, I do understand the red-lining issues . . . but, seriously, if the agent thinks that this family with two soccer-loving children might not know that there is a park in the city where kids play soccer a lot, it’s useful information. If I’m buying a plant from a garden shop, it might be good to know it’s subject to aphid infestation or that it doesn’t tolerate heat well or that it does really well growing next to tomatoes. How much more finding a place to live with my family!

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  78. Karen, I think there comes a difference when you view yourself, not in a Christian culture that is backslidden, but in a worldly culture that is full of unbelievers who do not know any better. I attended a wedding in West Africa, that was the third or fourth marriage for the man (and the other wives were still living and married to him), but neither I nor anybody else viewed that as me giving an endorsement to polygamy. That is not say I would be comfortable attending a homosexual wedding; but simply to point out how one’s perspective changes depending on what one expects of the culture. In the case of the wedding I played for the family culture was nominal (liberal) Christian, and in claiming Christianity, it could be said they should be expected to follow it. I know a young couple who were sleeping together before they were married or were Christians. When they became Christians and wanted to marry, their church wisely advised them to stop their relations and receive counseling before they got married; which they did.

    Kim & Janice, as a healthcare professional, I cannot and do not discriminate about whom I treat. Christ did not; and really, it is not an endorsement of anything if I treat a sick human being with care and compassion. My mother and I have been discussing this, and I do not see that a landlord is responsible for what his tenants do, so a Christian should be able to rent to a homosexual couple (all other things, like credit rating, being equal); and a Christian real estate agent is not endorsing the relationship if she shows a house to a homosexual couple; or an accountant to do their income tax. We are not called to shun the unbeliever who is a fornicator, otherwise, as Paul said, we would have to go out of the world (I Corinthians 5:10). I think of the Christians who were slaves in the Roman Empire. Paul said that even some of Caesar’s house had become Christians (Philippians 1), and the Emperor at that time was Nero. They would have had to serve a dissolute and immoral man. I don’t think they would have consented to directly worship idols or commit fornication, but they may well have had to serve at parties where such immoral and idolatrous practices were happening. Sometimes, I think modern Christians take too much responsibility upon themselves. Did Obadiah endorse Ahab’s worship of Baal by serving him faithfully (I Kings 18:3)? We know that Elisha gave Naaman a pass on going to the house of Rimmon with his king (II Kings 5:18).

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  79. Cheryl, the pastor (or priest, or rabbi, or imam, etc.) who officiates at a wedding here will use “by the authority vested in me by the province of…” It still hasn’t led to them being forced to perform gay marriages. Not only does the gay marriage law have a clause explicitly protecting religious leaders, but couples can either get a license or have the banns called. In the latter case, the banns are called in the religious institution of which they are member – hence the marriage is being approved by their religious community. So in order to say pastors have to marry homosexuals, they would have to start dictating the membership rules of a religious community (thereby violating the Bill of Rights, which protects religious freedom, and a whole bunch of other laws and statutes).

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  80. Roscuro, I think that the landlord situation could be different depending on the setting. In Chicago, for example, many of the houses were two-flats, built with the idea that the owner lived upstairs (the upstairs unit usually had a few extra features, such as a fireplace) and rented out the downstairs. Sometimes an owner rented out a house he didn’t live in, and rented out both units. But if he was renting out the bottom unit, then it made a lot of sense that he was looking for someone with whom he shared some common ground. He probably wouldn’t want them throwing loud, drunken parties, for example, unless he liked such events himself, since even phone conversations can be heard from floor to floor.

    In Nashville I advertised to get housemates, and would interview young women who responded to my ad. Most of them were obvious bad fits (and they weren’t all young). I turned down the one who reeked of alcohol, the one who told me how many people she had sued, the one who wanted to bring her own dog (who was allowed on the furniture), and the one who had two cats. I also turned down the one who sat in my living room for two hours and showed me literally hundreds of photos (including one of a semi and one of a cow–no joke); she was obviously not going to be a good fit since I worked from home and she was retired with too much time on her hands. The one who wanted her boyfriend to be able to stay with her over the summer? Nope, sorry.

    But when I wanted to place an ad on Craig’s list, not only could I not say I only wanted a Christian, I could not even say (or hint) that I myself was a Christian! Imagine how difficult that might make it for someone in a minority religion to get a housemate! (I was told that I was allowed to discriminate on religion when choosing who to take in, as long as I was renting to three people or fewer or in my own home, or something along that line, but I could not say in the ad that I was a Christian.) That is going too far. We shared a kitchen, dining room, and living room, and I needed someone with whom I had some things in common, including a common understanding of right and wrong.

