A federal judge has ruled that a southern Oregon city can’t limit a local church’s homeless meal services.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke found that an ordinance passed by the small city of Brookings, on the southern Oregon coast, violated the religious freedom rights of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, KGW reported. He issued his opinion on Wednesday.
The 2021 ordinance limited the church’s homeless meal services to two days a week, and required a permit to serve free food in residential areas. It was passed in response to resident complaints.
The church sued the city in 2022, saying the ordinance violated its right to freely practice religion.
I wish more people expressed their faith by caring for people.
Plenty do. You just don’t associate with that segment of society and it doesn’t make headlines.
If only they had a role model that would have taught them that!
Maybe they could have written it down in a book they could turn to for guidance.
Or if they would hold weekly meetings to discuss it.
🤣
Think of the following this person would have had if they had been killed for their teachings.
They would have become a martyr and an example for others for years, decades, centuries to come.
We’re talking about Che Guevara, right?
What other bearded champion of the downtrodden and resistor of imperialism could we be speaking of?
I looked up where this ordinance came from.
From AP
The ordinance against serving more than two free meals a week came in response to a petition from people living near the church, who said the church’s programs were creating public safety problems, Jefferson Public Radio reported.
The petition, which refers to the people around St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church as “vagrants” and “undesirables,” was signed by 30 people.
The town has about 7000 residents if you want to get an idea about what I’m percentage of the residents seem to find this to be a problem.
The church website claims they serve 210+ meals a week. Even if we assume everyone comes back for every meal, that’s 35 people.
So if we look to serve the greatest good, it seems helping the homeless helps more people than if they were to help the judgemental NIMBYs.
From the in OPs post:
The city is currently asking the church to stop shower and advocacy services also bringing in homeless people into the neighborhood.
A church not bathing and protecting the poor really does seem to go against what I feel what most would say a church should stand for. I’m going to side with the church here.
You make the bold assumption those advocating for this consider the homeless “people”
I try not to be tooooo judgemental in my reporting.
I’d love to see an AITA post from one of these people though!
I used to love reading that on reddit, but when I subscribed to it here my feed was immediately swamped with AITA … so I unsubscribed.
An occasional read is fine, but too much makes it seem like we’re all myopic selfish ijits that, although it may be true, does not give me hope for our survival.
For reference, Brookings is a little podunk town along the coast way down in the corner of Oregon near the California border. It’s highly unlikely that these homeless people are coming in from out of town since it’s far from any large city, so the people that are being attracted to this church already live in Brookings.
My thought as well when looking at the photo in the wiki when I grabbed the population count.
You never know though, those mountains could be full of phantom homeless!
It looks like a nice enough place.
It also looks pretty rich.
