Topic: A Modern Day Religious Quandry

[shemps#1]

Here's the deal. I have a friend who's originally from the DC area and is now shacking up with a woman in Tennessee. His religious beliefs are Wiccan/Pagan whatever that shit is (all religion is shit if you ask me) and they wanted to hire some bagpipe players for their Halloween wedding (why is beyond me). When they inquired about price the bagpipers emailed them back with a quote and inquired if it was a Pagan wedding due to date. When my friend replied back in the affirmative the bagpipers then told them that they refuse to work the wedding.

I told my friend that I while I'm no lawyer I think the bagpipers are in the right to refuse to play the wedding because doing so could infringe on THEIR (the bagpipers) religious beliefs (I repeat, religion is bullshit). It may suck and be shitty, but they are probably within their legal rights to do so.

So I thought I'd leave the question to you guys. What do you think? Do the bagpipers have a right to refuse to play the wedding, or does my friend have a legit descrimination case?

[Pilsner Panther]

Here's the deal. I have a friend who's originally from the DC area and is now shacking up with a woman in Tennessee. His religious beliefs are Wiccan/Pagan whatever that shit is (all religion is shit if you ask me) and they wanted to hire some bagpipe players for their Halloween wedding (why is beyond me). When they inquired about price the bagpipers emailed them back with a quote and inquired if it was a Pagan wedding due to date. When my friend replied back in the affirmative the bagpipers then told them that they refuse to work the wedding.

I told my friend that I while I'm no lawyer I think the bagpipers are in the right to refuse to play the wedding because doing so could infringe on THEIR (the bagpipers) religious beliefs (I repeat, religion is bullshit). It may suck and be shitty, but they are probably within their legal rights to do so.

So I thought I'd leave the question to you guys. What do you think? Do the bagpipers have a right to refuse to play the wedding, or does my friend have a legit descrimination case?

Well, Jim, here's how I see it: this bagpipe band is probably a private organization. I mean, I couldn't just show up at one of their rehearsals with a battered, out-of-tune bugle— not knowing any of their music— and expect them to let me play with them in public, especally at a paying gig. So, it's up to the band to decide on repertiore, performance venues, and personnel.

Why anyone would want to listen to a lousy bagpipe band in the first place, much less have one at their wedding, is beyond yours truly. Bagpipe music is the only music I've ever heard that sounds the same whether it's played forward, backward, or sideways. Turn the scores upside down, play them that way, and it would probably still go unnoticed by the audience (all six of them, thus outnumbering the band).

Except at weddings and funerals, where a captive audience has to listen to a flatulent "performance" on armpit-squeezed sheep bladders and crude reeds, from beginning to end.

The good news is that, at least in the Roman Catholic church, sitting all the way through a bagpipe concert gets you out of 5,000 years of Purgatory! Putting up with that much headache-inducing drunken racket is an Automatic Indulgence (see Papal Encyclical XXXVIIMCMQRS, ss. E, 1768, by Pope Suburban IV, 1690-1771).

 

For that opinon, I'll probably get kilt, och aye!

This is the one and only bagpipe band recording I've got... and one is enough!

 



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[jrvass]

Amen! The only thing worse than bagpipe "music" at a pagan wedding is bagpipe "music" at a pagan wedding played by pissed-off bagpipers.

IMO, your friend doesn't have a discrimination case. Or any case at all without a signed contract.

James

[Dunrobin]

I know I've said this before (although perhaps not here at ThreeStooges.net), but the only people not allowed to discriminate are government officials, since "government" is the (allegedly) legitimate use of force.  Private individuals and groups have every right to discriminate.  The claim that individuals may not discriminiate between themselves is pernicious and completely wrong.

And what is wrong with bagpipe music?  I oughtta take a claymore to ya!  If you guys don't behave yourselves, I'll make ya eat haggis!

