Mostly agree, except I’d leave them the exemption from taxes, in return for their staying out of partisan politics.
The moment Pastor Bob says, “If you vote for Candidate A, you will burn in hell,” bang, his tax exemption goes away.
(However, the absurd case in Pasadena, where the IRS tried to zap a church where the minister gave a sermon on the topic of “Peace,” and this was taken as a political anti-war statement, was going much too far. Breaking this “tax exemption treaty” has to be much more direct and overt than merely praising peace.)
It’s ugly and nasty and stupid and sad. But, yes. Religions get to be bigoted.
Much as individuals get to be bigoted. You could have a private golf course that doesn’t permit women to play. And that’s where the “it’s not a business” argument becomes meaningful.
Or, hell, the KKK. They can be as bigoted as they want, so long as they don’t break any laws. We can all hold them in (nauseated) contempt, but it is their right to hold such views, and to communicate them.
And notice in the part YOUR quote where it says “or NONE”. It’s because traditionally, people usually offer to make a donation, so they’re offering guidelines on how they can do so. (I would imagine if people asked if their donation could go to a charitable organization affiliated with the church, that would be welcomed)
Do I think the church should allow gay marriage? Yes. Do I think they should be forced to do so? No, I do not. I may criticize them, I may say they’re wrong for doing so, but I don’t think I should be able to force them to do it. History has shown us that it’s usually a bad idea when religion and government mix.
But this relies on an assumption which is common in these debates, and in the government’s policies. It defines ‘freedom of religion’ as strictly applying not even just to religious organizations, but even just to their religious functions. This is seen for example wrt abortion and the Affordable Care Act. The government seeks to define religious freedom as pretty mush just the freedom to conduct religious services. If the organization hires people, then it has to violate it principals to meet the requirements of the act. By further extension if individuals are forced to go against their religious views in business, that’s viewed as a totally different topic. But to actually religious people it’s not some totally different topic.
Secular type progressives, even of good will, carry their own assumption that strict organized religion is at best a nice show or symbol, or just BS that other people are entitled to foolishly believe in as long as it’s strictly hidden away in a church. They have consistent trouble seeing things from the POV of people who actually believe.
And in the general the argument ‘oh that’s not going to happen’ lacks credibility. Punishing religious organizations for not performing same sex marriages is clearly a somewhat popular view on the web, still outside the ‘electable spectrum’ of Democratic candidates for major office, for now perhaps…but so was same sex marriage itself not that long ago.
On the comparison of discrimination against blacks to holding Biblical views on homosexuality, it begs the whole question. If you think those two things are really the same, you probably put no weight on what the Bible (Abrahamic religious scripture in general) says*. But the issue is religious freedom for who those who do place weight on that. Likewise arguments like ‘what if I made up a new religion which said white people are untouchable’ assumes the centuries old religion at the core of our culture (and it’s relatively similar cousins) is the same as some casual ‘what if’. It again assumes the conclusion that traditional religious belief is BS. It doesn’t seriously address how to handle the rights of the large minority (at least) who don’t think that and hew to a particular (family of) religion(s) central to our history.
And I don’t agree that the cases of wedding providers successfully sued were people who ‘didn’t want to serve gays’ rather than objecting to a particular event. It was the opposite. They didn’t want to participate in a wedding ceremony they felt, for religious reasons, was a sacrilege. There’s no indication they sought the right not to take photographs or bake cakes for homosexual clients wrt any other event.
*racists in the modern West (ie the age of African slaves sent to the New World, and even after) tried to justify racism with the Bible but it’s actually a very long stretch. The societies of the Old Testament and Rome were not literally racist, about skin color. And there’s nothing explicit in the Bible about it. OTOH condemnation of the practice of homosexuality is quite explicit. Liberal Christians construct various arguments to justify ignoring those passages (context, translation issues, etc) with plausibility that could be debated separately. But the starting point is quite different than the case of race and the Bible.
It’s just the opposite AFAIK in the cases actually brought to court. Small businesses like photographer and baker didn’t want to take part in a same sex marriage ceremony. There was no indication they were in the habit of turning down business from homosexual clients in any other context.
‘Proportional numbers’ where people admit they just have a bug up their ass about religion would presumably be in the same study with the proportional numbers where people admit they just don’t like certain other races. So, if you surveyed a large group of people on the latter question and nobody or a tiny fraction admitted to racial hatred, would the ‘scientific’ approach then be to reject the hypothesis that anyone is a racist, for ‘lack of proof’. IOW sorry, it’s not serious to come back with ‘cite source’ as the response for a statement such as I made. If you really think there isn’t now a lot of hostility to traditional religious belief, per se, in this society, you can just say so and each person can decide if that’s a plausible or ridiculous statement.
Seriously? Look up Catholic atrocities and tell me what you find. Some pretty immoral pratices
Not strictly forbade but discouraged by keeping the Bible in dead languages and not wanting it translated into English. William Tyndale was burned at the stake for it.
