I think you are correct (cite). Churches and other religious organizations have different rules.
I think seminaries are also exempt from the rule -
This is absolutely true.
But I’ve never heard of any gay-rights advocates seriously suggesting that the government should force religious bodies to perform gay marriages. In every discussion I’ve ever witnessed, the advocates have stated clearly, unanimously, and generally with some forcefulness that they are looking for CIVIL rights to marriage, not religious ones.
This whole scenario is a purely hallucinatory bugaboo of the wacko religious right.
Now, I’m not including those people who are putting pressure on their own religion to change - that’s a matter internal to those churches. Each church/religion is going to have to make their own decisions and take the consequences thereof, whether that’s losing members who disagree with the decision, a schism, or what-have-you. But that’s got nothing to do with government infringement of religious freedom.
I will grant that there may be one or two nutballs that have said churches should be forced to marry gays - there’s always the loons, you can find someone that has said almost anything if you look hard enough - but nothing more.
And yet the WRR lie about this constantly, using the same argument you’ve presented here, pretending that there’s a real risk that churches will be forced to marry gays. All just to drum up fear in their congregations so as to maintain their stranglehold on the Republican party. That’s the sort of behavior that has disgusted and alienated the ex-Republicans that I know, and that posters above have recommend the RNC divest itself of.
In the post your responded to, Mach Tuck said (paraphrased, obviously) that IF religious people wanted to claim religiously-based tax exemption AND religiously-based freedom to discriminate for every single endeavor they might come up with, THEN he would change his mind about allowing tax exempt status for any religious entities. He explicitly stated that churches should (and do) have a different set of rules (that allow both discrimination and tax-exemption) than other entities.
Again, it’s the religious people’s attempts to expand their “freedom of religion” from the actual RELIGION to all the rest of the world that’s causing the problem.
Most of the suggestions, I thought, boiled down to “start being more like Republicans.”
I understood Mack Truck to be suggesting that churches should perform gay marriage (and ordain women, and so forth) or lose their tax-exempt status. That’s enough of a thread AFAICT to infringe on freedom of religion.
If a referendum were passed that established gay marriage as a civil union, and allowed pastors, imams, priests, and so forth, to decline to perform those ceremonies, then I for one would have no problem with the idea. Seems a good solution - if you don’t want to support gay marriage, you don’t have to. If you do, you can.
This is exactly the reaction I was expecting from right-wing analysis, and as a Democrat it is exactly what I hope the Republicans believe.
The critical flaw in this analysis is that the percentage of Americans who would be receptive to joining the current incarnation of the Republican base–working class rural whites, think Joe the Plumber–is shrinking as a percentage of the electorate. More people are earning college degrees. There has been a higher birth rate among minorities vs. whites for decades. Urban population is increasing faster than rural areas. These trends do not bode well for a target-the-base strategy.
It is no longer enough to follow the strategy of Ronald Reagan and shout about over-taxation and big government (I’m not even talking about the hypocirsy of that position, given what Bush Jr. has done). The number of working class rural whites who have faithfully hummed along to that tune is shrinking. My prediction is a continuation of that strategy is going to mean bigger losses in the years ahead.
The GOP needs to re-evaluate their core beliefs in light of conditions in 2008, not 1980. Taxes on the wealthy were confiscatory and so easy to paint as unfair in 1980, not so much today; this explains, for example, why GOP complaints about Obama “raising taxes”–when they weren’t exposes as out-and-out lies–had little effect.
That seems like a stretch. No US recession has lasted longer than two years since WWII, and there are reasons to believe this recession has already been going on for at least six months. I’d expect bad economics to continue throughout 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, at which time the recovery is going full steam for the fall elections, when in the Senate 19 out of 33 senators up for re-election will be Republicans. If you’re banking on the economy sinking the Dems in 2010, you’ll be pretty much giving away the Senate filibuster.
You mean, like, these people?
I think the biggest problem the RNC faces is that it’s taken some demographic groups for granted. As for just one–but a glaring one–example: Exit polls suggested that Obama won amongst “households earning more than $200K a year” by 52-46. Even taking into account the margin of error of exit polls, wasn’t that a demographic that McCain expected to win handily? Didn’t McCain and the RNC spend a large portion of their campaign hammering away at the tax increases that Obama promised for that income bracket? Think of the message that sent: Obama promised he was going to raise taxes for that demographic, and they still voted for him! Obviously something else was wrong with the GOP message there.
