Weird:

Michele Bachman: God says Biden is not our president

"Supreme Court relieves religious organizations from some covid-related restrictions"

 

The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority late Wednesday night sided with religious organizations in New York that said they were illegally targeted by pandemic-related restrictions imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to combat spiking coronavirus cases.

 

The 5 to 4 order was the first show of solidified conservative strength on the court since the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The decision differed from the court’s previous practice of deferring to local officials on pandemic-related restrictions, even in the area of constitutionally protected religious rights.

 

“Even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten,” the unsigned opinion granting a stay of the state’s orders said. “The restrictions at issue here, by effectively barring many from attending religious services, strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.”

 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court was intervening where it should not.

 

“States may not discriminate against religious institutions, even when faced with a crisis as deadly as this one. But those principles are not at stake today,” she wrote. “The Constitution does not forbid States from responding to public health crises through regulations that treat religious institutions equally or more favorably than comparable secular institutions, particularly when those regulations save lives.”

 

In past cases, Roberts agreed with conservative justices who turned down petitions from prisoners seeking intervention, allowing local corrections officials to set the rules for dealing with the virus.

 

But Roberts sided with the liberals, when Ginsburg was alive, to leave in place restrictions in California and Nevada that imposed severe limits on in-person services at houses of worship.

 

In the California case, Roberts wrote that fast-changing conditions meant the courts should defer to local officials charged with protecting the public. They “should not be subject to second-guessing by an unelected federal judiciary, which lacks the background, competence and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people,” he wrote.

 

But the court’s more conservative justices said it violated the Constitution for local officials to impose more drastic restrictions on houses of worship than on businesses considered essential.

 

TLDR:  According to biblical text, Omniscient Jesus didn't know much about fig trees which had already been cultivated by humans for thousands of years, but talked one to death because it annoyed him.

Relevance to topic: If you "believe in" biblical text as literal truth - especially when it describes "miracles" - then you're well on the path to to believing everything crazy and stupid.

Nothing crazy and stupid about cursing a fig tree to death. I have never liked figs. Wine, on the other hand, is another matter. 

Fred99: TLDR:  According to biblical text, Omniscient Jesus didn't know much about fig trees which had already been cultivated by humans for thousands of years, but talked one to death because it annoyed him.

But J could surely have resurrected the tree. He managed it with Lazarus. He just didn't like figs.

Conversion of "heathens" using the bible would have created certain serious problems for slave-owners.  The solution was to produce edited versions of the bible, retaining the bits where slaves are instructed to be loyal and hard working for their owners, deleting the bits that described gaining freedom from slavery as a good thing.

The faithful do excel at hypocrisy.

Batman: You guys are prudent to choose to mock a belief system that turns the other cheek. I recall something similar in France a few weeks ago that followed something in France a few years ago when they slightly joked about a different group, but was met with some retaliation of sorts.

Like this, you mean?

'Watching Trump and the Christian right go after Islam for being homophobic is, frankly, jaw-dropping. If any community in this country has shown itself to be anti-gay, it is conservative Christians and their decades of peddling hatred for gay people, comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, claiming AIDS is divine punishment, pushing “cures” for homosexuality, and blocking laws that prevent gays not just from marrying but from being discriminated against. A Christian pastor, who has enjoyed the company of Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz, recently said that, according to the Bible, homosexuals “deserve the death penalty.” Now the very same people who, just last month, were comparing trans people to predators who would use the wrong bathroom to hunt for child victims are suddenly lining up to defend gays from radical Islam.

'And yet, in the wake of the Orlando shooting, some Christians came out to say what they really thought of those gays in that club. One Christian preacher posted a video sermon in which he praised the Orlando shootings, saying, “The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles.”'

- Foreignpolicy.com

Batman: You guys are prudent to choose to mock a belief system that turns the other cheek. I recall something similar in France a few weeks ago that followed something in France a few years ago when they slightly joked about a different group, but was met with some retaliation of sorts.

Are you suggesting that if lunatic-fringe god-botherers were dangerous and prone to violence if (their god was) offended, then they should be left alone, to preach their hate unchallenged?

That's not how it works, and it's not how it should work. 

"Turning the other cheek" seems very inconsistent with centuries of atrocities carried out in God's name.  It's more consistent with Gandhi maybe...