If a child decides to take his toys and go home rather than share with others do we blame the others or the selfish whiny brat?

And I thought there were supposed to be laws about tax exempt status and fucking around in politics?

I agree with you, in principle. Private churches do have the right to discriminate on matters of dogma so long as it only involves their members who have the freedom to stay or go as they please.

There are a lot of grey areas though, and not just involving public money – questions of whether people are of sound mind, cases which involve joint property or child custody, and labour laws.

Plus, in social service matters, churches project can involve government or publicly-donated dollars which don’t go directly to the church.

So it can be complicated sometimes… or not.

The board of a Catholic-run hospital in our province got in hot water a few years ago when they decided to open confidential patient records to find out who was getting tubal ligations.

Virtually all health facilities here in Canada operate at the pleasure of the government, so the health region simply took the hospital away from the church – simple.

If they can’t deliver services and respect the law at the same time they shouldn’t be given that responsibility.

Let the Catholic church pull out of DC social services, DC can then used those dollars to run their own social services which would create jobs.

As long as the total from both sides remains the same, it has zero impact, but would provide the Catholics with a fig leaf that is more believable than the virgin births and miracles they talk about with a straight face.

You can call it a “non-discrimination benefits adjustment” or some other dull, boring term that only an accountant would care about. It’s kind of like an oil boycott. The Iranians get mad at us or vice versa and refuse to sell us oil. So, Europe buys more from Iran and we buy what the Europeans would have bought from their other sources. Nothing really happens beyond some book keeping, but appearances are maintained.

This being the case, I am just fine with the church’s social programs discriminating against gays. Fine with me. I’ll gladly trade the right to be myself on property that I pay for (public property operated at taxpayer expense) in exchange for your right to be an ignorant backwoods hick in your church, house and car that you pay for and own.

I fully support the right of PRIVATE RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS to discriminate in whatever manner they feel is proper. I am perfectly OK with the Boy Scouts of America kicking all the homos out. So long as the BSA does not get any public money, or get to use any public facilities for meetings or promotion of its agendas, its fine with me if they want to be ignorant.

What I do not support is mixing private religious organizations with government, funding religion with so-called faith-based initiatives (another way of saying church welfare) at taxpayer expense and then allowing them to discriminate.