When the House recently passed a healthcare bill which included restrictions on the use of federal money to subsidize abortion, pro-choice liberals were up in arms. ”It restricts choice!” they cried. ”Let’s oppose it! Let’s vote down the entire bill even if that means more people in the country will remain uninsured.”
Now the Catholic Church in Washington D.C. is being told that in order to receive government funds, they must abide by a new D.C. anti-discrimination law in all their charities and employment practices in those charities. The Church in Washington – part of a much larger, global organization – feels that it cannot submit to those rules and therefore will be forced to refuse said funds and close the doors on a number of the charities they currently run.
Liberals are once again up in arms. ”What about the homeless?” they cry. “How dare they not change their fundamental religious beliefs when that means leaving more homeless and poor without charitable services!”
Something about this smacks of double standards.
And thus we come to a very fundamental aspect of government involvement in just about everything. The government limits choice. The trade-off can be worth it. It may mean less affordable abortions but more people covered. It may mean gay people are given the right to wed, but religious charities have fewer dollars to provide for the poor.
The point I’m making is that there is such thing as consensus, but it usually comes at a cost. It can’t simply be that everyone gets what they want, nor is it merely a question of ethics. Reasonable people disagree on issues like abortion. And we have a system of government that separates church and state, for better or worse. This leads to concessions and compromises and trade-offs and people are always unhappy at the end of the day.
If we want government health care, maybe we have to give up federally subsidized insurance plans that cover abortion. If we want gay marriage in D.C. and we also want religious charities to keep doing their good work, maybe we have to make exceptions for those institutions on religious grounds. Or we can refuse them funding and find ways to implement those charities via the state or some other private charity.
Either way, I see pro-choice advocates and the Catholic Church doing very similar things here. They’re both up in arms about the government making rules about how they spend the government’s money. But it’s the government’s money, or rather it’s our money. And that’s the way it rolls in a representative democracy. Deal with it.
Originally published on November 13, 2009 at True/Slant.
12 responses so far
1 teabag // Nov 13, 2009 at 4:33 pm
If you want abortion coverage you just have to work for the GOP.
2 esurience // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:29 am
So, it’s a fundamental religious belief of Catholics that discriminating against gay and lesbian people, using taxpayer dollars, is more important than helping the homeless? Wow. Can we stop pretending that the Catholic Church is a moral organization now? They’re holding a gun to the head of the homeless, and telling the Washington DC city council that they’re going to SHOOT if the DC council votes for marriage equality. That’s sick.
3 Kevin B // Nov 14, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Now it’s up to the DC city council to decide if marriage equality is more important than helping the homeless.
4 esurience // Nov 14, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Kevin B: Not really, they’re paying the Catholic Church to provide certain services, they can pay someone else. I like how you ignore my point about this action by the Catholic Church being immoral though. You also see it as indefensible, presumably? This should be treated as any hostage/terrorism situation… we don’t negotiate with terrorists.
5 Kevin B // Nov 14, 2009 at 6:00 pm
esurience: So the Catholic Church isn’t really deciding whether the homeless get help. As you say, the DC city council can pay someone else to do it. The church is just deciding whether it is going to be the one that the government pays to provide that help.
Though I think the church’s position is the wrong one, and also bad p.r., I think they have the right to have a position.
6 esurience // Nov 14, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Kevin B: I’m not claiming that the Catholic Church doesn’t have a right to stop doing charity. But the charity programs that the Catholic Church runs are one of its only redeeming virtues. If Catholics stop providing charity… what exactly are they good for? And how is that even remotely Christ-like?
7 jakester // Nov 15, 2009 at 1:02 am
The reason why health care prices rise so steeply is because there is no incentive in the system, it is all dictated by the government who doesn’t care. We have simple wheelchairs that anyone can build going for 2K because they are some protected mercantile business. There is no competitios so prices will rise and rise as long as third parties pay the bills.
8 Kevin B // Nov 15, 2009 at 8:38 am
esurience: I doubt that the Catholic Church will stop doing charity. It’s just that the money from the government comes with conditions that they don’t want to accept.
If I were using government grants to teach sex education to high school students, and the government imposed a new rule that required anyone receiving those grants to teach abstinence ONLY (no safer sex, no contraception), I would try to find my funding elsewhere.
Government funds are a way for government to control what people do. If states want highway funds from the federal government they may have to lower speed limits, or raise the drinking age.
I think mainstream churches will come around on gay marriage eventually due to changes in attitude within the churches themselves. To see them coerced by the government is a reminder that separation of church and state goes in both directions. Government funding of religious charities is a threat to that separation.
9 sinz54 // Nov 15, 2009 at 9:52 am
Kevin B:
Even without Government funding, the moment that a Church runs a secular charitable function (like adoption services), it may be forced to comply with Government social edicts:
In Massachusetts where I live, Catholic Charities had been running the oldest and most successful adoption service for orphan children. But they refused to place orphan children with gay couples, asserting that this would be against their religious principles. About 10 years ago, a gay couple successfully sued them in court; the court ruled that Catholic Charities had to place children with gay couples or else be punished for violating state antidiscrimination laws.
Catholic Charities, forced by a government edict to violate its religious principles, had no choice: They shut down their adoption service entirely, rather than be forced to violate their religious principles about gay parenting. And that destroyed the oldest and best adoption service for orphan children in Massachusetts.
This was a clear case of the state forcing a church to do things against its religious principles, which violates the Establishment Clause in my opinion. The utter hypocrisy of liberals cheering such a court ruling while always waving the mantra of “separation of church and state” was revealed for everybody to see.
10 Kevin B // Nov 15, 2009 at 10:57 am
One difference between the situation with adoption services in Massachusetts and homeless services in DC is that the adoption service wanted to illegally discriminate in providing those services. If the church wanted to discriminate against homeless gay people (or black people, or Jewish people, or any other protected class) –which I have no reason to suspect they do– then they would be in the same situation in DC.
There is a grey area where the church ends and the public begins. But I’m comfortable with the church’s hiring policies being within the church’s sphere, and the provision of services to the services being part of the public (and subject to the public’s laws).
11 Kevin B // Nov 15, 2009 at 12:27 pm
“provision of services to the services” should be “provision of services to the public“
12 E.D. Kain // Nov 16, 2009 at 8:13 am
Thanks to everyone for commenting.
The long and short of this thing is: previously to these new rules, religious organizations were exempt from a bunch of regulations and rules that protect against discrimination. This was done basically to protect religious liberty.
These new rules change that, and require that the Catholic Church officially starts providing benefits and services to LGBT people. However you feel about that issue, you need to also understand that this is the state telling a religious organization what to do even if it conflicts with its religious beliefs. That’s the issue here. The Catholic Church isn’t saying that if gay marriage is passed into law that they’ll pull all their charities. It’s the D.C. city council who is threatening to pull contracts from the church if the church doesn’t change.
Blaming the church is just taking the easy way out. And I disagree with the Church on its position toward gays. So there it is.
You must log in to post a comment.