Posted on 03/20/2014 7:35:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A Roman Catholic diocese in Massachusetts that refused to sell a historic mansion to a gay couple is facing mounting legal pressure.
Massachusetts' Attorney General Martha Coakley recently filed a brief in support of the gay couple who are suing the Diocese of Worcester alleging discrimination.
Filed before superior court earlier this month on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Coakley argued that the diocese's actions constituted "sexual orientation discrimination."
"The commonwealth's compelling interest in protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination derives from their status as a politically vulnerable minority that has suffered a history of discrimination, which continues to this day," reads the brief in part.
"… though the diocesan defendants assert a sincerely held religious belief, their free exercise claim fails the rest of the compelling interest test, and they are not entitled to an exemption."
The Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General provided The Christian Post with a press release sent out last Thursday, wherein Coakley stated that her office respects the freedom of religion.
"Our laws provide important protections for religious organizations and people of faith. … These laws also strike a balance between religious freedoms and the rights of individuals to be free from discrimination," said Coakley.
"In this case, we believe that this family was unfairly discriminated against by the diocese when it refused to sell them property based on their sexual orientation."
A couple years ago, James Fairbanks and Alain Beret sought to purchase a historic mansion in Northbridge that the Worcester Diocese used as a nonprofit church-affiliated retreat center.
According to Fairbanks and Beret, although the diocese initially accepted their offer for a sale in spring 2012, the Catholic officials changed their minds and ended negotiations.
The alleged reason came through a leaked email in which diocesan officials expressed concern that gay marriages might be held at the mansion, reported Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe.
"The couple sued the diocese in September 2012. The parties moved for summary judgment last month, and oral arguments are scheduled for April 22," wrote Wangsness.
Gavin Reardon, attorney for the Worcester Diocese, told CP that the decision to reject Fairbanks and Beret's offer had to do with finances rather than sexual orientation or gay marriage.
"From the diocese's perspective, this is a failed real estate sale and really doesn't have anything to do with discrimination," said Reardon.
"The negotiations had ceased prior to any information about the possibility of same-sex marriages being conducted at the property."
Reardon said that Fairbanks and Beret had "made an offer for approximately half as much money for less than the whole property and the diocese rejected that offer."
"These people never came up with the money," said Reardon, who added that the leaked email had been sent out two days after the deadline for negotiations on the mansion.
Reardon also told CP that both the Worcester Diocese and the plaintiffs are seeking a summary judgment, which means they are requesting a decision by the judge without a trial based on the facts already present.
Agreed. Also there is the following consideration. If the property was on a single parcel and someone only wanted to buy part of it, the parcel may need to be split and there may be zoning law effects on both resulting parcels. Would the buyers be willing to pay for this split? Probably not. Especially since they did not really want to buy the property but rather just wanted a legal battle with the diocese.
Wow. So they are suing because their offer of half the money for a portion of the property was not accepted.
Who leaked the emails?
Yes. Seriously. When you put your property up for sale you can’t discriminate against who purchases it. Period.
Get familiar with the law. Seriously.
If you SELL it to them you have no control on what happens to it AFTER you SELL it.
Look up a nightclub in Manhattan named ‘Limelight’.
You didn’t meet the sale price.
Reality: I offer my house for sale at $1m. You show up with $1m. If I turn you down I’d better have a darned good reason. Especially if the house *remains* for sale for $1m or less.
Or I can expect to get SUED.
Try selling a home in a major metro area. And being picky about who buys it. Realtors will drop you like hotcakes. They don’t want to get sued either.
“First Amendment: Freedom of association.”
Completely destroyed by the Civil Rights Act.
You can by law specify the property's purpose or how it will be used in the future. If a buyer wants to burn it down or turn it into a hog farm the seller can reject that buyer. If The Church doesn't want to sell the property to those whose intent is to use and abuse the property through the practice of rectal sodomy within its walls, they can legally make that choice.
As noted above, for you to compare the cause of sexual perversion to the normal lives of normal black couples is beyond insulting to black people everywhere.
You can put conditions on selling real-estate it’s done all the time. their called covenants...
Good luck enforcing that.
Are you planning on installing video cameras?
Would you sell a car to an 18yr old boy knowing he will likely fornicate in that car?
You have no way to prevent or enforce that.
And it’s not different from the ‘block busting’ that went on in the 1960’s. You either:
A: Own the property and can decide what to do with your own property.
or.
