Magic Statistics

After reading the entire 41-page judgment of the BC Human Rights Tribunal in the complaint of Tracey Smith and Deborah Chymyshyn against the Knights of Columbus, Bob Tarantino at Let It Bleed calls the decision "a freakin' travesty".

The three panelists furrowed their brows, quoted a whole bunch of irrelevant caselaw, contradicted themselves about a jillion times and then, when not even that mash-up could get them to the result they wanted, they just made it up.
. . .
Laughably (well, not really, but what else can you do?) the Court awarded $1,000 to each of the complainants "for injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect" (para. 151). What's pathetic is that the panel is not able, even once, to identify the actions which lead to these supposed injuries. There is absolutely no enumeration of what the Knights actually did to injure the complainants.
. . .
In the end, the case turns on hurt feelings - the panel thinks the Knights were mean (according to some unknown standard), that there is some vague right to be free from mean people, and that this meanness magically translates into $1,000, plus reimbursement of the complainant's costs. Pathetic.

This bit is especially strange, I think.

Then there's all kinds of blather about a "constitutionally protected right to solemnize and to celebrate" a marriage (para. 125) and a constitutional right to be married (para. 107). Quite where this arises from is never explained. To make that a bit more clear: the fundamental right on which the panel bases its decision is never sourced, it's just picked out of thin air.

One would think that a quasi-judicial panel pontificating on the constitutional rights of Canadians would at least ensure that the rights they're talking about actually exist. As Bob says, they just made it up.

Read the whole thing. The text of the decision can be found here (document in pdf format).

The collect for today, the Feast of St Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay; Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy Word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfil thy holy commandments; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A native of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, Andrew was a fisherman, the son of the fisherman John, and the brother of the fisherman Simon Peter. He was at first a disciple of John the Baptist along with John the Evangelist. John the Baptist's testimony that Jesus was the Christ led the two to follow Jesus. Andrew then took his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, St Andrew is called the Protokletos (the First Called) because he is named as the first disciple to be summoned by Jesus into his service.

At first Andrew and Simon Peter continued to carry on their fishing trade, but later, the Lord called them to stay with him all the time. He promised to make them fishers of men, and this time, they left their nets for good.

The only other specific reference to Andrew in the New Testament is at Mark 13:3, where he is one of those asking the questions that lead our Lord into his great eschatological discourse.

In the lists of the apostles that appear in the gospels, Andrew is always numbered among the first four. He is named individually three times in the Gospel of John. In addition to the story of his calling (John 1:35-42), he, together with Philip, presented the Gentiles to Christ (John 12:20-22), and he pointed out the boy with the loaves and fishes (John 6:8).

After Christ's ascension, Andrew is named in the Acts of the Apostles only in lists of the apostles. It is not certain where he preached, where he died, or where he was buried, although there are early church traditions concerning these events. The earliest written tradition associates St Andrew with Greece; other traditions hold that he also preached in Asia Minor along the coast of the Black Sea. In particular, he is credited with founding the Christian church at Byzantium (later Constantinople), where he ordained the first Bishop of Byzantium, Stachys. The Greek Orthodox Church believes that this commenced an unbroken line of 270 Patriarchs of Constantinople that continues to the present day.

Andrew is believed to have been crucified on a saltire (X-shaped) cross at Patras in Achaia, where he preached to the people for two days before he died. His martyrdom took place during the reign of Nero, on 30 November, AD 60, when he must have been a very old man.

In 345, Emperor Constantine the Great translated Andrew's bones from Patras to Constantinople. After Constantinople fell to the Crusaders in 1204, St Andrew's relics were taken to the Cathedral of Amalfi, Italy.

Also in the mid-fourth century, St Rule (or Regulus) took some of Andrew's relics to the far northwest. He stopped on the Fife coast of Scotland, where he built a church and founded the settlement later known as Saint Andrews. After Robert the Bruce's victory over the English at Bannockburn (1314), the Declaration of Arbroath named St Andrew patron saint of Scotland and the Saltire became the national flag in 1385.

The StatDaughter bought this flag of Scotland on our trip to Great Britain in summer 2004. It is now hanging from her bedroom ceiling.