Again, I’m breaking the no-politics rule… but I was just reading the blogs and I stumbled across this pearl by Rick “I Can’t Tie My Own Shoes” Santorum, who waited a bit but finally had to find a venting outlet for his gay marriage induced man-on-dog fantasies.
So on my birthday (woohoo!) the CA District Court overthrew a ban on gay marriage because, duh, it’s blatantly unconstitutional. And, according to Little Ricky, that was the same day that men in California started having sex with their dogs. (And, possibly, photographing the whole thing and emailing it to Santorum’s office).
I don’t want to rehash the whole anti-gay marriage screed because, embellished man-on-dog details aside, it’s basically the same everywhere. And it’s always completely based on strawmen and reverse logic, is never statistically backed up (oh right, there are no statistics that really back it up…) and is, in general, stupid and backwards.
BUT - he brought up some silly points I just want to poke at. First - the whole idea that anti-discrimination laws are somehow discriminatory to bigots… a common Fundie argument since they don’t have anything else. Let’s get clear about the law here (I have to forgive these guys though, there’s really only one law school that’ll accept them and it happens to be Bob Jones University…) - it’s not illegal to be a bigot. You can hate anyone you want without getting in legal trouble - unfortunately for the rest of us, stupidity and ugliness are not generally illegal in this country. You only get in trouble when you actually try to use that bigotry to harm someone else.
He makes the argument that THE GAY MARRIAGE VOTE WILL SHUT DOWN CHURCHES AND KILL GOD BY REMOVING TAX EXEMPT STATUS OMG OMG OMG. Because, as he says, churches that preach anti-*anything* screed will lose their federal tax protection and that somehow is the same as being illegal. I realize this may be a complex train of thought for most of these folks, but let me try to be clear: It’s not illegal to preach in your church (nor, unfortunately, will it ever be); however, (as one Pandagon commenter put it) tell the congregation they’ll be excommunicated for voting for a gay candidate, and BAM you lose your funding and federal protection.
And anyway - churches already discriminate based on religion, a protected class. A Catholic church is not obligated to marry two Jews, a synagogue not obligated to marry two Protestants, etc… and they’re not facing legal trouble for it. Exclusion and discrimination are the nature of religion, they have to show us what not to be like in order to teach us what to be like. So I don’t understand why they get their panties in such a knot over adding gays to the list of protected classes that their federally tax-exempt church can officially discriminate against.
WHICH leads me to my second point. In his article he goes into uncontrollable spasm over churches and religious organizations losing their tax protections. I have to admit, I read that and had to re-read it several times to figure out that he was casting it as a bad thing - at first I thought he was providing one good possibility of an outcome from the crazy string of logic he laid out.
Let me go out on another limb here and make another crazy prediction. Within 10 years, clergy will be sued or indicted for preaching on certain Bible passages dealing with homosexuality and churches, and church-related organizations will lose government contracts and even their tax-exempt status.
Quick! Somebody call the WAAAAmbulance!
Hmm… let’s see. Cancellation of federal protection for churches… church-affiliated organizations losing government contracts and other boons just for preaching… that sounds like further separation of church and state to me! What business does the government have supporting churches anyway?! “Church-related organizations” getting government contracts - that sounds like it should be illegal in this country. If you can prove non-profit legal status based on reasons OUTSIDE of simply being a church (genuine charity, community development, etc), fine. Otherwise (Tammy Faye Baker?), why exactly do you deserve tax exemption?
I’d be happy as shit if my tax dollars were no longer going to support religious organizations against my choice. It’s borderline money laundering that my federal taxes are currently going to these groups to protect them from paying federal taxes, and to allow them to send missionaries overseas and within the US to harvest souls.
Because these groups aren’t about community development anymore, they’ve been hijacked by Right Wingers using them to snuggle up to the US Government, who after 8 years of the current regime will gladly push their interests forward, while continuing to evangelize… on my dime.
So cry me a river about religious tax exemption and man-on-dog action - I haven’t heard one single, legitimate, well reasoned argument as to why the decision was anything other than a genuine triumph of an independent judiciary, and a needed recheck to the Bush-era legal machine.
Could that be because there simply isn’t a good argument to be made? Hmm.