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  81. Cheryl, I do not know all the rental rules here, although I did share an apartment with a housemate whom I did not meet until the day she moved in. She turned out to be perfectly nice, a Catholic, and we got along fine. It is a longer story than I have space for here. However, my Christian landlords were very old fashioned, and didn’t even want their tenants, as the lady quaintly put it, to have ‘sleepovers’ with boyfriends or girlfriends. They were very intimidated by the whole gay marriage issue; but in talking to them, I discovered that the only case where a lesbian couple came to look at a place, when the lesbians realized that the landlord couple was uncomfortable with them, they voluntarily withdrew and never offered any trouble to the landlords. Sometimes, the Canadian cultural trait of non-confrontation can work in one’s favour. My mother heard an interview on Canadian radio of one of the couple who brought this clerk in Kentucky to court; and she said the interviewer asked the woman why they had insisted on going to this clerk when they knew her convictions, and also asked whether they had thought that the clerk could lose her job. This particular radio station is very liberal minded, so it wasn’t sympathy for the clerk’s convictions which prompted those questions.

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  84. People were abuzz at work when I came in today, they were so glad the clerk was in the slammer. 🙂 “Good!” one of them said.

    Well, this was (in the clerk’s mind) an act of civil disobedience so I suspect she expected and was willing to shoulder that punishment to make a point. But whatever … I think civil disobedience is only a good thing if liberals do it. 😉

    Of course, then they launched into all her personal dirty laundry … (as I understand it, those incidents were prior to her conversion, but whatever, it’s not the point).

    Albert Mohler, I think, does a good job of highlighting the deeper questions this all raises (and will raise) for Christians, especially those who serve in government:

    http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/09/03/in-this-world-you-will-have-trouble-welcome-to-rowan-county/

    _________________________________________________

    “… The Bible is clear — a Christian cannot act in violation of conscience without committing sin. Kim Davis has been clear, even as her own marital background has been discussed, that her conversion and Christian beliefs do not allow her to sanction what the Bible declares to be sin.

    “At the same time, the Christian church has long struggled to understand how Christian faithfulness is translated into faithful decisions in any number of political and legal situations. How would a faithful congregation advise Mrs. Davis to fulfill her Christian commitment? Should she remain in office and refuse to issue marriage licenses? Should she resign her office? Exhausting appeals to a higher court, should she now obey Judge Bunning’s order? Should she defy that order and go to jail? …

    “There is no automatically right answer to these questions. Each can be rooted in Christian moral argument, and any one of these options might be argued as right under the circumstances.

    “Kim Davis was within her rights as a citizen of the United States and as an official who had pledged to uphold the U.S. Constitution to appeal her case and make her argument all the way to the Supreme Court. The hardest questions come now that her appeal was turned back.

    “The Bible clearly commands that Christians respect the rightful authority of civil governments, understanding that the institution of human government is itself a part of God’s design. At the same time, the rightful power of government is not absolute. …”
    ________________________________________________

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  85. A more likely direct legal challenge to churches, I think (rather than pastors being asked to perform a wedding ceremony), would come initially in the form of a gay couple wanting to rent out a church social hall or other facilities for a gay wedding reception (understanding that such a request would be part of pushing the envelope).

    Clergy, of course, already discriminate in who they’ll marry or not — although I can see the issue, if pushed (and it will be) possibly affecting licensing of clergy by the government at some point?

    Poor Janice! I had a stomach/intestinal bug a few months ago, I was miserable. I don’t get those ailments often.

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  87. Thanks, glad someone else is up. I slept for a couple hours but now its 4 a.m. and I’m up again. I feel like I’ve been run over by a train.

    Plus doing a little back-and-forth on FB with a liberal Christian friend on the Kentucky issue. I was going to let her have the last word when I went to bed a few hours ago, but when I woke up again and revisited it, I decided to just make one more comment …

    It’s all respectful and I’m hoping I’m making some headway in the argument I’m trying to advance, but hard to tell. Everything is so knee-jerk these days (and I’m guilty of that, too, at times).

    We don’t like to really listen or think very deeply or respectfully about these issues in our country, sadly.

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