Fortunately for you, I don't have any bagpipe music readily available to attach to this, so you'll have to settle for something from the Brobdingnagian Bards.  (It's pretty funny, at least.)   

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[Giff me dat fill-em!]

I'll add my copy of this tune to Dunrobin's - just fer funzies.

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[kinderscenen]

Yeah, they have a perfect right to refuse. I'm guessing that there is at least one other band of bagpipers that'd be happy to play. And even if the friend wanted to sue (or whatever), what could be said? The group didn't want to play a wedding because of the religious beliefs of the couple?

[Pilsner Panther]

The last big, expensive wedding I went to, they had a professional six-man Mariachi band, complete with the bullfighter suits and sombreros... they were also really fine musicians and the music was sweet, believe this finicky old music critic.

It was very cool, especially since the setting was a winery in the California hills, with a sweeping view of the Santa Clara Valley and San Francisco Bay. Bagpipes wouldn't have worked.

Bagpipes never work, because they sound like this:

(not my image, it's by Fish-outta-water at Fark.com; go there and cast a vote if you like it!)




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[Bangsmith]

As human beings, they can do what the fuck they want. Nobody should be forced to do anything they don't want to, unless they are incarcerated. Religion is nothing but an excuse for powerhungry, insensitive pricks to maintain control (and a sense of security) over a disadvantaged population who would be perpetually pissed off if it were not for false beliefs. Let the Pagans and Presbytarians duke it out, for all I care! Virtually ALL violence (hate) is caused by the love of something one doesn't understand (because it doesn't exist!!)!

[Pilsner Panther]

As human beings, they can do what the fuck they want. Nobody should be forced to do anything they don't want to, unless they are incarcerated. Religion is nothing but an excuse for powerhungry, insensitive pricks to maintain control (and a sense of security) over a disadvantaged population who would be perpetually pissed off if it were not for false beliefs. Let the Pagans and Presbytarians duke it out, for all I care! Virtually ALL violence (hate) is caused by the love of something one doesn't understand (because it doesn't exist!!)!

Bangsmith, you sound like you've had a bad experience with organized religion... so did I. By the age of 12, definitely 13, I knew I didn't believe in the supernatural in any way, shape, or form, but I was still forced to go to church and to religious schools. That was my father's doing: he told me, "As long as you live under my roof, you're going to church!"

Which is a pointless and ridiculous idea, when you stop to think about it. At best, the non-believing person who's subjected to this compulsory religion is only going through the motions; and at worst, he or she comes to resent it and ends up seething with anger over the injustice. By the time I was a junior in high school, though, I wasn't living under his roof any more, and so I immediately transferred to a public school and quit going to church. Except for weddings, funerals, and the occasional organ recital, I haven't set foot inside a church since, much less gotten down on my knees. I despise groveling, and I get down on my knees for "nuttin' and nobody."

I know I'm missing out on some great stuff, though— like the current pope's juggling act (this is one of my images).





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[Bangsmith]

I went to Catholic schools against my will, also. I even lived in a Catholic orphanage for a year and a half when I was 8/9 years old. They didn't treat me all that bad, I never got my ass kicked by the nuns, but I was a bullshit detector from day one. Some of my posts in other topics can explain that further. I trust practically no one, especially authority figures, so there's no way the same people who rob us, encourage dysfunctionalism (is that a word?) among poor people as a form of control, shove drugs and booze in our faces to shut us up, and start wars are going to tell me that there is a God up there who loves us and that there is a very specific way of pleasing Him. If there is a God, all those hypocritical douchebags will fry first.

[shemps#1]

It's funny, I had the exact opposite experience with religion that you guys had growing up. My mother was the one who was forced to go to church by her father when she was younger, and she resented it so much that she never forced her children to attend, letting us figure all of that shit out for ourselves instead. She wouldn't have prevented us if we actually wanted to go, we just never felt inclined to do so.

