Not sure how this is being missed. The analogy is this:
In marriage those married gain certain benefits from the state that couples who are not married do not have access to.
In the case of the play ground other groups have access to certain benefits from the state for the playground that the church does not have for their playground.
It is akin to saying one marriage is ok and the other isn’t when it comes to benefits from the state. Your playground is ok and you get money from the state, church playground is bad so no money for you.
Slight aside: when our school’s playground got a rubberized surface, some parents worried about offgassing organized and pressured the district, at tremendous expense, to replace this surface with wood mulch. Because I am a consummate professional, I will not list better uses for that money.
I’m tempted to just leave it like that; a simple statement that you’re wrong. But I won’t. Here’s an explanation.
I didn’t argue that simple survival was some universal standard. What I said was that the United States Constitution requires the government to allow the free exercise of religion. So my question was does denying public funding to religious organizations prevent the free exercise of religion? And my answer was no, it does not because religions have been practiced without public funding.
The equivalent argument doesn’t work in regard to same-sex marriage. If the government denies marriage to a same-sex couple does that prevent them from getting married? The answer obviously is yes. The issue is not whether the couple is still alive, it’s whether they’re married.
No, CarnalK has it right. The government denying you public money to do something is not the same as making it illegal to do something.
If the government doesn’t give you money to buy a car, it’s not denying you the ability to own and operate a car. However it the government makes various documents like a license and a registration a requirement for owning and operating a car and then denies those documents to you, it’s preventing you from owning and operating a car.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
The government denying you public money to do something is not the same as making it illegal to do something.
[/quote]
Obviously. But if the government makes that money broadly available to other people, they must have a sufficiently compelling reason for denying it to you. They could not, for example, deny it to you solely because you are gay.
There is clearly some point at which the government cannot deny funding to an organization simply because it is religious. After all, the government cannot attempt a backdoor elimination of religious organizations by imposing punitive taxes on all organizations and funding all secular organizations. I do not know under which circumstances the government may or may not deny generally available funding to religious organizations, and I suggest you don’t either.
It may well be that Missouri is in the right here. But your blithe assertion that the free exercise clause is in no way implicated when the government denies public money to religious organizations simply because they are religious is not obviously true. And of course you simply ignored the equal protection aspect entirely.
You’ve pretty much repeated my argument. The point at which the government cannot deny funding to a religious organization is set by the Free Exercise Clause. So you have to show that the denial of government funds is likely to result in the backdoor elimination of religion in order for that denial of funds to be unconstitutional. Good luck trying to produce evidence to support that.
Let me put it in still another way: if it’s so blatantly obvious that the free exercise and due process clauses are not implicated, why is the Supreme Court hearing this case?
The reason, that I haven’t repeated your argument is this: I have argued that there is some point at which the government cannot deny funding to a religious organization, and I don’t know what that point is. You agree that there is a point at which the government cannot deny funding to a religious organization, and you further claim to know what that point is: when religion would otherwise cease to exist. You have provided no evidence in support of this assertion, and it is not an assertion which I think is obviously true, because as far as I can tell you have ignored the word “free” in the phrase “free exercise.”
Your argument – that the government can do anything it wants to short of banning religion entirely – would lead me to believe that the government could ban public places of worship, because religion has been practiced without them and your standard is
I suspect your interpretation is wrong. If the government is more strictly limited than “cannot ban religion entirely” then your assessment of the point at which the government can deny funds is wrong.
Obviously, because I don’t believe you have nailed down the point beyond which government may not deny funding to religious organizations, I do not accept that I must prove that we have reached that point.
And of course you’re still ignoring equal protection entirely, which you may note is part of the complaint:
[QUOTE=Brief of petitioner Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia]
For the foregoing reasons, the Court should reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and hold that categorically excluding Trinity Lutheran from the Scrap Tire Grant Program based solely on its religious status constitutes a violation of the church’s free exercise and equal protection rights.
