This title is horribly ambiguous. I thought the pastor was charging money to let people shelter in the church. Instead he was being a good human and allowing people to shelter in the church for free and was charged by the city.
I thought the church was in Wisconsin and didn’t get where Ohio came in. The church and pastor are in Ohio, but the author is making a connection to the recent hypothermia deaths in Milwaukee.
Unfortunately (in this case), freedom of religion, in the US, only protects your right to practice your religion free from persecution. You can’t break the law and then justify it by saying it was a form of religious expression.
Laws aren’t just because they’re laws. The police could have simply practiced their right to discretion and ignored the zoning law for the duration of the blizzard.
The police are too busy firing less-lethal weapons at peaceful protesters to do anything that would benefit society. They were within the law, doing what they did. I’m not saying I support it.
Scientology seems to get away with it fairly often. And all those holy roller type christian churches bringing conservative politics into their services despite their tax exempt status. But this is where we draw the line - keeping people from dying of hypothermia.
Sounds to me like the pastor got that message. Nobody in the city’s government cares about that, but he got it.
Good on the pastor for doing what he did. Anyone who speaks out about it, or endorses the charges laid against him should be ashamed. Honestly, you’re going to condemn someone to die because of what? Because they’re poor? Homeless? Does that mean we should treat them like they’re not worthy of life?
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. (Not you OP, I’m sure you’re cool)
This is a non-sequiter, given that Milwaukee is nearly 300 miles and three states away from Ohio. It’s like, ‘eat your vegetables, people are starving in China.’
Bad zoning laws are bad. And these laws are really bad (forcibly separating 'business' and residential are makes no sense to me) , but completely deregulating that (like allowing residential building directly adjacent to a dangerous chemical plant or in a flood zone) would be as bad.
I just fucking hate this shit, Life is fucking hard. Why go out of your way to make it harder. The D.A. is going to argue some B.S. about how the zoning laws are there to protect people. Fire hazard shit. Ignoring the fact that the pastor was putting people at a very small risk to protect them from a very large risk.
So when corrupt preachers rake in tens to hundreds of millions it’s tax-exempt because it’s not a business, but when a pastor actually cares for the needy like their book says to, that’s a crime because it IS a business?
As a REAL atheist, I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you to sit down and shut up. You’re embarrassing us.
To everyone else: I offer an apology. Real atheism isn’t about angsty childish complaints and smug insults. Nor is it about becoming the very thing you claim to hate- a judgmental arrogant asshole.
Actual atheism is simply the decision to not believe in any deities. Live and let live.
Not mad at anyone. Just thought I’d offer up an explanation to those that think all atheists are angsty teenagers that do nothing outside of spewing contempt and insults at people. You see, I don’t like it when people go out of their way to make my personal beliefs and choices look bad.
I think everyone should be doing this instead of remaining silent and allowing the minority of a thing to dictate its public perception.
Like how I believe that the majority of Christians are good people. They just don’t stand up against the ones that aren’t.
Hahaha this is the best example I’ve seen of the “no true Scotsman” in my life. I never claimed to be (what you consider to be) a real atheist. Matter of fact, I didn’t mention atheism at all.
Even your statement is full of contradictions. “Live and let live” unless you’re this guy spreading facts, then sit down and shut up.
And “atheism is simply the decision to not believe in any deities” unless you’re this guy spreading facts, then you’re “not a real atheist”.
You got confused. You’re an anti-theist as in against theism. Atheism simply means without theism. Anyways happy I could clear that up for you. Try to be nicer in the future.
The book is a bunch of non-sensical, contradictory fairy tales written and rewritten by a million dudes, a thousand times over, to manipulate others.
True, but one of the few things it isn’t unclear or downright self-contradictory about is that the main dude said to help the poor and otherwise marginalised people.
I love it when people pretend to know what “the book” says better than Christians
As an atheist who’s actually read the damn thing rather than just gotten the perspectives of conservative preachers and politicians, I’m not pretending. I do in fact know better than some so-called Christians what their stupid book says.
