On marriage: Utah

[simplicio]

If something is decriminalized then it is no longer a criminal offense (usually it becomes an "ordinance violation" or the equivalent). Misdemeanors are criminal offenses.

An excellent catch, I commend you for your diligence. But I am sure your diligence also picked up on the fact that the precise wording used here is not my own, it is gleaned form news reports, both secular and religious. In fact, many reports used the phrase "like a traffic offense" or parking ticket to view the proposed legislation's views on polygamy.

[rogue06]

An excellent catch, I commend you for your diligence. But I am sure your diligence also picked up on the fact that the precise wording used here is not my own, it is gleaned form news reports, both secular and religious. In fact, many reports used the phrase "like a traffic offense" or parking ticket to view the proposed legislation's views on polygamy.

But, by definition, if it remains a misdemeanor then it cannot be "decriminalized."

[Starlight]

A look at church history shows a continuity of ideas across time. There are very few novums, new ideas.

Hmm. Might have to disagree there.

[simplicio]

Hmm. Might have to disagree there.

How so?

Whether societal issues like slavery (movement from slavery to serfdom to notions of equality) or democracy (which has not resolved the timeless problems of authority and liberty), or theological ideas like Trinity and Incarnation, or development of doctrine, we see a continuum in which new ideas can be recognized in incipient form.

The really new ideas usually are shown to be heterodox and involve some rejection of principles of the faith.

[simplicio]

But, by definition, if it remains a misdemeanor then it cannot be "decriminalized."

Okay. No over reliance on literalism there, Slick, English is a difficult language to master.

The news reports I really on are exclusively in the English language.

[rogue06]

Okay. No over reliance on literalism there, Slick, English is a difficult language to master.

The news reports I really on are exclusively in the English language.

Settle down Sport. I'm just pointing out a simple fact. How many sources are using the words "decriminalized" (or its variants) as well as "misdemeanor" and actually saying it'll become a misdemeanor after decriminalization?

We may have some bad reporting responsible, especially if it has been picked up by other news outlets and repeated (especially possible if it is a wire service like AP or UPI).

In any case it might be a good idea t see if you can find a copy of the pending legislation online and read for yourself what it'll do.

[simplicio]

Settle down Sport. I'm just pointing out a simple fact. How many sources are using the words "decriminalized" (or its variants) as well as "misdemeanor" and actually saying it'll become a misdemeanor after decriminalization?

We may have some bad reporting responsible, especially if it has been picked up by other news outlets and repeated (especially possible if it is a wire service like AP or UPI).

In any case it might be a good idea t see if you can find a copy of the pending legislation online and read for yourself what it'll do.

I am settled, Slick. I have read the pending legislation.

The imprecise wording, attributable to common and naive views on criminal law show that many writers do not have the lawyers viewpoint on precise language. The change in status from felony to misdemeanor is what most are focusing on.

It does bring in diverse and difficult ideas, such as the reluctance of abuse victims in coming forward, the desire to break the pattern of dependence on polygamy as a family structure, or a view of marriage as a central issue for society.

[Starlight]

Whether societal issues like slavery (movement from slavery to serfdom to notions of equality) or democracy (which has not resolved the timeless problems of authority and liberty), or theological ideas like Trinity and Incarnation, or development of doctrine, we see a continuum in which new ideas can be recognized in incipient form.

Any new idea can always be identified 'in incipient form' in some earlier period with the application of sufficiently creative thinking if that's the goal. So I think that sort of standard owes more to the subjective creativity of the historian who's reinterpreting the past past through the lens of new ideas, than it does any objective standard.

In general I just don't accept as at all valid the idea that if a new idea emerges slowly over time piecemeal and along some sort of continuum of development, that it is somehow more valid / more true than an idea that emerges entirely suddenly. And to say that something wasn't a change at all just because it happened slowly over time, is an exercise in self-delusion.

The really new ideas usually are shown to be heterodox and involve some rejection of principles of the faith.

I guess I would point to 3 major changes in Western Christian theological history that I see as being almost complete disjunctions from what came before them, each about 500 years apart... Augustine inventing Original Sin due to his inaccurate Latin translation of Romans 5:12 and vehemently condemning the far-more-orthodox-than-him Pelagius, Anselm inventing the Satisfaction theory of the atonement in which Christ paid an infinite penalty owe-able for our sin to an infinite God and it displacing existing understandings of Christ's role, and Martin Luther reinventing 'justification' to be about humans getting 'declared' righteous quite aside from sanctification / being actually morally changed.

