Supreme court decision sides with the state over churches wishing to open in defiance of state closures during the pandemic

I think for the many here who understand the science behind social distancing I’m sure forced closures during the pandemic would be a welcome relief from needing to argue for caution where the states haven’t restricted such meetings. Since I live here in California I’m glad if there won’t be COVID hot spots spreading out from large churches here. If only we had some national leadership to move toward reopening without abandoning precautions.

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Interesting also is the politics on the court. Roberts evenly sided with liberal leaning justices, whereas Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion, which effectively ignored the main argument.

I think churches are opening themselves up to liability if they spawn a outbreak by opening early or with inadequate precautions. Grandma that gets it and dies may not sue, but her daughter in LA may. It will be interesting to see what happens on the legal front.

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Honestly I’m glad that they voted the way they did. I do feel it was going against out constitutional rights in many ways. I do wish more people would take precautions but that ultimately I believe the constitution was held up in the vote, for better or worse.

Anytime the government is able to step, and force people from working and so on its a slippery slope. Like if the rules that came out affected me from going to work, I would disobey them. I don’t work from a office, and my work involves being on sites. Even a $3k check would not cover my overhead for a month.

I’ll respect many things such as remaining 6 feet apart as much as possible, and doing take out over dining in and so on. But if someone tried to go against the basic freedoms and laws we have in place form the constitution, Supreme Court cases, and so on and it was going to place me in a position where I could not financially care for myself, my family, and those who are my dependents I would fight back legally with law suits, and so on.

I had the city try to force a trail that I bought into a road connecting two highways. It was 100 acres at the time of pine forests and I had a path carve through it with gates on each end. A dirt road. The city tried to force me into the land becoming public roadway splitting my property. They went as far as paving parts and building a bridge that went over a creek. After two years of tractors bashing up the road, the bridge being smashed in, and 50 large trees being placed in the path again and again they completely gave up and moved the road about 2 miles down the road through a corn crop field.

I believe we should do more to medicate people on how to be safer with the virus and limit exposure but ultimately we can’t undermine freedoms we already have.

I can understand the need to work to provide for ones family. I’d want to do the same. So long as we follow the guidelines that keep each other safe, there shouldn’t be any issue.

I’m surprised that they would start building that road through your place without due process. Did it end up going to court?

Perhaps being the chief justice gives one a little extra impetus to do the right thing. It is a real shame how political the supreme court has become. Scary times.

It did not. They threatened it. Or maybe they did. I received papers from a sheriff a few times, went to a few and they were delayed and I stopped going, stopped signing any paperwork. They were acting like because people already used the road to travel, it was like a 14 foot wide dirt road, that they had a legal right to pave it and widen it. That’s when I had a problem. I was only 23 at the time. They even set up cameras to count how many cars used it and so on. When it was just locals cutting through I did not care. People would fish at the creek, I had no hunting signs up though. A few spots where people would park and it just kind of created a parking spot. But when they suddenly cut it like 10 feet on each side and started doing road work I got mad. Now let the woods grow back along the entrances and let it grow back a bit more wild and have a 8 feet wide path that enters it with a few gates along the way. There is a spot though where people can still park and hike the property foraging. Just locals basically that I’ve met and told them it’s ok. It’s not as inviting now.

Interesting to see how all this works…the one church I know had signups with no more than 10 in a room, use designated parking spot and building entrance, bring own chair and wear facemask…there are people at the supermarkets and shopping for coleus and peonies at the nurseries…and then they rioted in several cities overnight for another reason…will be interesting to see what affects whom here.

Any church with a sound plan for meeting should be cleared to open IMO. As you note, my favorite plant nursery opened almost immediately. Of course they’re on 2+ acres and cleared out all the plants displayed at the end of each isle to make a space for line to form marked off at six feet. They also had cleaning stations at the entry, required masks and had a well thought out arrangement to protect the people who rung up your order - which you could only pay by credit card.

That sounds “par for the course” where I am too!! Hooray for summer !!