B: You do not own the property.
If you thought the civil rights act was about letting black people sit at lunch counters you seriously underestimated the original intent of its authors.
I bet you thought the immigration act wouldn’t dramatically change our demographics either. Didn’t you?
If the Church wanted to prevent this sort of open sale they should have offered it privately to parishioners that could afford it and not had it go on the open market.
Chalk this up to ‘unintended consequences’.
And they’re shot down in the courts all the time. Depends on the state and locality whether or not those will actually stand.
And you can’t write them AFTER you offer the property on the open market. Ie, you can’t add them in after the fact when you find out someone ‘unsuitable’ is considering purchasing the property.
And what will you do when you find they HAVE been violating the covenants. How will you prove that? Cameras? Hear say? Can you afford a legal case that might take YEARS to resolve?
Good luck with that.
Yeah. Read my previous reply again, this time slowly.
‘Everyone’ agreed with the civil rights act because ‘everyone’ agreed that blacks should sit at the lunch counter with whites.
However, what the civil rights act REALLY said was that the government could dictate to your business who and under what circumstances you would and could and should do business with.
In the 1960’s that was blacks. Now it’s gays.
And good luck enforcing the sodomy restrictions post sale. I really want to know how that will work out.
How would you feel if it were gays refusing to sell to straights?
The diocese really should have made the property available to a limited number of people prior to offering it for sale on the open market. If they are concerned about unsavory activities in the property in question they should take it off the market.
Civil rights don’t apply to behavior. If they did, people who play and practice in rock bands would have noise ordinances overturned. Pyromaniacs would have arson laws overturned. Alcoholics would have drunk driving laws thrown out. Being black is not the same thing as getting your jollies from filthy sexual behavior.
You haven’t paid attention to the ‘hate crime’ legislation then have you? ‘sexual orientation’ is included in that.
Civil rights act + hate crime legislation including ‘sexual orientation’ makes this sort of thing a fait accompli.
And ‘behavior’ that takes place in the confines of ones home that is imperceptible to others isn’t applicable to noise ordinances. Unless you think peeping toms are public servants? Or you call the police when you hear the straight couple next door doing the nasty?
Listen. This has been the whole idea from the beginning.
I went to a VERY liberal arts college in the early 1980s in the deep south. One of the history profs was a former freedom marcher who’d been involved in the whole civil rights movement. He *bragged* that the civil rights act wasn’t just about blacks at lunch counters. It was about government deciding what the playing field was going to look like. He viewed it as a first step to the ultimate socialist state that he wanted this country to become. Government says who or what you can do business with means you no longer have a say in your own business. Only low info voters thought it was about blacks at lunch counters...
Prior to the hate crimes legislation discriminating against this sort of thing might have had a legal leg to stand on. Not anymore. Civil rights act says government dictates your customers based on predetermined criteria. Hate crimes legislation merely codifies that criteria after the fact.
I don’t like it one bit. Doesn’t change the fact that the diocese in question will get the snot sued out of them and end up selling the property against their wishes AND probably paying for a sodomite orgy with the legal winnings besides.
Friend of mine owns a formal dress store. I won’t go into the horrors she has had to experience with tranny customers. And every lawyer she’s talked to tells her that unless she wants the trannies to own her business she HAS to allow them in her shop. She’s had to request customers with little girls (honey booboo is a big hit in this area) come at pre specified times and private appointments to avoid the potential X rated dressing room. One of her tranny customers came running out of the dressing room, stark naked, holding a dress in one hand shouting ‘this will never do. never never never...’ Meanwhile the store was full of moms and daughters shopping for dresses for a local pageant. 6 year olds got an eyefull of grown naked man. And there’s nothing the store owner can do about it either...without getting sued.
Racial discrimination in real estate deals is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act. Faggots are not yet a protected class.
We’ll, on matters such as these, they better star helping each other.
There’s a real ugly movement by the Leftists out there, and we better start pushing back as one or else.
They are since the ‘hate crimes’ legislation in various states.
And yet if they’d met the terms of the sale they would have been obligated to sell it.
Next time you sell a house, tell the realtor you don’t want to sell it to gays. See what happens.
And even IF you sell it to straights how on earth would you be able to prevent THEM from subsequently selling it to gays.
Agnes, a number of us are very informed about and active in real estate.
These guys made an OFFER. It was REJECTED. Happens every day.
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