I think that’s but one example of why any analysis that the RNC makes has to be grounded in statistics, not emotion, to be successful. If, say, I personally believe that “taxes are bad,” that alone doesn’t make it an effective campaign slogan. Exit polls indicated that the majority of voters believed that both candidates would eventually raise taxes if elected. When that’s the case, “taxes are bad” isn’t an effective campaign slogan at all. If I say “taxes are bad and your guy is going to raise them,” and the voters think, “Yeah, but your guy’s gonna raise them too,” that just makes my guy look like a liar who’s going to evilly raise taxes. Now, how the RNC would combat this is left up to better political thinkers than me, but I’d have suggested not bringing that up in the first place, based on what voters were thinking.
I’d be wanting to do more voter analysis if I were the RNC. I’d be asking “why did we lose demographics that we won in 2004, like the over $200K income group and Latino men?” And I’d tailor the message around those analyses.
Actually, I wasn’t even thinking about gay marriage. It has never crossed my mind to force churches to marry anybody. I was thinking more along the lines of the Boy Scouts kicking out gay scoutmasters.
There are obvious places where we make exceptions to laws or common practices for religious purposes. Kids can take a sip of wine during a Catholic mass, for example. I’m not going to begrudge an organization tax exempt status for that. But it crosses the line when we say discrimination is OK for religious purposes.
And it’s Mach Tuck, not Mack Truck. 
CJJ* if you read what I wrote as “a target-the-base strategy” then I would ask you to reread it.
More it is a recognition that their base, with even a modest portion of moderates, is still a major threat. They need to hold on to the base to win, but that can be done without targeting them. To win they need only have the Democrats become somewhat complacent and be able to pull in a few more at the margins - which is where they’ll need to target.
Think of it as the inverse of the Urban Archipelago approach for the Democrats. For the Democrats the key is holding onto the urban vote and expanding into more of an influence in the expanding metropolitian areas and “edge cities” - and winning enough there to offset losses in the rural sections. The GOP needs to expand its share of the same edge cities and exurbs and in the groups that populate them. And yes a significant portion of that group are Hispanic and “ethinics” of various sorts who have not been adequately targeted by the GOP.
How smug. For every one of those Pubby Philanthropists there are hundred of other GOPers sucking the country dry.
Cheny, Bush and friends have raped this country. The oil barons write the Energy
I make snide suggestions as I did above out of an internal perversity. I then worry it would actually work. How much of America is ripe for fascism?
Eh. The Whigs collapsed, the GOP arose. The GOP collapsed under Hoover, & then only became the party of personal responsibility & hard money in response to FDR. The liberal establishment of the 1960’s fell apart as the Democrats found McGovern & the civil rights faction, & part of the old coalition became neo-conservatives.
Eventually, the Blue Dogs or the nearly-Greens will opt out of the universal Democratic coalition so that two-party-ism can return.
The politicians don’t want one-party rule either. They’ll break it for us, in ways we don’t yet see.
FriarTed, I dug up some information about the case against the wedding photographer you referenced. It took some digging to find a cite that was from a legitimate news outlet.
According to the decision handed down by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, Elane Photography lost on the basis that it violated New Mexico’s antidiscrimination statutes, not specifically because of the owners’ faith. Essentially, the state held that since the company made its services available to the public through publicly accessible means, it could not legally discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Elane Photography is appealing the decision but I don’t know where that is or where it’s going. (The text of the appeal is here, but there’s no case number.)
That being said, I don’t think businesses should be forced to serve customers they don’t want, and Elane was at least upfront in its refusal to photograph that particular ceremony; it didn’t sign a contract then back out at the last moment. But you violate state law, as Elane did, at your own peril. (FTR, I don’t think facilities that are legitimately owned by churches or synagogues should be forced to hold same-sex weddings if they’re against that religion’s beliefs. So sue me.)
Robin
And let me add, the “conservatives” were the Washington Senators to the liberal establishment’s Harlem Globetrotters for 45 years. We did OK then.
It depends - if we are not in recession, but the deficit is sky high and the economy is still limping along with less than 1% annual growth, and Obama is not perceived as having done much to fix it, he will still be in trouble. And, traditionally, the party in the White House loses seats during the mid-terms. Not always, obviously.
But we in the US are spoiled. Things have been so good for so long that anything other than spectacular growth (as we experienced under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush - yes, that one) is seen as sub-par. And I have heard a lot about how this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
But a big tax hike and an ass load of new spending isn’t going to address our current economic woes, regardless of what Obama says. And we are that much closer to Social Security running out of money, and Medicare and other entitlements the same or worse.
We’ll see. Obama may turn out to be a hell of a lot better at this President gig than I expect. If he is, then I look to the Democratically controlled Congress for the fuckups necessary to reduce the margin between the parties.
