Whose responsibility is it to protect unhoused when it’s freezing outside? An Ohio pastor opened his church to the homeless and was charged by city.
And here I was told that the government doesn’t need to take care of these things because churches and charities will pick up the slack…
Did you even read the headline? If you could peek over your bias for a second you could see that the article is saying the government is charging a pastor for providing shelter. Big miss here chief lol
Mate, I think they were sarcastically saying that one of the reasons there aren’t government run programs to help people is the claim that churches and charities will do that instead. In this case a church attempted to do so and was instead punished, which is quite ironic if they are supposed to help those in need.
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Ambiguous title. The pastor didn’t ask for money from the freezing people. He took them in for free. The city then criminally charged him for violating zoning rules:
Chris Avell, pastor of Dad’s Place in Bryan, Ohio, was arraigned in court last Thursday because he kept his church open 24/7 to provide warmth to the unhoused.
Ohio law prohibits residential use in first-floor buildings in a business district. Since the church is zoned as a Central Business, the building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property.
So by this logic church patrons would have to leave the premises to eat a snack, participate in a church meal, or even eat one of those wafers they sometimes hand out.
Yup. Serve the body of Christ? Straight to jail. Your sermon is so boring someone dozes off, believe it or not, jail.
Of course, this doesn’t really happen, through the magic of selective enforcement the only people getting the boot are those preventing the homeless from freezing to death, ruining the plans of the local administration.
A pastor would not be “serving the body of Christ”, since transfiguration is a Roman Catholic heresy
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If this goes to a jury trial, everyone on that jury should fucking nullify.
If you don’t know, jury nullification is an implicit property of jury trials. The court can’t make you show your work or tell you that your verdict is wrong, so you can give any answer you want. That means if someone is up for something you think is bullshit, like helping the homeless or enjoying marijuana in their backyard, you can just say Not Guilty. The court can’t do shit to you so long as you don’t scream “NULLIFIED FUCKERS” as you’re doing it.
That said, everyone involved in pushing these charges along should probably be voted out of office or run out of town. They’re trying to kill people, just slowly and via exposure.
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The unhoused are supposed to die quietly, he got in the way of that.
