Freedom of Religion?
Katherine Lopez of National Review wrote an article on a topic I’ve thought a lot about over the past couple years. Could the government, by expanding the definition of what discrimination is in civil rights legislation; end up coercing my religion to abandon some of its moral positions?
Catholic Charities, the arm of the Catholic Church that runs its charitable activities, recently announced it was going out of the adoption business because in some places it was being required by law to provide adoptive services to homosexual couples. Laws which prevent discrimination against homosexuals have compelled the church to run its adoption service in a way it finds morally offensive so it has decided to stop providing the service.
I will leave for another post my thoughts on whether or not the Catholic position is correct or bigoted, short sighted and bad for kids who need parents. It doesn’t matter in this discussion. My concern is that government is more and more playing a role in determining the way religious organizations do their business. Lopez in her article linked above quotes Matthew Spalding, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. who makes the comment:
“If religious institutions are forced by the new regime of laws to withdraw from the adoption business in order to preserve and protect their liberty and religious faith, what about marriage itself? What about the tax-exempt status, or free-speech protections, of religious institutions that advance teachings contrary to the new regime? I think we have entered a new phase of the battle, in which the larger implications of the heretofore abstract debate about marriage are becoming disturbingly clear.”
Could the ability of religious organizations to teach and administer to their members according to their own declared moral principles be at stake if the government is legislating morality in this way?
What happens when churches are told that they can’t discriminate between homosexual and heterosexual couples when they provide marriage services? I know that is a big leap from churches being told not to discriminate in adoptions but does anyone think that the government definition of what is or isn’t discrimination is going to stop expanding?
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