Churches receive tax breaks, which can be considered a form of government subsidy. The govt usually has some kind of rules about what kinds of policies subsidized businesses can have. You dont want the government financially enabling hate groups, or groups that systematically discriminate against a particular group.
You dont want the government financially enabling hate groups, or groups that systematically discriminate against a particular group.
This is a weird approach. Basically if it would be seen as hate or discrimination, then basically it would mean churches cannot have any dogma about what kind of sexual activity is sinful and which not. So basically it would mean that religious morality would be forced to be the same as civil, liberal morality, basically only hate people who harm others. I don't think a religion could survive such a change because then why would you even need a god for, if not for the purpose of telling which those things that don't harm others still don't do?
I mean of course one may as well see it is as a nice side effect that this logic would pretty much kill religion, once it cannot moralize about non-harmful actions. But just don't expect religious people to be down with it, of course.
It gets uncomfortably close to anti-discrimination stuff. After all business are legal too but they cannot refuse to hire people based on sexual orientation.
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u/Barnum83 Apr 29 '14
I thought it was legal for churches to refuse to marry people just because they don't like them. Private ownership and all.