Church, Politics & Prop 8

[_Droopy]

Does Bill Marriott know this?

I don't know, but I know some people who do.

[_rcrocket]

Equal protection means just that. Regardless of the situation, the gov't CANNOT discriminate among groups of people (unless it has a damn good reason, which goes to the "compelling state interest" issue).

That is certainly incorrect. Governments discriminate all the time, and the equal protection clause is no bar unless there is a "rational basis" for it, a very low threshold and far lower than "damn good reason." You can't vote until you are 18; you can't vote if you are a felon; you can be denied citizenship if you don't meet certain standards. It is easy to construct a rational basis to bar homosexuals. This threshold is so low that it is extremely rare for a plaintiff to succeed on this particular theory.

If, however, you are in a protected "suspect class" (race, national origin, gender), then the government has to have a "compelling state interest" to discriminate. So far, only California has held (and no federal court has held, although I haven't read the Mass. and Ct. decisions) that gender orientation is a suspect class subject to the strict scrutiny test.

by the way, are you equating gay marriage with murder?

I don't know how one would equate an opposition to capital punishment with murder. And no, I am not. I am merely drawing a parallel between one church's opposition to capital punishment, and another's opposition to homosexual marriage.

[_Sethbag]

Except that such marriage goes a long way to making right the sexual activity outside of marriage that was sinful. The marriage relationship itself is legitimate, regardless of prior activities. Homosexual sex is not only sinful, it is a gross perversion of appropriate human sexual relations, and hence, no further modifications of it, such as marriage, can alter the fundamental salient spiritual reality involved.

Heterosexual immorality involves a misuse of otherwise normative sexuality. Homosexuality and similar fetishes involve a perversion or distortion of our sexuality that no other legal or institutional accretions can possibly consecrate as legitimate.

I think Droopy here is going a very long way toward verifying my hypothesis on the real reason the Mormons cannot take gay marriage. Religious legality of sex, to Mormons, and legal marriage itself, are irreducibly intertwined, and yet gay sex cannot be made legitimate by any means in the Mormon worldview, and hence gay marriage itself is a profoundly dissonant idea.

[_collegeterrace]

Heterosexual immorality involves a misuse of otherwise normative sexuality. Homosexuality and similar fetishes involve a perversion or distortion of our sexuality that no other legal or institutional accretions can possibly consecrate as legitimate.

Does Bill Marriott know this?

Perhaps he could ask what Bill's knows the next time Droppy stays at a Marriott and does a all night pay-per-view porn bender.

[_Ray A]

Perhaps he could ask what Bill's knows the next time Droppy stays at a Marriott and does a all night pay-per-view porn bender.

I think Droops will be hitting the bar before the porn.

[_Sethbag]

Bah, if he's had a problem with alcohol in the past, the last thing he needs from any of us is to egg him on about it - would you feel good if he succumbed after reading some of this stuff and fell off the wagon? I wouldn't.

[_Ray A]

Bah, if he's had a problem with alcohol in the past, the last thing he needs from any of us is to egg him on about it - would you feel good if he succumbed after reading some of this stuff and fell off the wagon? I wouldn't.

I've been "off the wagon" for 21 years, and don't see a problem with it.

Editorial correction.

[_asbestosman]

I am merely drawing a parallel between one church's opposition to capital punishment, and another's opposition to homosexual marriage.

I think it's an excellent question. Likewise I wonder if anyone would object to a church becoming politically involved in helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked. Something tells me that the real is just that the church passionately pushed for something they detest. As long as a church politically pushes the values of seccular humanism, all is good.

[_Sethbag]

I think that the churches should pay taxes on all the money they "earn", and they should be free to preach to the world whatever they want.

And others are free to condemn them all they want, too.

To go back to Bob's thing, I think the Catholics are free to protest against the death penalty, and whoever disagrees with them is free to protest back.

The Mormons are free to tell the world God doesn't want fags getting married, and people are free to condemn and protest the Mormon church all they want.

I guess what gets me is that Bob seems to be upset that people are protesting against the Mormon church for their stand on Prop 8. Why is that so abhorrent, Bob? You want the church to be free to tell the world what they think about Prop 8, but you don't think the world should be free to tell the Mormons what people think about them? What am I missing here?

And as far as efforts to take away tax-exempt status from the church, some might see this as revenge, but I cannot be held responsible for what someone else says or thinks. But I personally don't see what sense there is in allowing multi-billion dollar corporations to "earn" billions of dollars a year and not pay taxes on that like every other corporation out there.

One corporation sells us dish detergent, and another sells us a crock of crap about some non-existent deity, and all the wonderful things he has in store for the faithful. Why, again, should churches be tax exempt? As George Carlin once said, God must be really bad at managing his money, because he always seems to need more and more of it.

[_asbestosman]

I'm fine with non-violent protests. I'm not fine with denying churches the right to be involved in politics as many (not all) would like to do. I'm even fine with using democracy to tax churches. However, if this is done then I think it would be wrong to target only the LDS church out of revenge. Yet even if that's the will of the people and if the constitution allows it, then I'm not gonna throw a fit.

By the way, the one case I might make for taxing all organizations including charities and churches is that they too make use of law enforcement and fire services which are paid for with taxes. However, one might say that those taxes are already properly paid for by the church's members. Perhaps so, but yet we tax most other organizations.