“There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.”
It used to be the social and religious conservatives who warned us not to confuse liberty with license.
In the 1960s, for example, when ever-larger groups of often-young people were experimenting with drugs and sexual freedom, evading the draft, dressing and wearing their hair in odd ways and revolting against a century of racial separation and gender discrimination, many of their elders were complaining that such behavior wasn’t freedom but the harmful collapse of society.
And as the march of civilization started to include recognition of the humanity of LGBTQ people, those who were trying to stand athwart history were complaining that what was being sought was not equal rights, but special rights.
How the script has flipped.
Now we see a defeated president making ever-more-pathetic claims that he shouldn’t lose power because, well, he doesn’t want to. Whether he stays or goes, that president is the figurehead for members of a large segment of our society whose members have as their motivating grievance a complaint that their special place in the world is being threatened. Threatened by what they perceive to be a growing number of those people, people whose rights, even their basic humanity, can’t be recognized because to do so would diminish the special place of the white patriarchy which is, indeed, losing its grip.
As has been said elsewhere, when you have been privileged for so long, equality feels like oppression.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee is among those who have complained that the culture, the media, the government and the courts are trying to discriminate against people of religious faith when, more often than not, what is really happening is a move to take away the privileged status of certain religions and their followers.
It wasn’t long ago, for example, that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, were stating that the public health emergency of COVID-19 justified rules that sought to limit the contagion by restricting the ability of churches to maintain their normal worship practices. They ruled, rightly, that the threat to public health is real and that it was no special burden for religious institutions to suspend normal gatherings.
But on Thanksgiving Eve, the new Republican-appointed majority of the Supreme Court — with instant Justice Amy Coney Barrett now on board — flipped the other way and blocked an order from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that churches in high-transmission areas of his state sharply limit the number of people in attendance at any one time.
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Many religious leaders around the world — including LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson and Pope Francis — have followed the guidance of science in limiting the size of gatherings, encouraging people to wear masks and doing other things to protect their neighbors as themselves.
But Catholic and Jewish groups in New York went to court to claim Cuomo’s order was an infringement of their First Amendment right to religious freedom. Similar attempts had failed earlier this year as the justices rightly deferred to public health experts.
But now that Barrett was on the bench, there was a firm majority to rule the other way. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that it was unconstitutional to limit religious services, especially when other, nonreligious, businesses were allowed to remain open.
The ruling centered on the idea that churches are “essential,” or at least as essential as some operations that were allowed to stay open, such as hardware stores, bicycle repair shops and acupuncture clinics. What the ruling ignored, and the powerful dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained, is that people don’t gather in large groups in stores and clinics, standing or sitting, singing, chanting and otherwise sharing their breath, for an hour or two.
New York actually cut churches a small break, allowing small numbers of people to be inside them, while completely closing down comparable venues, such as Madison Square Garden and Broadway theaters.
The court’s ruling did not give the churches of New York equal rights. It gave them special rights. Something that conservatives used to be against.
It would be absurd, perhaps, to worry that this ruling is prologue to other decisions that would exempt religious institutions from laws such as those that ban human sacrifice, selling daughters into slavery or parents stoning their children to death for not showing proper respect.
But it was a decision that holds that you can get away with behavior that is clearly harmful to the whole community just because you claim it was for a religious purpose.
If that’s really what freedom of religion means, we don’t need any more of it.
George Pyle
George Pyle, editorial page editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, has been to one bar mitzvah, a couple of Catholic weddings and a handful of atheist funerals. None of them during a global pandemic.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has determined that Italy must pay for the dependents of migrants even if they do not live in the European Union.
EU judges stated that Italian legislation which allows Italians to claim benefits for dependents living abroad but which bars non-EU migrants from doing so was contrary to EU law. The court, therefore, ruled that non-EU citizens with residency permits or who are long-term residents are entitled to allowances for their families living outside of the bloc.
The decision was a result of a challenge between the National Social Security Institute and two non-European Union citizens, one from Sri Lanka and another from Pakistan, who lived and worked legally in Italy and have families living in their home countries, Italian newspaper Il Giornalereports.
