Sounds like what usually happens when two flawed people collide. The counselor should have been able to do her job in a secular way and Holly should have been able to suck it the fuck up. Free exorcise of religion isn’t an excuse to disobey a court order.
I have to say, this comment got treated with a lot more respect than it deserves.
Church and State are supposed to be separate in your country, the judicial system should not be mandating religious based measures.
That is such a fundamentally different issue from a civil servant refusing to carry out their duties because of religious beliefs.
It’s a clear distinction, and your post looks completely disingenuous as a result.
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M.P. -
I understand that there are many groups of AAA - I mean AA - groups out there -and also the reports from friends & acquaintances here in my N.W. University town reflect the environment in this town - as in this is not the bible-belt.
So - with this disclaimer out of the way…
People I’ve talked with here have described the verbiage about the higher power to be pretty wide-open…like believe & contemplate whichever deity or deities you worship or are familiar. If you don’t believe in a deity(ies) - then believe in the force of nature, science, what your family, ancestors and/or etcetera think.
I reckon the higher power thing to be more of a concept or learning tool to assist a person’s continuing recovery. The idea is to accept that which you cannot change - to acknowledge one’s lack of - or imperfect control over the addiction.
This is the ideal - at least my understanding based on various peeps I know who have been in AA. On the other hand - I respect, but do not agree with a lot of the way the AA philosophy seems to be implemented. It seems kinda cult-like (I’m not calling it a cult, yo.) This is even more of a problem when a particular AA group does have a bias or agenda favoring a specific religious sect. Plus - the nature of the group can cause some marriage issues - at least according to some anecdotes from acquaintances.
Well - there I go again. Another pedantic, verbose post. I’m gonna click reply anyway.
~cdh
There’s a lot of problems with AA besides the god-talk.
For instance, the whole angle that you as a wretched addict are an evildoer who must necessarily hurt others as part of the additiction, will never “be okay”, and have no personal agency.
“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Bullshit. If that were true, then nobody would ever get sober. It only encourages people to embrace learned helplessness and engage in AA’s cycle of codependent forgiveness.
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Now you are just off topic. I’m sure there will be a thread about Davis sometime soon where you can advance your pet theories on the hypocrisy of the left, but it has nothing to do with this thread.
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Yeah, the problem here isn’t with the judge but the counselor and Holly. You don’t get to just dip out on court ordered counseling because you feel like it. It sucks that she didn’t get a quick response from the court about the issue but that doesn’t give her the right to just say “fuck it”.
I’d take that bet.
She shouldn’t have to obey a court order that’s clearly unconstitutional. And when she complained and asked for a competent counselor the court ignored her. So she stopped going because it was violating her rights.
Then the court noticed and took her children away even though it had failed to acknowledge her grievances.
This isn’t a case of “she should suck it up”. It’s a case of the court acting unacceptably and in a Kafkaesque manner.
If the court didn’t ignore her, but instead addressed her legitimate grievance in a constitutional manner, then this wouldn’t have happened and everyone would be okay.
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Let’s talk about this later. It gets personal.
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LDoBe -
Yes - this. Your post is what I was getting at - only more to the point, & less wordy than my post. Codependent - this is the idea I was going to add as an edit/ P.S. to my post until I read yours.
~cdh
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IIRC we’ve locked horns over AA before, and I’ll leave the topic alone here, I’ve said what I’d like to say 
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This comment from you really, and correct me if I’m taking this out of context, makes you sound like you’re totally, if not 100%, completely on board with the establishment of Christianity (not defined by sect here) as the State Religion of the United States of America.
Main problems being that the 1st amendment to the US constitution specifically forbids the establishment of a State Religion, and that one member of the judiciary in New Mexico has established that a '“Christian” councilor is the one, and only, councilor under which this woman, Salzman, may receive parental counselling within that particular jurisdiction in this particular case.
As it happens, this also runs afoul of the 14th amendment as the judge, undoubtedly, understands exactly how much hot water s/he would be in if the court’s victim were Jewish or Muslim instead of atheist/agnostic.
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This is a nice, thoughtful & respectful discussion…one where I read one person’s argument, then the counterargument & say - ‘yer right - yer right’ or some other variation.
Addiction is really complex, but in my view, it should be treated as a medical condition first - then once stabilized (etc) - the other stuff should be addressed. For clarity - I view mental health issues to be medical issues too - independent of how they were acquired. We don’t hassle or stigmatize an amputee or a diabetic about how they acquired their medical issue - why do we do this to mental health & neurological issues?
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Court ordered counseling is not unconstitutional. I think marlboromonkey7 put it pretty well
Either she could just go with it and see her children or she could chose to be offended and make it a crusade. And who said the court was ignoring her? Bureaucracy doesn’t move fast, I’m sure if she had stuck it out she would have gotten some kind of resolution eventually but instead she decided to skip her very next appointment.
Also I think you need to re-read some Kafka.
Of course it isn’t. This isn’t counseling. It’s court ordered proselytization. That’s completely illegal and unacceptable. The court done fucked up. The least it could do is publicly apologize.
I’m sick and tired of atheists’ constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom from religious meddling being trampled by the government. Raising a stink is what you got to do if you want to be respected as a first-class citizen like all the religious people.
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It’s kind of an Abrahamic thing. See: Jews, Muslims.
The problem is with the counselor, not the court.
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Maybe this kind of thing would be OK if sentencing her to be subjected to what some might consider a mildly freakish religious based counseling punishment sessions is the judge’s idea of punishment for a DUI or something like child endangering. Courts have been doing that kind of thing and getting away with it due to "faith based services support by the religous right, government policy in part justified because AA and religious based organizations provide lower cost mental health services (in this case compared say to 10 hours with a professional doctor of psychiatry at $250+/hour) This does not sound like any serious dispute but who knows? Can’t tell from the post what the real issues are. Maybe she did something to piss the judge off. He obviously thought she had issues. Maybe she wanted to let the children have assault weapons. If choice is the children or the Christians or a mental institution and all your money - Really, the Christians choice should be the clear choice to avoid high costs of a professional shrink and associated mental health record. The Christians choice also makes the validity of her court ordered mental health evaluation plausibly deniable from a secular argument. Or maybe there is no professional shrink around and she has no other choice but the Christians other than to tell the judge what he wants to hear, that she has repented and will go back with her husband like a moral christian woman would, or whatever she has to do to get her children back, then, get more lawyers for even more money, file for another divorce, hopefully with another Judge. Yikes! We are still in the dark ages in a way, or for 1 hour/wk. for 10 weeks, you could listen to the rantings of a well meaning and seemingly narrow minded person who believes that every aspect of her life has to be for the Lord (what ever that means to her at the moment), for $30/ hour (maybe?) under the table illegally as she admitted to a reporter, but she’s nice and she’s doing a pretty good job and having a good time doing good, saving money and you could be doing that too, Don’t we really need people like that in this crazy world? Come on and lets everyone take off all our clothes, get into a pile like a bunch of puppies and pray about it, OK? Wouldn’t that be fun? Why fight it?? Why all the fuss?
The “higher power” can be anything you want it to be, including your own conscience, your sponsor or anyone you feel would make better decisions than you in the face of your addiction[s].
most aa meetings end with the lord’s prayer. 'nuff said imho.
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