I also follow the more empathetic parts of it better than anyone on the “Christian Right”
True, but one of the few things it isn’t unclear or downright self-contradictory about is that the main dude said to help the poor and otherwise marginalised people.
Absolutely not true. “The main dude” did all kinds of fucking heinous shit, up to and including genocide of the entire human race.
As an atheist who’s actually read the damn thing rather than just gotten the perspectives of conservative preachers and politicians, I’m not pretending.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve “actually read the damn thing” because as I’ve already explained, it doesn’t make any fucking sense and has no principles.
You can do what Christians do and cherry-pick passages that affirm your current beliefs, or what you want to believe, but then you’re using the same flawed logic they are where you ignore giant swaths of contradictory statements.
I’m glad you brought this up. I don’t know if he stuttered. Never met the guy. But according to The Bible, he did say:
If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:13
And:
You shall have no other Gods before me
Exodus 20:3
Now we can go back and forth about what all of that means and historical context and all of that and I would argue that that would be arguing my point, precisely. None of us are born with innate knowledge of “God’s word” and God doesn’t come down here to clarify what he means about anything. So everybody interprets it to mean whatever they want it to mean (that’s you). And who are you tell absolutely anyone else that their interpretation is wrong?
even if you just take the overarching themes of it without looking too much into detail about it, you have one deity saying to commit genocide, then later on the same deity (purportedly) says to not be violent, turn the other cheek, yadda yadda. then a few pages later you get some rando coming in and writing fanfic about the deity’s son that he never met and somehow changes most of the fledgling religion.
I work in a religious nonprofit that hosts a bunch of community service orgs including two churches, a teen volunteerism org, a food ministry that distributed 10 mil pounds of food thru the pandemic, a music nonprofit, an acting/drama nonprofit and more. We’ve been getting our ass ridden so hard by local zoning and fire stuff. About to drop $20k plus on a compliant oven hood for a simple oven like you have in you kitchen. I took a cut in pay last year because of this bullshit.
God that website though… eventually scrolled to a point it threw two interactive ads back to back, filling the screen, preventing me from scrolling. And all the ads were the same, like I saw it already, GOT IT, leave it alone
Go into settings on your app, set to open links in external browser. Assuming your primary browser is Firefox with ublock on, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Even opening with my Lemmy app’s internal browser, there were two easily closable pop-ups, and the embedded ads in the article didn’t even load.
What's your point? The laws suck ass, don't align with the purported intentions of the religion backing said laws and legislators, and in fact, according to the religion the people inacting the laws are on their way to hell. So, are you also having a nice try? Caring for people is definitely not something to outlaw, and those that do are always on the wrong side of history; no debate.
That’s the Milwaukee DA. The story leads with Milwaukee but the Ohio pastor being cited was actually in Ohio, specifically Williams County. The DA there is, in fact, a Republican. Though not necessarily a “RepubliQan” as stated.
A fair point - the Milwaukee journal sentinel article talks about people freezing in Milwaukee and then jumps to Ohio. I didn’t catch the jump and, honestly it’s a little weird. Still, my bad. Thank you all for pointing it out.
The D.A. is the one to blame. Sure the zoning laws are shit, but the D.A. has discretion about which cases to bring and pursue. They could easily just move the fuck along like they do with any number of other cases they do in the year, but having worked with a number of these dipsticks in a previous life, I can guarantee you they saw it as an easy win and didn’t expect to get the attention they did. D.A.s are just as bad as police officers when it comes to selective enforcement and application of the law and should be scrutinized much more closely during local elections.
D.A.s are just as bad as police officers when it comes to selective enforcement and application of the law
That’s because they ARE cops. They weren’t originally supposed to be, but they do the exact same thing as cops do: put as many people behind bars or to death as they possibly can regardless of whether or not they’re guilty.
Just like cops will get funding based on their “solve rate” whether or not they actually got the real culprit every or even MOST times, DAs run for re-election based on their conviction rate, no matter how many miscarriages of justice are counted amongst those "wins’
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