Populist Senator Matteo Salvini, who heads Italy’s most popular party, the League (Lega), commented on the court’s statement, saying: “The Court of Justice of the EU establishes (and imposes on Italy) that non-EU citizens are entitled to allowances even for dependent family members living abroad outside the EU! Are they joking?”
EU Moves Against Austria for Changing Benefit Payments for Children Living Abroad https://t.co/rnotGL4wCQ
The case comes after the European Commission brought up infringement procedures against Austria over a similar issue.
Austria attempted to index child benefits in 2019, which meant that child benefits would be paid according to the cost of living where the children lived so that if a migrant worker had children in a country with a lower cost of living than Austria, they would receive less money.
EU Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen said of the Austrian proposal at the time: “When mobile workers contribute to a social security system in the same way as local workers, they must receive identical benefits, even when their children live abroad.”
Italy has seen a surge in migrants over the last several months, despite Wuhan virus outbreaks. Areas such as the island of Lampedusa continue to see waves of new migrants, most of whom come via Tunisia.
Spain Deploys Police to West Africa as Canary Islands Migrant Influx Increases by 1,000 Per Cent https://t.co/fWKAajS5F3
Ranchi: The national president of Adivasi Senghal Abhiyan (ASA) and state chief of Janata Dal United (JDU) Salkhan Murmu on Saturday announced a nationwide chakka jam protest on December 6 to press the Centre for a separate religion code ahead of the 2021 census. Following a spate of protests, the Hemant Soren government on November 11 passed a resolution in favour of an Adivasi Sarna code at the assembly and forwarded a proposal to the Union government. “Although the assembly cleared the resolution, several tribal bodies have been congratulating only chief minister Hemant Soren and the ruling parties. We want both the grand alliance and opposition camps to apprise the people about the strategies to fulfil the long-pending demand for a separate religion code for tribals,” Murmu said at a news meet in Ranchi on Saturday. He said, “Two years back, the Karnataka government had passed a resolution in favour of Lingayats and had sent it to the Union government, but the latter denied to accept it. Hence, the state government and other political parties of Jharkhand must hit the roads until the Union government accepts the resolution.” He also appealed all the parties to join hands for the December 6 protest in the interest of tribal rights. “As far as JD(U) is concerned, it is strongly backing the demonstration,” he said. ASA has its base in five states — Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam, Orissa and West Bengal. Murmu said that the protest will be effective in all these five states. Various tribal bodies have also been asked to support the movement. Before the December 6 protest, a bike rally will be held in Ranchi on December 1 while similar rallies will be held between December 2 and 4 in other states as a prelude to the nationwide stir. The demand for a separate religion code, tribals say, is imperative to retain their distinctive cultural and religious identity. Without a separate code (column) during census, they are classified either as Hindus, Jains, Muslim and others.
Sky News host James Morrow says a “small, hilarious slip-up” from President-elect Joe Biden where he pronounced ‘Psalms’ – a book in the Bible – as “Palms,” can be used to make several serious points about the nature of his administration.
The former US president’s limpid memoir is a blast until he reaches the White House
BL PREMIUM
26 November 2020 – 05:00 Edward Luce
Barack Obama’s presidential memoir can be split into two narrative styles. The first chronicles his almost cinematic life story up to his January 2009 inauguration. The rest is devoted to the first two-and-a-half years of his presidency. Though they are in the same memoir they read at times like different books.
Obama’s limpid prose, which shot him to fame in the mid-1990s with his precocious autobiography, Dreams From My Father, is alive and well in the way he describes his pre-presidential days, including his historic 2008 campaign. It is easy to see why Penguin Random House gave him and Michelle Obama a combined $65m — an advance to which none of his predecessors have come close…
(Photo: University of Notre Dame)Amy Coney Barrett
When the U.S. Supreme Court barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Governor Andrew Cuomo had imposed to combat the novel coronavirus, numerous religious organizations cheered it as setting down a marker in the United States.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent, The New York Times reported.
The ruling stirred debate on the notion of the “wall of separation” between Church and State due to often-quoted words of U.S. founding father Thomas Jefferson in a letter he once wrote to a group of Baptists on the constituion’s First Amendment’s opening clauses.
