That's not true. Every city hall must carry them out. If all the officers there refuse to (which is a preposterously unlikely occurance) someone would have to be brought in to do it for them.
The percentages are far more likely to be the other way around. And just because someone doesn't marry a gay couple doesn't mean they are not doing their job; most of the time there are other couples to marry.
Who are not in short supply.
A crook doesn't have a right to choose which cop is going to arrest him. An enemy doesn't have a right to choose which soldier is going to shoot him. And when you are brought in a hospital for an emergency, you have at most limited choice of which doctor is going to treat you.
If this pharmacist does not want to fill prescriptions for birth control and therefore asks another pharmacist working in the same pharmacy to do it for him, I don't think there is a serious problem.
In this case it is a right to marry, which is enforced. No one is refused marriage. All that happens is the tasks the officials have to carry out are scheduled with their religious sensibilities in mind.
No, the persons who want to get married go to town hall. Town hall has to provide an official to perform the ceremony. If they don't, the community council hasn't done its job and the persons involved can go to court to enforce it.
We're speaking here of a change in the job description. I think you should be pragmatic about such situations. In the beginning 80s, Holland still had draft, and began to be active in UN peacekeeping operations. Draftees got the choice whether they wanted to do that or not.
And some GPs don't want to perform euthanasia. Attitudes change over time. Thirty years ago, the first Dutch abortion clinic was shut down by the then Minister of Justice. Now, the government subsidizes an abortion boat which visits places like Ireland and Poland
.The right to gay marriage in the way Earthborn and I described the Dutch situation very well can be enforced - haven't heard of any problems with it except for the above anecdote.
Really, the church does not marry people only the state and/or government does. Marriage is a legal contract between two people and marriage should be allowed between any two people that are of age and not already married, a parent, an aunt or uncle, a legal parent or a sibling, period.
A police department, military unit or hospital can however take individual qualities, weaknesses and sensibilities into account when assigning tasks. And that's all we are talking about here.
That would be a serious problem, and therefore it is illegal. Just as it is illegal for someone working in city hall to prevent couples from getting married who are otherwise legal to marry.
To a very limited degree, and only if it can be guaranteed that no one's rights are violated, or even has to notice it.
Just because they don't marry gay couples doesn't mean they don't work while a gay marriage is happening. More likely they're marrying a straight couple or doing some paperwork. And that happens in the sort of crazy country that values equal rights as much as religious freedom, and isn't afraid to implement solutions that make everybody happy.
Maybe it sounds strange to people who aren't Dutch, but if you live in a country where every political decision is necessarily a compromise between people with vastly different principles, that purposefully codifies hypocracy into law and calls it "policies of tolerance", then it really doesn't sound that strange at all. It is working out okay... so far as we know while keeping a close eye on it... at the moment.
You don't code for meteors dropping on your computer, and you don't code for the Y100K problem. Likewise there is no reason to make laws that can stand every preposterous eventuality that might happen in some nebulous hypothetical future. You make laws in an attempt to solve the problems of today, of the conceiveable future and when in the future the unintented consequences become too great, you change them.
I'll mention again: transitory measure. The law has changed, the duty has changed. A much more apt example is: soldier at Abu Ghraib says: "I don't want to torture, it's against my conscience". Torture wasn't on the duties of a soldier when he enlisted. Now it is - apparently. Should that soldier be fired? The fact that we both may think "gay marriage good" and "torture bad" (well, I hope so) is immaterial to the answer; the fact that the duties have changed in the meantime is.
Pay doesn't come into it. In Holland, marriage officials are civil servants working in all parts of town hall who do marriages as only a part of their job because they like doing it. People who get married want the day to be great. Should you throw away the experience of these officials when a pragmatic solution is available?
So has that happened? No, it hasn't. Was it ever likely to happen? No, it wasn't.
It's the Dutch way. It is pragmatic. It works.
Let's hear how that works out for you in the USofA...
I see no obvious flaws from the start. I don't see a problem now.
Then you're not doing your job as web developer. You should take care the old address still works - e.g., redirects to the new address. People bookmark your pages.
I don't think my brother and his friend, living in Amsterdam, would have any problem getting married if they'd want to. I'm afraid gays living in StaphorstWP will have bigger day-to-day problems than getting married.
It is enforced; not on the individual officer level, but on the level that a community must have an officer who officiates a gay marriage.
I know it is hard to fathom, but -- in a country where fundamentalist religious organisations and gay rights organisations often organise conferences and committees together to respectfully discuss eachother's ideas and needs and do often find mutual agreements and respect, even consensus -- someone who is against gay marriage does not necessarily "hate the gays".
No, because classes are mixed and forming mono-racial class specifically for your purpose requires discrimination in assigning students to classes.
No, the opposite of ignoring it: harmonising principles that would otherwise conflict.