Those are points of major discontinuity in Western Christian theology (and some of the reasons why Eastern Christendom which wasn't influenced by those thinkers remains closer to early Christianity), and what came after each of those writers was significantly to what came before them. While I'm sure a sufficiently creative and determined person could find 'traces' or 'inklings' or 'hints' of their ideas in incipient form in earlier writers, it's reasonably clear no earlier writers held anything close to such developed views as they did on those subjects, and their writings majorly changed how Western Christianity thought about those topics for centuries and millennia following them.

[simplicio]

Any new idea can always be identified 'in incipient form' in some earlier period with the application of sufficiently creative thinking if that's the goal. So I think that sort of standard owes more to the subjective creativity of the historian who's reinterpreting the past past through the lens of new ideas, than it does any objective standard.

In general I just don't accept as at all valid the idea that if a new idea emerges slowly over time piecemeal and along some sort of continuum of development, that it is somehow more valid / more true than an idea that emerges entirely suddenly. And to say that something wasn't a change at all just because it happened slowly over time, is an exercise in self-delusion.

I guess I would point to 3 major changes in Western Christian theological history that I see as being almost complete disjunctions from what came before them, each about 500 years apart... Augustine inventing Original Sin due to his inaccurate Latin translation of Romans 5:12 and vehemently condemning the far-more-orthodox-than-him Pelagius, Anselm inventing the Satisfaction theory of the atonement in which Christ paid an infinite penalty owe-able for our sin to an infinite God and it displacing existing understandings of Christ's role, and Martin Luther reinventing 'justification' to be about humans getting 'declared' righteous quite aside from sanctification / being actually morally changed.

Those are points of major discontinuity in Western Christian theology (and some of the reasons why Eastern Christendom which wasn't influenced by those thinkers remains closer to early Christianity), and what came after each of those writers was significantly to what came before them. While I'm sure a sufficiently creative and determined person could find 'traces' or 'inklings' or 'hints' of their ideas in incipient form in earlier writers, it's reasonably clear no earlier writers held anything close to such developed views as they did on those subjects, and their writings majorly changed how Western Christianity thought about those topics for centuries and millennia following them.

Interesting ideas. When we look back in history and look at ideas on a topic, like rights and race, we see ideas expressed and wrestled with. We do see ideas we recognize as modern competing with other ideas. The secular sphere mirrors the religious sphere (:)), ideas on Trinity can be viewed competing against other ideas. The Church and Caesar worked together to make Trinity the orthodoxy, neither church nor Caesar could work to enforce modern view of rights.

Yet the view of rights and equality emerged as did Athanasius' view both became a sort of orthodoxy. We might not burn the heretic today, but politician who crosses a certain line on race will be crucified politically.

[demi-conservative]

Utah has started to decriminalize polygamy.

Just imagine if Mormons had been expelled. Catholics too.

[simplicio]

Just imagine if Mormons had been expelled. Catholics too.

Does that possibility make you quiver with excitement? The expulsion of Mormons always included mob violence, which is why they moved into the western desert wilderness. No one could see the Salt Lake area as a land of milk and honey except after experiencing Cairo and Nauvoo.

The expulsion of Catholics by Know Nothings and Nativist movement did not work out, Archbishop Hughes noted that his city would burn. It did manage to quell the violence, securing the right to build churches in America. But I think it noteworthy that after two centuries, such sentiments are not really far from the surface.

Or imagine the expulsion of the SDA (like Ben Carson). Sparko noted, with disapproval worthy of Catherine Macpherson, that the Mormons were cultists, while MM was defending Ben Carson as some moral exemplar.

Yes, Demi, I do think you are a Christian.

[Starlight]

When we look back in history and look at ideas on a topic, like rights and race, we see ideas expressed and wrestled with.

I can't say I've really studied the topics of rights and race as they pertain to church history...

I guess a few major events that come to mind that might be considered relevant were Peter Damian's Book of Gomorrah in the 11th century condemning what he alleges to be a common practice of homosexuality within the church which led to a crackdown on it throughout Europe, Pope Nicholas' 1454 declaration that the practice of slavery that had been banned throughout Europe could be re-instituted and that blacks could be "captured and reduced to perpetual slavery", the Spanish Inquisition whom nobody ever expects, and the Reformers' role on both sides of the Peasants Revolt and its massacre.

I guess it's hard to see Christianity's contributions to the topic of race as having been positive overall. On the topic of rights, at least as we know them today, they are mainly the product of the Enlightenment, and in that sense secular, though it is possible to trace some input from various strands of Christian thinking. In the 20th and 21st centuries Christians seem to have been primarily on the side opposing the expansion of rights to others, as we saw most recently with regard to same sex marriage.

ideas on Trinity can be viewed competing against other ideas. The Church and Caesar worked together to make Trinity the orthodoxy,

The doctrine of the Trinity never really caught my interest for study. I would grant that that is probably the one case that fits a Newman developmental framework okay, where it is in inchoate in some of the NT writings and the Christians over the next few centuries together developed it into a theoretical framework.