“Separation of Church and State” is paraphrased from Jefferson and therefore used in looking at the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution, according to Wikipedia.
It reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
The latest U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling went against earlier ones concerning churches in California and Nevada.
In those cases, decided in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services, The Washington Post reported.
AMY CONEY BARRET
The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.
The ruling of the court was at odds with earlier ones for California and Nevada.
In those cases, in May and July, the court allowed the states’ governors to restrict attendance at religious services.
The Times pointed out the Supreme Court’s membership has changed since then, with Justice Barrett succeeding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seen as a liberal judge, who died in September.
The vote in the earlier cases was also 5 to 4, but in the opposite direction, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Justice Ginsburg and the other three members of what was then the court’s four-member liberal wing.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called that ruling in the dispute over COVID-19 restrictions, “irrelevant” and not “final” while arguing that the decision is really more of a statement on the court’s new conservative bent, Christian Today reported.
“They wanted to make a statement that it’s a different court. That’s the statement they’re making, I understand that. And that’s to be expected,” Cuomo said, alluding to the impact of the recent addition of Justice Barrett on the bench without calling her by name.
“We know who we appointed to the court. We know their ideology. It’s irrelevant from a practical impact because the zone that they were talking about has already been moved.
“It expired last week. I think this was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and politics,” he said.
Henry Olsen, a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center wrote in the newspaper that the “decision rightly reversed this noxious notion.”
The court held that Cuomo’s regulation, which capped attendance at houses of worship in areas in the most restrictive ‘red’ and ‘orange’ regions of the state to 10 or 25 people regardless of the edifice’s capacity, to be a clear constitutional violation. ”
Olsen noted, “Houses of worship, however, were arbitrarily capped at minuscule numbers in both regions. The court drily noted that there was no reason the smaller number of permitted worshippers was necessary to protect public health.”
He wrote, “This reversal was possible only because of Barrett. Without the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there were only three liberals to join the chief justice in support of the governor’s order.”
He said Barrett joined the four conservatives who had dissented in this summer’s cases to form the majority in this one.
“Liberals have often marveled at how religious conservatives could so fervently back a decidedly imperfect man in President Trump. This case, in which all three of Trump’s appointees formed the majority’s backbone, shows why they did.”
The court’s order addressed two applications: one filed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the other by two synagogues, an Orthodox Jewish organization and two individuals.
The applications both said Cuomo’s restrictions violated constitutional protections for the free exercise of religion, and the one from the synagogues added that the New York governor had “singled out a particular religion for blame and retribution for an uptick in a society-wide pandemic.”
CATHOLICS OPPOSE CUOMO
The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, which covers Brooklyn and Queens, argued houses of worship were being unfairly singled out by the governor’s executive order, Crux News reported.
The diocese had argued it had previously operated safely by capping attendance at 25 percent of a building’s capacity and taking other measures.
“We are extremely grateful that the Supreme Court has acted so swiftly and decisively to protect one of our most fundamental constitutional rights — the free exercise of religion,” said Randy Mastro, an attorney for the diocese, in a statement.
Avi Schick, an attorney for Agudath Israel of America, wrote in an email: “This is an historic victory. This landmark decision will ensure that religious practices and religious institutions will be protected from government edicts that do not treat religion with the respect demanded by the Constitution.”
The UK has called for fresh thinking from the European Union and hit out at “risible” proposals on fishing quotas amid mounting tensions as both sides enter what could be the final week of post-Brexit trade negotiations.
There was anger on the UK side after reports emerged the EU could accept just a 15-18 per cent cut in its share of fishing rights in UK waters, emphasising how far away from a deal the talks are.
The UK, led by chief negotiator Lord Frost, is understood to believe that the potential benefits of a no-deal Brexit are underappreciated, despite dire warnings of the effect on businesses and the economy.
A source close to the negotiations said the UK was not going to “sell out” its sovereignty.
They said: “Over the coming days we will continue to negotiate with creativity and intensity. We hope that the EU will come with some fresh thinking because what we’ve seen so far doesn’t cut it. They must understand that we are not going to sell out our sovereignty.”