[/quote]
It was not illegal for same sex couples to get married. They did it all the time. It was just not recognized in the eyes of the state and amounted to about the same as you marrying your kindergarten sweetheart in your tree house when you were seven. The state recognition of your marriage isn’t the point. Who cares about that? The thing people cared about are all the benefits that accrue to people the state deems married.
In this case the government was giving people stuff…tax benefits, social security benefits and a slew of other things. So yeah, it is like the government giving out cars but only giving them to certain people.
What benefits did the state give specifically to gay people but not straight people?
Because that’s what’s most important that’s missing from this analogy: churches get multiple benefits from the state, ranging from tax-exempt status to RFRA measures, that are harder to get for secular organizations. Churches choose to organize in a particular way in part to gain these governmental advantages. They could choose to forgo these advantages in order to gain access to the same advantages as anyone else.
You don’t count up benefits and say group-X gets ten more benefits than I do so they do not get to complain that a particular benefit is unavailable to them.
…right, which it’s good that I’m not doing that. But if Group A, let’s call them Bob’s Big Buddhist Building, can choose from the church package of government benefits or the secular package of government benefits, and group B, let’s call them Sarah’s Super Science School, can only choose the secular package, I’m not convinced that Bob is being disadvantaged by not getting both the church package and the secular package.
I don’t find the equal protection argument very compelling either. Trinity is analogizing itself to schools which allow student groups to meet in their facilities, but the issue there was regulation of speech.
Thank you. We’ll see how long it lasts; it becomes a time-consuming distraction.
Is there any reason to believe that the church is not a 501(c)(3)? I’m not a tax lawyer, but is there some way in which the law treats certain 501(c)(3)s differently from others based on their “exempt purpose.”
Moreover, is there any reason to think that it would make a difference in this case? The Missouri Constitution provides “That no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect, or denomination of religion” and “Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town [etc.] shall ever make an appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any religious creed, church or sectarian purpose, or to help to support or sustain any private or public school… or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination.”
It doesn’t say “tax exempt” church or “school organized under the tax laws for religious purposes.” It’s any “church, sect, or denomination” and any “private or public school . . . controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination.” It applies to Grand Canyon University (apparently a Baptist for-profit college; example picked at random); it applies to Notre Dame; it applies to the church preschool. I assume it’s broad enough to prevent grants to the Salvation Army, to Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services, as well as (apparently) church schools and, of course, churches themselves.
Again, I’m not a tax lawyer, but I don’t see how churches get to “choose” between benefit packages. They are 501(c)(3)s… and treated (as far as I know) the same as others, aren’t they? (I know that churches don’t have the same annual reporting requirements as other non-profits, so there’s that). I mean, sure, there’s the first amendment, and RILUPA, and RFRA, and other “special benefits” for religion, but that’s not a function of corporate organization or form. What are you thinking of?
The problem with that argument is: “but religions have been practiced anyway” does not accurately state the test for violation of the Free Exercise Clause.
Sure. But it depends on how you frame it. That couple could marry in a state that recognized it, but still not qualify as married in another state, and I could repeat your formula. They could, if they wished, “reorganize” with a move to a state that recognized their marriage. But that ignores their basic complaint: they are not being treated neutrally with respect to opposite-sex couples.
Surely the state doesn’t originate the process and say "You specific non-profit entity, are a church and you, the other one over there, are not. The organization must first claim to be a church. (At which point it might be argued and I do find this problematic.) Therefore, this whole problem would be solved if organizations just never said they were churches. They’d just apply for non-profit status.
But this would never happen, at least in part because churches are given special benefits under the law.* And it seems to me that this is the problem, because it then forces the state to vet, at least implicitly, that this entity is a church. If it can do that, if it can say this organization that people go to on Sunday morning to commune with nature (and just incidentally knock a little ball into 18 holes) is not a church, how is that not establishing what is a religion.
*Church retirement plans are exempt form ERISA requirements
*Clergy cannot be compelled to testify about matters confessed to them
*Clergy housing tax exemption
*exemption from filing the 990 report on income and expenses.