[demi-conservative]

Does that possibility make you quiver with excitement?

Or imagine the expulsion of the SDA (like Ben Carson)
Yes, Demi, I do think you are a Christian.

In the future integralist protestant nation all cultists and Catholics will be expelled

[simplicio]

I can't say I've really studied the topics of rights and race as they pertain to church history...

I guess a few major events that come to mind that might be considered relevant were Peter Damian's Book of Gomorrah in the 11th century condemning what he alleges to be a common practice of homosexuality within the church which led to a crackdown on it throughout Europe, Pope Nicholas' 1454 declaration that the practice of slavery that had been banned throughout Europe could be re-instituted and that blacks could be "captured and reduced to perpetual slavery", the Spanish Inquisition whom nobody ever expects, and the Reformers' role on both sides of the Peasants Revolt and its massacre.

I guess it's hard to see Christianity's contributions to the topic of race as having been positive overall. On the topic of rights, at least as we know them today, they are mainly the product of the Enlightenment, and in that sense secular, though it is possible to trace some input from various strands of Christian thinking. In the 20th and 21st centuries Christians seem to have been primarily on the side opposing the expansion of rights to others, as we saw most recently with regard to same sex marriage.

The doctrine of the Trinity never really caught my interest for study. I would grant that that is probably the one case that fits a Newman developmental framework okay, where it is in inchoate in some of the NT writings and the Christians over the next few centuries together developed it into a theoretical framework.

But the topic of race, rights, and personhood shows little difference between the secular worldview and religious (whether that is an argument against religion is another topic). The mass of Irish in America had many formulating theories about the inferiority of the Celtic, body and soul, decades before phrenology became a theory in science (or pseudoscience), little difference between religious and irreligious. The opening of sailing routes in the Age of Discovery had the Catholic Church vacillating on slavery and race, the heavy hand of excommunication for taking slaves alternated with the encouragement of taking heathens to train and educate them.

Spanish Inquisition, and other Inquisitions, are shrouded in myth. They were products of their time, a time when commoners' testimony needed corroboration of torture. Many saw the Church courts preferrable to any secular government court, blasphemy was used to force the change in venue to the Inquisition.

Two views on rights emerged from the Enlightenment, the English view in which the rights were tied to nationality, the French view of an abstract universal view. American colonists appealed to their rights as Englishmen, with government saddled with the responsibility of ensuring those rights. In the interwar period of the twentieth century, the universalist view of rights of the French Revolution as laughable, the stateless person had less rights than the criminal, security was found in becoming criminal. Today we appeal to the universalist view of rights.

The topic of race has no eureka moment, there is always the next problem to tackle. Christians played a major role in abolition, then the Civil War freed slaves, the abolition movement dissolved. Men like Frederick Douglas gave way to MLK, (both black and Christian), who succeeded by shaming Christians and seculars into supporting his progressive movement. And today we face ideas like CRT and the exact nature of institutionalized racism. CRT is a secular theory with Marxist roots, the Southern Baptist Convention, founded on the issue of slavery, passed a resolution in 2019 supporting used of CRT (in a limited way). Baptists find themselves on the front lines of the controversy over race and CRT, gender and intersectionality, divided; they are in the uncomfortable position as a real time case study of competing secularization theories

The evolution on race and rights cannot be viewed as strictly secular or religious, the philosophies, ideas, and principles have always been argued within the church. Liberalism and secularism are not any guarantee that society will arrive at a just conclusion.

The discussion and the wrestling with ideas occurred within the church as well as without, the church was part and parcel of the evolution of thought throughout history. As a Catholic with triumphalist leanings, I see it as inevitable, others see it as coincidental.

[rogue06]

I am settled, Slick. I have read the pending legislation.

The imprecise wording, attributable to common and naive views on criminal law show that many writers do not have the lawyers viewpoint on precise language. The change in status from felony to misdemeanor is what most are focusing on.

It does bring in diverse and difficult ideas, such as the reluctance of abuse victims in coming forward, the desire to break the pattern of dependence on polygamy as a family structure, or a view of marriage as a central issue for society.

Well Sport, this does not require any sort of special knowledge or training to understand that a misdemeanor is still a criminal offense. It is pretty much common knowledge. The lesson to be learned here is to try to be careful in the future when using sloppy inaccurate sources especially if they discuss topics that you're apparently ignorant about.