A government source added: “These figures (on fishing) are risible, and the EU side know full well that we would never accept this. There seems to be a failure from the Commission to internalise the scale of change needed as we become an independent nation.”
However, it is understood that a potential path has emerged that could pave the way for agreement on one of the other main sticking points, the level playing field.
Face-to-face Brexit negotiations have resumed in London, with just over a month before the transition period ends on 31 December.
But there is thought to be growing scepticism among other EU states about the prospects of a deal.
Home Secretary Priti Patel suggested UK ministers were still prepared to walk away even at this late hour.
The government was committed to ensuring the Brexit talks were “conclusive”, she said.
“But at the same time we are preparing in the way in which our country would expect us to prepare for the end of transition.”
Earlier, French MEP Pierre Karleskind, who chairs the European Parliament’s fisheries committee, defended the fishing proposal.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “You asked for your companies to access the common market of the European Union, and we ask our fishermen to access your waters…it is reciprocity.”
On Friday Lord Frost said that any deal must respect the UK’s sovereignty.
“That is not just a word – it has practical consequences. That includes: controlling our borders; deciding ourselves on a robust and principled subsidy control system; and controlling our fishing waters.”
Boris Johnson also underlined his commitment to reaching a Brexit deal that respects the sovereignty of the UK in a call with Irish prime minister Micheal Martin.
The UK government is understood to believe a crunch point in the talks, when it will become clear if a deal can be struck or not, may come within days.
Chaos is predicted at British ports whether or not a deal is struck.
However, a no-deal is expected to do more damage to the British economy.
Britain is demanding the European Union brings “fresh thinking” to post-Brexit trade deal talks and concedes on fishing rights ahead of what Downing Street said could be the last week of negotiations.
The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has been in London this weekend for talks with his UK counterpart Lord (David) Frost, but Downing Street said there remains a lot to do at a late hour.
Progress is understood to have been made across many areas, yet significant gaps are said to remain on the EU’s access to UK fishing waters when the transition period ends on December 31.
Reports last week suggested that Mr Barnier recently said the EU could accept a 15-18% cut in its share of fishing rights in UK waters, but British officials were said to have immediately rejected the offer.
A Government source said: “These figures are risible, and the EU side know full well that we would never accept this.
“There seems to be a failure from the Commission to internalise the scale of change needed as we become an independent nation.”
The Government has repeatedly said it is prepared to leave the transition period without a deal if the EU fails to move, and talks have been deadlocked for months over fishing rights and other issues.
They include the governance of any deal and the “level playing field” conditions aimed at preventing unfair competition by cutting standards or increasing state subsidies.
???? After technical discussions this weekend, negotiations continue online today with @DavidGHFrost and our teams. Time is short. Fundamental divergences still remain, but we are continuing to work hard for a deal.
But ahead of what Number 10 said could be the final week of talks, a source close to the negotiations said: “Over the coming days we will continue to negotiate with creativity and intensity.
“We hope that the EU will come with some fresh thinking because what we’ve seen so far doesn’t cut it. They must understand that we are not going to sell out our sovereignty.”
Mr Barnier arrived in London on Friday night telling reporters that he would continue to work with “patience and determination” to reach an agreement.
Face-to-face negotiations were paused earlier this month after one of the EU team tested positive for coronavirus, but in-person discussions resumed on Saturday morning.
“This is a criminal act and runs counter to the principle of respect for human rights the EU stands for,” said the statement, attributed to an EEAS spokesperson.
“In these uncertain times, it is more important than ever for all parties to remain calm and exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid escalation which cannot be in anyone’s interest.”
State TV confirmed the killing a short time later, and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif quickly alleged that Israel was involved.
“Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,” Zarif tweeted. “This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators.”
Syria also accused Israel of involvement, with Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad claiming the act would fuel tensions in the region.
Israel responded only with a statement from the minister for Settlement Affairs, Tzachi Hanegbi, saying he had “no clue” who was behind the killing, according to Al Jazeera.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/sltrib/2U72VQBOXNBELJRZDNDQFO2AA4.jpg?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "George Pyle: Court says it’s OK to spread death — as long as you are a religion.")
