A transgendered, divorced Catholic walks into a bar ...

Picking up where we left off in our ongoing series of "Why people who support Canada's proposed 'Defence of Religions' Act are hypocritical morons," if you need to come up to speed, I suggest quickly perusing Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. It won't take long, and I'm sure you can catch up with the rest of us in short order.

Now, as we've already established beyond any possible doubt, DoRA has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting freedom of religious expression or freedom of speech in Canada. Rather, that hypothetical legislation is incredibly poorly-disguised gay bashing by intolerant, homophobic, Bible-whomping, Canadian bigots. But that's not why we're here. Intead, we're here to point out some probably unintentional side effects of that Act if it ever passes.

Note that the whole point of DoRA is to allow, among other things, publicly-funded marriage commissioners to refuse to marry same-sex couples since doing so would offend their delicate, religious sensibilities. But why stop there?

What about, say, a Catholic marriage commissioner who is deeply disturbed (pun sort of intended) about performing a ceremony involving a previously-divorced Catholic? Or an evangelical who is adamantly opposed to joining together, in the eyes of God, someone who has previously had an abortion? Or a fundamentalist who can't abide the notion of marrying a couple, one of which is an avowed atheist? Or a Jewish commissioner who is horrified by the thought of a Jew marrying a Gentile?

Oh, my, there would appear to be no end to what might religiously "offend" any given marriage commissioner (against which they must naturally be "protected"), which would make the chore of finding an amenable official a real crapshoot, wouldn't it? "Um, hi, I'm a twice-divorced Catholic who's had an abortion and is pro-choice, and I want to marry a transgendered, illegal immigrant named Ricardo. Are you OK with that? Um ... hello? Hello? Damn."

Where would it end, if everyone had the right to drag their personal religious bigotries into it? And the solution? Quite obvious, really. You have a public job and are on the public payroll? Then you do the damned job or get the fuck out. What could be simpler? And, need I add, fairer?

In our next installment: Oh, those wacky Biblical marriage laws.

OH, IRONY OF IRONIES. There's something pants-wettingly funny about the Canadian wingnut-o-sphere moaning on and on about DoRA and how their delicate, religious sensibilities need to be protected, then having one of the most deranged among them publish a post accusing others of being crybabies.

I'm not sure what I would do without the Blogging Tories. Find my jaw-dropping stupidity somewhere else, I suppose.

PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE JOKING. I'm not sure whether I should take seriously this from the first commenter "anonymous":

There's nothing that says that the Act has to be that open-ended. It could be written to be very specific and just allow religious people to opt out of performing same-sex marriages based on their religious objections, and nothing more.

That proposal is so inanely illogical that it's hard to believe the writer is not a troll but, what the heck, let's deal with it.

It's amusing to suggest that all of the problems I've listed could be bypassed if DoRA were written so specifically and so narrowly that it would address just that single issue for that single demographic.

Remember that, historically, it's been the Far Right who have howled loud and long about how extending non-discrimination protection based on sexual orientation would constitute a "special privilege" and yet, in the next breath, they propose to introduce legislation that is the textbook definition of a "special privilege" -- a right that would be extended exclusively to them and available to no one else.

I have to believe this is just someone trolling for the entertainment value. The thought that someone would make this suggestion in all seriousness is just too scary, even for me.