based upon religious
preference
See also NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3. Andrew Cuomo is not the Church?
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> Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
U.S. Catholics in Poll See a Church Out of Touch
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Roman Catholics in the United States say that their church and bishops
are out of touch, and that the next pope should lead the church in a
more modern direction on issues like birth control and ordaining women
and married men as priests, according to the latest New York Times/CBS
News poll.
Seven out of 10 say Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican
have done a poor job of handling sexual abuse, a significant rise from
three years ago. A majority said that the issue had led them to question
the Vatican’s authority. The sexual abuse of children by priests is the
largest problem facing the church, Catholics in the poll said.
Three-fourths of those polled said they thought it was a good idea for
Benedict to resign. Most wanted the next pope to be “someone younger,
with new ideas.” A majority said they wanted the next pope to make the
church’s teachings more liberal.
With cardinals now in Rome preparing to elect Benedict’s successor, the
poll indicated that the church’s hierarchy had lost the confidence and
allegiance of many American Catholics, an intensification of a long-term
trend. They like their priests and nuns, but many feel that the bishops
and cardinals do not understand their lives.
“I don’t think they are in the trenches with people,” said Therese
Spender, 51, a homemaker in Fort Wayne, Ind., who said she attended Mass
once a week and agreed to answer further questions after the poll.
“They go to a lot of meetings, but they are not out in the street.”
Even Catholics who frequently attend Mass said they were not following
the bishops’ lead on issues that the church had recently invested much
energy, money and credibility in fighting — artificial birth control and
same-sex marriage.
Eric O’Leary, 38, a funeral director in Des Moines who attends Mass
weekly, said: “I would like them not to be so quick to condemn people
because of their sexual preference or because of abortion, or to refuse
priests the right to get married or women to be priests. I don’t think
the church should get involved in whether or not people use birth
control.”
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted on landlines and cellphones
from Feb. 23 to 27, when many Catholics were still absorbing news of the
first resignation of a pope in 600 years. The margin of sampling error
is plus or minus four percentage points for the 580 Catholics, who were
oversampled for purposes of analysis in the survey of 1,585 adults.
Benedict, a soft-spoken scholar and a church traditionalist, had
apparently made little impression on American Catholics in his eight
years as pope. Half of those in the poll said they either had no opinion
of him or had not heard enough about him. Nevertheless, 4 in 10 had a
favorable opinion, and only one in 10 unfavorable.
“He’s written three or four books, and his writings are incredible,”
said Leonard Lefebvre, 70, a retired economist in Tequesta, Fla. “He’s
continued on course, and he’s held the religion to where it’s supposed
to be at.”
The poll suggested that the papacy no longer occupies the exalted
position it once did. Asked whether the pope is infallible when he
teaches on matters of morality and faith, 40 percent said yes, 46
percent said no, and 14 percent said they did not know. Nearly 8 in 10
Catholics polled said they would be more likely to follow their
conscience on “difficult moral questions” than to follow the pope’s
teachings.
When asked which “one thing” they would “most like to see the next pope
accomplish,” the most common responses that respondents volunteered
were, in order: bring people back to church, modernize the church, unify
the church, and do something about sexual abuse.
A spate of new information about prelates hiding the misdeeds of
pedophile priests appeared to have taken a toll. A higher percentage of
Catholics said the pope and the Vatican had done a poor job of handling
reports of past sexual abuse recently (69 percent) compared with 2010
(55 percent), when the abuse scandal flared in many European countries.
This is despite the church’s many reforms in the last 10 years and
reports of abuse by priests in the United States declining drastically.
Majorities said they wanted to see the next pope maintain the church’s
opposition to abortion and the death penalty, even though they
themselves were not opposed to them. Three-quarters of Catholics
supported abortion under at least some circumstances, and three-fifths
favored the death penalty.
“I can understand how the Catholic Church stands against it,” said Geri
Toni, 57, of abortion. “We are not supposed to kill. That is one of our
Ten Commandments.”
“But as a woman,” said Ms. Toni, who lives in Fort Myers, Fla., and
attends Mass weekly, “I have to make sense of it, and I believe choice
comes down to the individual.”
On every other hotly debated issue, Catholics wanted the next pope to
lead the church in an about-face. Seven of 10 Catholics polled said the
next pope should let priests marry, let women become priests and allow
the use of artificial methods of birth control. Nine of 10 said they
wanted the next pope to allow the use of condoms to prevent the spread
of H.I.V. and other diseases.
Sixty-two percent of Catholics said they were in favor of legalizing
marriage for same-sex couples. Catholics approved of same-sex marriage
at a higher rate than Americans as a whole, among whom 53 percent
approved.
John Sadel, 28, a supervisor in a plastics production facility in
Bethlehem, Pa., said, “I’m not saying change everything the church
stands for, but you need to evolve with the times if you want to remain a
viable religion.”
The American bishops also appear to have lost ground among their own
flock in their campaign to fight the White House rule that requires
employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives — a campaign
the bishops say is about religious freedom.
One year ago, two-thirds of Catholics polled said that religiously
affiliated employers, like hospitals or universities, should be allowed
to opt out of covering birth control for their female employees because
of religious or moral objections. In the most recent poll, only about
half of Catholics said they agreed.
The issue has become a political litmus test, with Catholic bishops and
religious conservatives saying that their religious freedom is being
threatened by President Obama’s policies. But when asked what the debate
is about, only 40 percent of Catholics polled said “religious freedom,”
while 50 percent said “women’s health and their rights” — an indication
that Mr. Obama’s framing of the issue is holding sway even among many
Catholics.
Catholics seemed to feel far more warmly toward their local priests than
those in the hierarchy. Seven in 10 Catholics in the poll said they
felt that their parish priests were “in touch with the needs of
Catholics today.” Eighty-five percent of those who attend Mass said the
sermons were excellent or good.
Nearly two-thirds of Catholics polled said they had not changed the
amount of money they contributed to the church in the last few years; 16
percent said they gave more; 17 percent said less. Of those giving
less, half said it was because of financial circumstances, and
one-quarter cited unhappiness with the church.
Nationwide, bishops are closing parish churches and schools to save
money and to respond to changing demographics. The reorganization is so
sweeping that the poll found that 11 percent of Catholics who attend
Mass said their parish church had closed or merged in the last few
years.
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