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Know what’s not going to help anything with this virus and fear around it. The recent responses to the riots. I keep seeing videos of cops shooting rubber pellets at people standing on their porch. It’s not happening where I live. But I happened to notice a gun store maxed out and talked with the owner who is a friend and he said between him and a few other businesses that they’ve sold about 4 months worth of typical gun and ammo sales in about 6 hours and the reasoning he keeps hearing is that people are paranoid between the responses to the riot and to covid that they think it’s better to be armed.

Do you think they are arming themselves out of fear of heavy handed police tactic or out concern about people rioting and burning things down?

I hear both to a degree but it seems to mainly be fear directed towards the government abusing its authority. In person, with people I’ve met, its all been fear of the government abusing its authority.

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Do you think the protestors are wearing the masks for pandemic or secrecy reasons? Xd

No, it is just a liberal social marker :wink:

I haven’t been watching the coverage of that but I’m just glad if people in that situation do wear masks. I think the protesters have a valid and important point to make but it is too bad some always seem poised to use any opportunity to loot and break things. Then again with income inequality as bad as it is and the amount of poverty all around us we shouldn’t be surprised that people do desperate things and fail to respect other people’s property. Doesn’t mean I like or approve of it, but I do understand where it is coming from.

For me I just don’t care about any of it. I recognize what happened to that guy was disgusting but that’s about as far as I go with it. I am glad that guy cop was arrested. I will have to wait to see if the coroner determines the kneeling as a cause of death but regardless the cop was a prick in my opinion kneeling on a subdued guy. But I guess I don’t actually believe we have a police brutality problem in America. We have roughly 1,000,000 full time and part time cops and they killed around 1,000 people in 2019 and so it’s 0.1%. For me that’s statistically insignificant and so I think it’s a bad cop problem, and not a bad police problem. It seems like the overwhelming majority of cops never kill anyone and that the majority of people who have interactions with cops don’t get killed. Bad apples get media attention. In the grand scheme, it’s probably for the better though that people being to react violently because it’s probably what put pressure on them to arrest the cop. Without it, the cop would probably went free. But that does not undermine its evil to burn down and rob people.

Either way it’s not happening where I live. I would defend my property or buisness and if it was someone else’s I would call the cops. If it was serious.

For me there seems to be a million things that are horrible and the media takes time to highlight random ones. If I chased down every crazy thing I would go crazy. So I focus on what I can control. Looters 1,000 miles away hiding behind a event concerning a man I never met just can’t fit into my life. It was wrong, I shared a few posts about it, and that’s all I can do. I definitely won’t go to a protest and I’m not about to start pulling out my phone and recording cops arresting people. I do hope justice is served though and that maybe cops will focus on getting a even better track record and maybe consider using nonlethal and non abusive tactics to handle situations.

I suspect that he died of “positional asphyxia” even if it induced a cardiac event with pre-existing heart disease. You don’t have to cut off a person’s breathing or airway, just make it too hard for the chest to expand. His airway was obviously open as he could talk. The other cops on the rest of the body may well have contributed to the death. Positional asphyxia - Wikipedia

I understand. I just don’t know nothing about the guy. I’m under the impression he was engaged by the police because he was suspected of being active committing a crime. Don’t get me wrong, regardless I believe the cops should be held responsible for abusing their power and blood choking a man out or whatever happened.

I just mean until a actual cause of death comes out I can’t make a real assumption on should those charges be upgraded to cause of murder and ect… as far as I know he had drugs on him and ate them to avoid being caught and that contributed to it and so on. I’ve seen it happen several times.

Or perhaps an educational-elitist marker? Perhaps the biggest advantage of an education in times like these is having a better basis for recognizing expertise so that we don’t get sucked down conspiracy rabbit holes.

I don’t have it in for police and my own interactions have always been positive. But I have to recognize that as one aspect of my privilege as a white person in this culture. I too think the vast majority of police are putting themselves at risk for the public good and go into for that purpose. But I do think the practice of covering up for the bad apples has been a disservice to the profession. A culture among policemen in which they expect to be called on their transgressions by their peers would go a long way to improving their image, especially among minority groups who have reason to regard the police more as dangerous than as helpful.

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