[bolding mine]
This was in response to Friar Ted claiming that the loss of tax-exempt status for a private university due to discrimination (i.e., BJU) was equivalent to similar treatment for a church and was therefore a freedom of religion infringement. You made a similar claim in post #53.
As I said - the problem is NOT freedom of religion for churches/religions. They have that now and no one’s trying to take it away from them. The problem is that some people are trying to extend their “religious freedom” exemptions to anything and everything they may choose to do.
Sorry, but that’s not how it works. It is, however, part of what the rest of us are talking about when we say that y’all are shoving religion down our throats. If a religious group wants to run a restaurant, that’s fine. They can’t claim it as a “religious entity” for the tax exemption and discrimination exemption. It’s a restaurant, not a church.
Mach Tuck clearly stated that this sort of ridiculous stand is pushing him away from believing that it is right and good that churches have their special exemptions. IOW, if anything were going to cause churches to lose those privileges, it would be due to the actions of the religious right in trying to force the rest of us to extend the special privileges already given to churches to other areas.
Again with your shibboleth. There is no “if” about it - all attempts to legalize gay marriage have been solely on a civil basis.
**THERE HAS BEEN ABSOLUTELY NO EFFORT TO FORCE ANY RELIGION OR RELIGIOUS PERSONS TO PERFORM GAY CEREMONIES.
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A LEGAL EFFORT TO FORCE RELIGIOUS GAY MARRIAGES.
THIS IDEA YOU KEEP REPEATING IS NOTHING BUT BULLSHIT LIES PROPAGATED BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN ORDER TO PLAY ON THE BIGOTRY AND FEAR OF SOME AMERICANS IN THEIR EFFORTS TO GAIN AND MAINTAIN POLITICAL POWER.**
And, since you’ve obviously not been bothering to read any of the many, many posts by various Republicans in this and other threads - THIS TYPE OF BEHAVIOR is what is driving many people away from the Republican party. Not the economy, but the continual blatant lies and demagoguery.
Despite the devastating effect argument by capitalization has on me, I will repost the part that led me to conclude that churches and private universities were being lumped together in the class of “Places that Might Need to Lost Their Tax-Exempt Status” -
So I assume you are fine with churches refusing to perform gay marriages, but retaining their tax-exempt status.
If you are saying that the status quo is “shoving our religion down your throats”, I disagree. I will repeat, if a referendum were passed establishing gay civil unions but allowing churches and private citizens to opt out and not perform those ceremonies, I would be fine with that. This seems to drive you into a frenzy of capital letters - why is that? What do you prefer? The status quo? Or do you agree that churches should be able to refuse to perform gay marriages? Or do you feel they should lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to join in?
It seems a little harsh to accuse me of spreading lies if I agree that gay civil unions are fine, providing no one has to perform them if they don’t want to.
Please explain this. What extensions are being claimed? Not to perform gay marriages? I thought you were OK with that. Not ordaining women? What else?
Btw, I’m not defending BJU’s past racism or say that they should be tax-exempt or be eligible for federal funding. In fact, they have changed the racial policies & have done pretty well w/o federal funds or tax-exemption. What I am saying is that eventually someone will try to apply that precedent to tax-exempt religious organizations, probably even churches eventually, over gay issues. It may be attempted over women’s issues first, to test the waters. That’s what I want a strong protection against.
Actually, it was important to them. BJU did not change it’s racial policies at the time. It only changed them when the public fuss over then-candidate Bush’s visit in 2000 caused it to re-assess the stance & change it. BUT according to the wikipedia article, it has not re-applied for tax-exemption.
Does anyone want to start a new thread on this? I don’t particularly but we’ve hijacked this one long enough.
It might be best to click the link before posting something ignorant. Buffet, Gates, Winfrey, and Soros are among the many decidedly NON-Republican philanthropists listed therein. Your gratuitous demographic assertions are rather useless.
It’s a big country. Just because there are a lot of people who think along the lines of you and DSeid doesn’t mean your group is the most significant. There is a reason the economy is considered a Democratic advantage. The electorate prefers the Democratic position. Overall, Americans like Social Security and Medicare and want “socialized medicine”.
The GOP became more conservative on social issues in order to also move to the right on economics. The culture war helps them get away with their unpalatable plutocratic agenda. If they give it up something else will have to give as well. Either they’ll become more economically moderate or they’ll lose more elections. Obviously you are sincere in your desire for a GOP that better fits you but it’s just not in the best interests of the GOP to change in the manner that you hope. So they won’t. There just aren’t enough libertarian types to replace the “values voters” to make it worth their while.
Just my 2sense