I’m not saying it will attract more people. I’m saying Churches will eventually have to change and mature along with society. All you have to do is look at church history to see this is true. The entire reformation and protestant movement is an example. More churches ordaining women. more integration rather than claiming God wants the races seperate. etc. These are not issues of permissiveness or watering down beliefs, but basic issues of truth and justice concerning humanity. The Catholic church may not have officially changed it’s doctrine but the fact that it chooses not to enforce them sends a message. I hear the new Pope will move to make some changes that traditionalists won’t like. We’ll see. I just doubt any church that values tradition over truth and a sense of justice will do well in an increasingly more educated and aware society.
cite.
they are for now but I predict that after a few generations when SS marriage is more common place and SS couples have shown their value as members of society, churches who continue to reject our gay brothers and sisters as equals will find it harder to attract a new generation.
That’s the problem: some people wanted the “religious freedom” to deny their employees the right to obtain contraception, even on a plan the employees purchased. The employer wasn’t even purchasing the plan, only making money available to the employee to buy insurance.
They were trying to use religious freedom as a tool to pry apart other people and their freedoms.
This came to a (hellish) head in Arizona, where they tried to claim that it was “religious freedom” to allow shopkeepers to refuse to serve gays.
This is why we’re limiting religious freedom to religious ceremonies. The theocrats tried to use it as a basis for secular discrimination. They bit off far too much…and lost some teeth in passing.
Stop trying to sneak theocracy in by the back door, and we’ll stop trying to define religious freedom narrowly. Keep it up…and we’ll keep fighting back.
We can co-exist…but that doesn’t mean “Everybody you don’t like has to suck it up.”
Without making any defense of various Catholic actions, it should be noted that Corry El’s claim was that the church has not changed a core teaching, not that it has always followed those same teachings.
This distorts history. There were several English translations that preceded and followed Tyndale (and Wyclif). Wyclif was censured and Tyndale executed for having preached ideas considered heretical and for having created translations that differed remarkably from the approved translations in support of their ideas, not for having translated the bible, per se. (England was one of the last countries in Europe to get a bible in the vernacular, most other countries having already created their own (church approved) translations.)
It should be noted that the Catholic Douai-Rheims English translation was actually created and published before the Authorized/King James Version. (Both were attempts to improve upon (or correct) Henry VIII’s Great Bible using more direct translations from the Hebrew and Greek than the Great Bible had employed.)
Since he already made it clear he opposes all discrimination on the basis of “gender” I’m still waiting for his explanation as to whether the local women’s softball team that refuses to let me be a member is full of “bigots” or not.
Yeah, that was shown pretty well back in jolly ol’ England, you know, Steophan’s country. Personally, I think it’s absolute and utter bullshit that certain members in parliament are there simply because they happen to hold a particular office in a particular religion. But, of course, nobody in England gives a fig about what I think about their government.
Perhaps rather than waiting, you could go read the posts where I’ve answered that. The short answer, though, is that they’re not bigots, as there are fundamental and relevant differences between men and women when it comes to playing sports.
Why did you put “gender” in quotes in your post?
I agree with what you think about our government there. The arguments about House Of Lords reform are ongoing, and the practical effect of that is that the Bishops in that House won’t do anything outrageous else the reforms to remove them would happen much sooner.
Not a perfect solution, but an improvement. Eventually, I expect to see a fully elected second chamber, for better or worse.
Ibn Warraq: How’d you like Steophan’s BS about the US having “nominal separation of church and state” and his blather about some church having control of our government? Comedy Platinum, that.
I really don’t know how it works in detail here but I suspect that in Vietnam churches are viewed as business enterprises (which is a reasonably good description) offering a variety of services and taxed accordingly. This seems reasonable to me in a world where there is true separation of church and state and not one where it is a fiction.
As I see it there is separation of Church, that means the state cannot back any Religion, It is no different that I can see some of our civil laws could be called bigotry.
I cannot understand why a person( Gay or otherwise would want to be married in such a church to begin with. They apparently don’t accept the churches teachings and if they call it bigotry that dos not make it so. Once Catholics couldn’t eat meat on Fridays that is no longer a rule for them. restaurants were not forced to serve them fish if they didn’t have it on the menu.
If a person joins a church, but doesn’t believe in it’s teachings then why stay in it? Many Catholics do not get married in a Catholic Church and as I understand it, the Church doesn’t consider that a valid Marriage.
I’d say there are fundamental and relevant differences between a Catholic church offering to wed couples in a Catholic marriage vs. a non-Catholic marriage too.
The line is drawn at harm. Murder is a harm; refusing to marry someone because they don’t qualify for the standards of marriage you created does not. Just because marriage standards exist in other religions, or in civil society, that are different doesn’t mean your church’s shouldn’t stand. They’re just different, like any other religious belief.
Religion is about shared beliefs. People are not excluded from a religion or its rituals because they disagree with them - the exclude themselves. It’s just like, for instance, a Republican demanding the right to run for an elected office within the Democratic party. Of course he can’t do that, because he doesn’t qualify by virtue of his beliefs, and that is his choice. It’s perfectly rational.
No. I’d say churches may not discriminate based on sexual orientation in some circumstances, such as hiring people for a non-religious job like an accountant. Just as you explained above with murder, birth control etc. It’s not the group being discriminated against that matters, it’s the type of discrimination and function in which it occurs.
I don’t think the fact that some churches are paid for weddings has any relevance at all, and I’ve said so. It doesn’t make them a business.