It is claimed on some South Dakota blogs that opposition to same-sex marriage and the belief that homosexual sex is sinful are the products of nothing more than bigotry. In this sense the fight for same-sex marriage and full civil rights for homosexuals qua homosexuals is the same as the fight for civil rights for black Americans (see Shelby Steele for a counter argument). If this is the case, then those who oppose this agenda are morally equivalent to those who "stood in the schoolhouse door" or whose racist convictions led them to oppose civil rights and desegregation in the American South. If this is all true, then the full weight of the law should be put behind reshaping people's attitudes regarding homosexuality and certain current public benefits should be denied those organizations who continue to teach that homosexuality is sinful.
This is the argument of law professor Doug Kmiec (registration required, and HT to Joe Knippenberg).
While it may be inconceivable for many to imagine America treating churches that oppose gay marriage the same as racists who opposed interracial marriage in the 1960s, just consider the fate of the Boy Scouts. The Scouts have paid dearly for asserting their 1st Amendment right not to be forced to accept gay scoutmasters. In retaliation, the Scouts have been denied access to public parks and boat slips, charitable donation campaigns and other government benefits. The endgame of gay activists is to strip the Boy Scouts (and by extension, any other organization that morally opposes gay marriage) of its tax-exempt status under both federal and state law.
For technical legal reasons, it is difficult to challenge a religious group's non-profit status in federal court, but state court is more open. There, judicial decisions approving same-sex marriage or even state laws barring discrimination can be used to pronounce any opposing moral or religious doctrine to be "contrary to public policy." So declared, it would be short work for a state attorney general's opinion to deny the tax-exempt status of charities and most orthodox Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious bodies. If enough state lawyers do this, expect the IRS to chime in.
There is precedent for denying public funding or tax exemption for organizations that do not conform to our standards of racial equality (see, for example, Bob Jones University vs. US, and to be clear I think the Court reached the correct decision in that case). Will the government remove public dollars from, say, Christian schools that continue to teach the scriptural view of homosexuality? Will their tax-except status be removed? As is already occurring, public schools will likely begin teaching the moral equivalence of same-sex and traditional marriage. We have also seen the state of Massachusetts strip Catholic Charities of its power to arrange adoptions because Catholic Charities has religious objections to placing children with homosexual parents. The popular culture is already well on the way to creating a culture where homosexuality is mainstreamed while those who maintain an orthodox opposition to homosexuality are marginalized, if not ostracized.
I post these thoughts without comment. I intend them to be an analysis of what is currently happening and what is likely to occur in the future. Some will take these events to be a sign of a new age of civil rights and justice. Others will see it as a continued assault on orthodox Christianity and those who hold to biblical sexual morality. One thing is for sure: the coming of same-sex marriage (which I take to be nearly inevitable) will further a constituency for the use of state power to counter the latent influence of biblical morality on the populace. The other question is whether I will face any penalty for the overuse of prepositions in the previous sentence.
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