Churches (surprise!) unite in advocating for overt discrimination

And, of course, wrote a manifesto about it. Now, this isn’t unexpected - Christians discriminating isn’t exactly anything new here in the good ol’ USA - but this paragraph particularly made me break out my “you deserve it” evil laugh:

For example, in New Jersey, the state cancelled the tax-exempt status of a Methodist-run boardwalk pavilion used for religious services because the religious organization would not host a same-sex “wedding” there. San Francisco dropped its $3.5 million in social service contracts with the Salvation Army because it refused to recognize same-sex “domestic partnerships” in its employee benefits policies. Similarly, Portland, Maine, required Catholic Charities to extend spousal employee benefits to same-sex “domestic partners” as a condition of receiving city housing and community development funds.

Man, you’re really pulling at the hearstrings. Let me recap:

The government was giving you money to run a scenic wedding-hosting site. You told gay people they couldn’t use it. The government stopped giving you money.
The government gave you $3.5 million dollars in contracts of some sort. You told gay people they couldn’t get their spousal benefits. The government stopped giving you money.
The government gave you money for doing good things. You said you didn’t want to give gay people their spousal benefits. They said they would stop giving you money. It’s not clear, but it sounds like you may have (heaven forbid) bitten your lips, taken the money, and stopped discriminating.

Sorry, but I just can’t really muster any sympathy for organizations that discriminate, get government money, and then whine when it gets taken away for discriminating.

In short, the refusal of these religious organizations to treat a same-sex sexual relationship as if it were a marriage marked them and their members as bigots, subjecting them to the full arsenal of government punishments and pressures reserved for racists.

This sentence is also a nice little follow-up. Getting all riled up at the implied comparison to racists? How dare the government decide that discriminating based on one in-born, un-chosen physical trait is just as bad as discriminating on another in-born, un-chosen physical trait. The nerve.

One bright spot: in the not-insignificant list of cosigners, I didn’t find a single Presbyterian - which is notable on a list that includes national-level leadership of Vineyard, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, Pentecostals (IPCC), Anglicans, General Baptists, Salvation Army, Evangelical Friends, Nazarenes, Evangelical Free, Lutherans (Missouri Synod), and Open Bible as well as several bishop-level officials from the Free Methodists, Lutherans (NALC), Catholics, and LDS. I went to a Presbyterian church up in Seattle, and really appreciated the discussions I had with my pastor about such things, and there is a significant portion of the church advocating for change at the national level. There was some minor progress at the last General Assembly, and the next one is coming up in July. Here’s hoping for more progress. And there’s always the Episcopal church right next door to my apartment that gladly accepted my PGMC poster. Love those Episcopals.

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