I do it every year, and I’m happy to be back, and an early contributor to the 2009 Blogswarm Against Theocracy. For Reconstitution’s first contribution, we’re going to take a look at a Washington Post article about an increasing number of legal battles that “religious” individuals and groups are losing in the courts when they discriminate against gay and lesbian American citizens.

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

– A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

— A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.

– Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.

— A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

“It really is all about religious liberty for us,” said Scott Hoffman, chief administrative officer of a New Jersey Methodist group, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, which lost a property tax exemption after it declined to allow its beachside pavilion to be used for a same-sex union ceremony. “The protection to not be forced to do something that is against deeply held religious principles.”

Let’s examine this oft-repeated claim that religious individuals and organizations are no longer free to practice “religious liberty.” What they actually talk about, of course, isn’t any kind of “liberty” that you or I ever heard of, since most of the time it has to do with blatantly discriminating against American citizens who wish to avail themselves of services routinely offered to the public at large. As is normally the case with the right-wing cross-wearing bigots I affectionately refer to as Jesusistanis, the “liberty” they cry about “losing” is non-existent. While anyone is free to believe whatever he or she may want to believe, you are NOT free to shove your beliefs down my throat, or the throats of any other American. In trying to bar gay Americans from services that other members of the public are able to obtain, the Jesusistanis are practicing a blatant discrimination, and they deserve to lose every time they try it. Why should I, as an American taxpayer, subsidize a bigoted organization? When a “religious” organization gets a tax-exempt status, the revenues missed because of that status will be collected elsewhere-meaning that you and I are paying for the police and fire protection such an organization receives, just to name two things. If these Jesusustani hatemongers came to my front door begging for donations, I’d send them running-so why should I have to be billed for them even indirectly? Where’s MY freedom to refuse to aid these bigots?

And bigotry is what the game is all about, make no mistake. The Family Research Council, one of the most prominent bigoted antigay voices in the country, purchased the Ku Klux Klan’s mailing list. Many of the leading lights of the “religious right” were among the most strident opponents of the Civil Rights Act and other desegregation measures over the last 4 decades, and their arguments sounded a whole lot like the arguments they use now to justify discriminating against gay people. They had “religious” objections to allowing black and white folks to congregate together, and there were laws on the books throughout Dixie that forbade interracial marriage. The argument of that day was the same argument used now; allowing different races to marry would “weaken” the institution of marriage, and change it from its “traditional” definition. Those arguments were wrong, and the arguments the Jesusistanis are making today are just as wrong.

I don’t believe that these hatemongers should be banned, or anything of the sort-but I do believe that when they openly discriminate, then the state has a right-no, an OBLIGATION-to yank their tax-exempt status. The Mormon Church recently spent several million dollars to get the discriminatory Proposition 8 passed in the State of California. Their tax-exempt status means that other Califonians essentially paid for their efforts to get this discrimination put into California law, because the Mormon Church had a lot of extra money available to throw at Proposition 8 that they wouldn’t otherwise have had if they’d had to pay taxes on their donations, sales, services, etc. While other Californians were paying taxes, the Mormon Church was playing politics with their money. But just let the California gay community decide to stop paying taxes so THEY can afford an advertising blitz! Does that seem fair to you? Does it seem right?

It’s time that the hatemongering organizations that hide behind a “religious” designation stopped getting a free ride. They sell books, they make video productions, they run media organizations, and they take donations. They are profitable as hell, and they turn those profits around for things like political lobbying and advertising for their hateful positions. How can anyone seriously argue that they aren’t breaching the church/state divide every day? Since they want to lobby and influence politicians like other corporations do, it is way past time that we started treating THEM like corporations, and make them pay their fair share on the profits they rake in. I don’t necessarily see the church with a small building and a 100 member congregation as a target for taxation, but I certainly do see churches with media organizations and lobbyists as institutions that need to be treated like any other corporation gets treated. Er, as any other corporation SHOULD be treated is probably a better way of putting it.

I’m tired of watching them give our system the middle finger while they codify hatred in our laws. How about you?

Tags: bigotry, blog against theocracy, religion

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 2:20 am and is filed under Jesusistan, Jolly Roger, Our Constitution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.