Earlier in the summer, the Episcopal Church decided to take steps toward creating a service for gay unions. The move, while controversial, continues the Episcopal Church’s branching from its Anglican roots. In 2003, the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay clergy member.
Few religious leaders contacted by the Sun-Times News Group about either the ELCA or Episcopal changes wanted to speak on the issue. Most of those who did declined to be identified. Their reasons for not wanting to speak varied, and perhaps could be an indicator of the divisive nature of the progressive movements of church leadership.
One local Episcopal clergy member spoke at length about his reluctance to potentially adopt any sort of rites for gay unions and cited a rule that would give discretion to individual churches over such matters.
That same member of the clergy requested that the Chicago diocese be contacted for further comments. Calls placed to the general number of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago went unanswered.
All the testimony available is to a Grand Jury, which ruled there was sufficient evidence to charge him and go to trial. The case never went to trial, in a plea bargain all the other felony charges were dropped and in return he plead guilty to the one charge of sex with a minor.
The judge sent him to a local CA prison for something like 96 days for a psychological evaluation and sentencing a recommendation. The recommendation was for no further jail time, just time served. The determination came back early, in half the time allotted. The judge supposedly felt that he should complete the 96 days since he was only there half the time. Polanski refusing to return for the other half of his evaluation time jumped bail, went to LAX, bought a ticket with his bank card, and was in the air and out of the jurisdiction in barely 15 minutes. He has lived his life since in jurisdictions where he could not be extradited to the USA, until in his arrogance he made the widely advertised mistake of traveling to Switzerland for a Polanski fest and where the authorities were waiting.
The situation of now more complicated. The judge is being accused of judicial misconduct because he wanted Polanski to serve the full evaluation instead of setting him free immediately. He has since died.
Two years ago or so there was a documentary on this case and a retired deputy prosecutor from the case claimed that he committed prosecutorial misconduct. He has since recanted, stating that he was building the excitement up for the documentarian, but that he lied about his conduct for the documentary.
Ooooohhhhh nooooo Mr. Bill.
That was supposed to be a comment for the Polanski thread!
Please delete.