What’s that? You can’t or won’t believe it?
Religious institutions could be at risk of losing their tax-exempt status due to their beliefs about marriage if the Supreme Court holds that gay couples have a constitutional right to wed, President Obama’s attorney acknowledged to the Supreme Court today.“It’s certainly going to be an issue,” Solicitor General Donald Verrilli replied when Justice Samuel Alito asked if schools that support the traditional definition of marriage would have to be treated like schools that once opposed interracial marriage. “I don’t deny that.”
Alito was continuing a line of questioning started by Chief Justice John Roberts. “Would a religious school that has married housing be required to afford such housing to same¬-sex couples?” Roberts had asked.
Verrilli tried to defer to the states on that point, but Roberts pressed him about the significance of the court’s ruling as it might pertain to federal law.
Federal law, as matters stand, overrides state law on matters of discrimination. Should the Court enshrine a “right to marry” that overrides the traditional understanding of marriage as a heterosexual union, Christian churches will be put under pressure to conform. The pressure will be financial at first – loss of tax exemptions is the obvious starting point – but should they refuse to knuckle under, I have no doubt that more forceful measures will be applied.
Nor would I venture to suggest, nor to believe the suggestion, that such pressure would only last “until we can get that prick out of the White House.” Isn’t it pretty to think so, as Hemingway surely would have said. But the IRS has been a loose cannon, endlessly and voraciously swallowing up more power and revenue wherever the prospect has been afforded it, and legal measures to rein it in have almost entirely failed of the purpose.
Now ask yourself, in full candor, whether you would expect the same pressures to be put upon an Islamic congregation.
The Left advances on many fronts. Christianity, with its demand that Man submit to the will of God as revealed in the Noachite Commandments:
Now a man came up to him and said, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?" He said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." "Which ones?" he asked. Jesus replied, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself." [Matthew, 19:16-19.]
...is the worst of its enemies, for that demand is the origin of virtually every important facet of Western Civilization – particularly American Civilization.
Ponder that, atheists and Amiable Agnostics. I’m going to Mass.
Fran, I will ponder this, but I'm not sure if I follow the logic. I agree with you, but using the commandment "love your neighbor as yourself", how could this not be taken to mean "allow your neighbors to marry as you have married, even though they're both men"? In other words, what YOU do may be as weird to your neighbor as what THEY do is to you. And please understand, I don't agree with the gay marriage proposition, I think homosexuality is an unnatural perversion. It may be a perfectly valid albeit twisted source of pleasure to those so inclined, but I don't think we should be messing with the underpinnings of western civilization just because some people are ok with perversion.
ReplyDeleteIn yet other words, I am an Amiable Agnostic", and I STILL think that homosexuality should be treated as the unnatural thing that it is, left alone but certainly not fostered. Is it not possible to find ways to argue for this WITHOUT bringing the bible into it? Not that I want to argue against the Bible, just that I don't think it's necessary in putting homosexuality in its place. It's great that the Bible seconds nature in this case, but from a very natural angle, there is no benefit to mankind from homosexuality, and it carries a distinct harm. There is no "gay gene". No living human was conceived of a same-sex union. Propagation of the species is rendered impossible. Socially, it furthers the acceptability of an unproductive situation. Surely these arguments, among others, can suffice? Or am I missing the point? Is the point that we MUST protect the freedom of the faithful, because if this falls, what else is there? I'm open to suggestions.