We had neighbors that were originally from the South, and were church-going WASPs. We used to play with the children and the parents offered to take us to Vacation Bible School along with them. Needless to say I was kicked out shortly thereafter for questioning their beliefs and not accepting them as fact. Even at a young age I was a skeptic.

All of these years later and neither me nor my brother and sister attend church in any form.

[jrvass]

My parents half-heartedly attended church when we were growing up. As they get closer to the head of the line in "God's Waiting Room", they attend church more often. 

James

[Dunrobin]

My parents were also "forced" by their parents to attend church when they were kids, and neither of them had any use for it when they became adults - except to make their sons go through it, too.   

The funny thing was, we moved fairly often while I was growing up (about 5 years at a stretch in any one location), so when we moved they would just make us go to whatever "maintstream" Protestant church was handy.  Thus, I was baptised as a Presbyterian, and then went to a Methodist church during grammar school, followed by a Congregational church during junior high and the beginning of high school.  When we moved to the Detroit area, my parents decided to let me choose which church to attend.  (I still had to go, but at least I got to pick one for myself.) 

I had Catholic friends, and had attended a couple of Masses in the late 60's (before Vatican II had taken root); I liked the Liturgy, but I was too much of a Protestant to accept all of the dogmas, so when I got the chance to choose I went with the Episcopalians, since they had the ceremony without the dogmas.  Unfortunately for me (at least in my view), the Episcopal church got very liberal and eventually downright apostate, and I stopped going to church or supporting it in any way.

In the last twenty years I've developed a much more "anarchist" philosophy, and while doing so discovered very sympathetic concepts in Christianity.  Mind you, that's Christianity, not Christendom; there's a difference.  I've come to realize that "the Church" largely missed the point fairly early on, and they have gone further away from it over the centuries.  Most "churches" today have become the very people that Christ criticised and condemned during His ministry.  I'm afraid that a awful lot of "religious" people are going to be in for a very rude awakening at the Last Judgment.  (I know a lot of you have become diehard atheists, so I won't bother to elaborate unless someone is interested.)

[Pilsner Panther]

All I added was the caption...



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[Bangsmith]

My parents were also "forced" by their parents to attend church when they were kids, and neither of them had any use for it when they became adults - except to make their sons go through it, too.   

The funny thing was, we moved fairly often while I was growing up (about 5 years at a stretch in any one location), so when we moved they would just make us go to whatever "maintstream" Protestant church was handy.  Thus, I was baptised as a Presbyterian, and then went to a Methodist church during grammar school, followed by a Congregational church during junior high and the beginning of high school.  When we moved to the Detroit area, my parents decided to let me choose which church to attend.  (I still had to go, but at least I got to pick one for myself.) 

I had Catholic friends, and had attended a couple of Masses in the late 60's (before Vatican II had taken root); I liked the Liturgy, but I was too much of a Protestant to accept all of the dogmas, so when I got the chance to choose I went with the Episcopalians, since they had the ceremony without the dogmas.  Unfortunately for me (at least in my view), the Episcopal church got very liberal and eventually downright apostate, and I stopped going to church or supporting it in any way.

In the last twenty years I've developed a much more "anarchist" philosophy, and while doing so discovered very sympathetic concepts in Christianity.  Mind you, that's Christianity, not Christendom; there's a difference.  I've come to realize that "the Church" largely missed the point fairly early on, and they have gone further away from it over the centuries.  Most "churches" today have become the very people that Christ criticised and condemned during His ministry.  I'm afraid that a awful lot of "religious" people are going to be in for a very rude awakening at the Last Judgment.  (I know a lot of you have become diehard atheists, so I won't bother to elaborate unless someone is interested.)

I'm not an atheist, I'm more of an agnostic. I believe that something is up there, but we don't know, or should know it's nature. Life would be a hell of a lot more honest if people weren't just trying to go to Heaven. If we don't know what possibly could happen after we die, all of our motives, good or bad, would at least be pure.