Christian Sharia in Texas?
By
nalhamid
on October 10, 2007 at 01:24 am
10 Comments
Found this on Irregular Times interesting, thought you would like to read
Back in 1991, Christian fundamentalists remained happily silent when Canada passed a law allowing religions to engage in voluntary remediation of legal disputes under their own religious laws. They were content to watch this happen because Jewish and Catholic groups were the ones to place their subjects under religious law, and that
was apparently OK.
It was only in 2005 that Christian Fundamentalists howled their opposition, when a former Canadian Attorney General proposed that
Muslim religious organizations be able to enforce Islamic sharia law in matters concerning Muslim families, such as divorce, child custody
and the division of assets.
All of a sudden, the Christian fundamentalists came out of the woodwork denouncing the proposal (which was rejected by the Canadian government, by the way). The fundamentalists’ problem wasn’t with theocracy — it was with Islamic theocracy.
Fast forward to the summer of 2007, when the Texas Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit of Peggy Lee Penley against Pastor and licensed
professional counselor Buddy Westbrook. Penley had approached Westbrook for marital counseling, and in that counseling session told
Westbrook she’d had an extramarital affair. Licensed professional counselors are legally obliged to maintain confidentiality, and in its
ruling the Supreme Court of Texas accepted Penley’s claim that her disclosure occurred within the context of Westbrook’s non-religious
professional counseling. And yet the Supreme
Court of Texas wrote in its ruling:
Even so, we cannot ignore Westbrook’s role as Penley’s pastor. In his dual capacity, Westbrook owed Penley conflicting duties; as Penley’s counselor he owed her a duty of confidentiality, and as her pastor he owed Penley and the church an obligation to disclose her conduct. We conclude that parsing those roles for purposes of determining civil liability in this case, where health or safety are not at issue, would unconstitutionally entangle the court in matters of church governance and impinge on the core religious function of church discipline. Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction.
In other words, when a person’s secular obligation conflicts with church law, church law wins.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that once a person willingly joins a religious institution, the prerogatives of that religious institution to implement and enforce its religious law upon its members supercedes and overrules the right of individual members to be protected by secular laws. This is an implementation of American theocracy, placing religious law above secular law. But you won’t find Christian fundamentalists crying foul over this instance of theocracy; indeed, Christian fundamentalists funded Westbrook’s legal defense. That’s because, as was showing in the case of Canada, Christian fundamentalists don’t have a problem with theocracy — as long as it’s
their religion that gets the power. Theocracy is only objectionable to the Christian fundamentalist movement if it is the theocracy of a competitor religion.
http://muslimchronicle.blogspot.com/2005/01/toronto-star-story-on-marion-boyds.html
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=272
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/09/09/sharia-protests-20050909.html
http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/historical/2007/jun/040838.htm
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/12/22004b.asp
Back in 1991, Christian fundamentalists remained happily silent when Canada passed a law allowing religions to engage in voluntary remediation of legal disputes under their own religious laws. They were content to watch this happen because Jewish and Catholic groups were the ones to place their subjects under religious law, and that
was apparently OK.
It was only in 2005 that Christian Fundamentalists howled their opposition, when a former Canadian Attorney General proposed that
Muslim religious organizations be able to enforce Islamic sharia law in matters concerning Muslim families, such as divorce, child custody
and the division of assets.
All of a sudden, the Christian fundamentalists came out of the woodwork denouncing the proposal (which was rejected by the Canadian government, by the way). The fundamentalists’ problem wasn’t with theocracy — it was with Islamic theocracy.
Fast forward to the summer of 2007, when the Texas Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit of Peggy Lee Penley against Pastor and licensed
professional counselor Buddy Westbrook. Penley had approached Westbrook for marital counseling, and in that counseling session told
Westbrook she’d had an extramarital affair. Licensed professional counselors are legally obliged to maintain confidentiality, and in its
ruling the Supreme Court of Texas accepted Penley’s claim that her disclosure occurred within the context of Westbrook’s non-religious
professional counseling. And yet the Supreme
Court of Texas wrote in its ruling:
Even so, we cannot ignore Westbrook’s role as Penley’s pastor. In his dual capacity, Westbrook owed Penley conflicting duties; as Penley’s counselor he owed her a duty of confidentiality, and as her pastor he owed Penley and the church an obligation to disclose her conduct. We conclude that parsing those roles for purposes of determining civil liability in this case, where health or safety are not at issue, would unconstitutionally entangle the court in matters of church governance and impinge on the core religious function of church discipline. Accordingly, we reverse the court of appeals’ judgment and dismiss the case for want of jurisdiction.
In other words, when a person’s secular obligation conflicts with church law, church law wins.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that once a person willingly joins a religious institution, the prerogatives of that religious institution to implement and enforce its religious law upon its members supercedes and overrules the right of individual members to be protected by secular laws. This is an implementation of American theocracy, placing religious law above secular law. But you won’t find Christian fundamentalists crying foul over this instance of theocracy; indeed, Christian fundamentalists funded Westbrook’s legal defense. That’s because, as was showing in the case of Canada, Christian fundamentalists don’t have a problem with theocracy — as long as it’s
their religion that gets the power. Theocracy is only objectionable to the Christian fundamentalist movement if it is the theocracy of a competitor religion.
http://muslimchronicle.blogspot.com/2005/01/toronto-star-story-on-marion-boyds.html
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=272
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/09/09/sharia-protests-20050909.html
http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/historical/2007/jun/040838.htm
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/12/22004b.asp
, “Christian Fundamentalists oppose human instituted theocracy wether “Christian” or any other form”. You might claim that some do and some don’t, but your overbroad assertion to bail out the effing nutcase fairytale believers (this goes for you too ‘nalhamid’ if you believe in silly shit) is not cutting it. Christian fundamentalists are whacknips. Period. Christians are odd, but here we are talking about Christian fundamentalists. They homeschool, not to be free of Marxist influences, but rather to keep all their kith and kin as stupid as they possibly can (oh, “I mean in the good graces of God, who made the whole universe 6,000 years ago and hid fossils around to test our faith” and not “stupid” (I’m not being a wiseass, they believe that shit.)). Its probably the only religious group in the US that all are exempted from capital punishment (b/c we don’t kill people with an IQ lower than 75 in this country). And y’all think global warming backing scientists have a misled belief or two!?!
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