The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has declared it will stop running the social service programs it operates for D.C. if the city legalizes gay marriage. It’s kind of like blackmail.
The archdiocese works under a contract to the city, and thus would have to offer the same benefits to its employees’ same-sex spouses as it does to opposite-sex spouses. The Church claims this violates its religious freedom, since it regards same-sex marriages as invalid and sinful.
But this is interesting:
- If two Jews get married in a Jewish service, the Catholic Church recognizes the marriage as valid.
- If a Catholic and a Jew get married in a Jewish service, the Church does not recognize the marriage as valid.
Catholics must be married by a priest (or get a special dispensation from the local bishop); otherwise our Catholic/Jewish couple is just two fornicatin’ freaks living in sin.
But guess what? The Catholic Church doesn’t get to say:
We won’t give the same employment benefits to Catholics married to Jews (in a Jewish service) as we do to Jews married to Jews (in a Jewish service).
That would be illegal religious discrimination, and even though it’s based on Catholic doctrine, we don’t hear the Church crying about violations of its religious freedom. The fact is, the Catholic Church has never had the right to employment deny benefits to a legally married couple just because it deems their marriage invalid. Again:
The Catholic Church has never had the right to deny employment benefits to a legally married couple just because it deems their marriage invalid.
The Church is freaked out over losing a right it never had. This isn’t about religious freedom. If it were, the Church would have tried to deny benefits to immorally-married straight couples long ago. This is about the legal double standard — the second-class citizenship — that conservatives want gays to accept.
So let’s be clear. The Church can do what it likes within the confines of ecclesiastical law. But when it comes to civil law, we’re all created equal.
And THIS, I think, is where we REALLY need to keep the argument focused. It’s not ABOUT religion, it’s about CIVIL law.
I’m certain (because I’ve seen them do it) that many people will say that one can’t separate one’s religious life from one’s civil life, but we do it all the time in this country. Hell, it’s even written into our Constitution. What a lot of people don’t understand, it seems, is that the separation of Church and State has got to work both ways – just as the government can’t interfere in religious freedom, so too the churches have no right to interfere in matters of state. Once we get that through our collective thick heads, I think we’ll be a lot better off.
Kind of on a related note, my doctor was telling me a story the other day while underlining how important it is to check my coverage for specific coverage details. She had a patient who wanted an IUD. This patient had a major, well-known insurance company whose policies routinely cover such things. THIS patient’s policy didn’t, however, because this patient’s husband (the primary policy holder) worked for … wait for it… a Catholic school. The school (i.e. the Church) was able to rewrite the policy to exclude birth control and sterilization from the policies. The IUD had to come out of pocket.
This is all to say that the Church is well used to being able to impose its views on other’s lives, regardless of whether those others wish it or not.
I’m under the impression religious institutions may discriminate at will based anything they like. That’s somewhat logical as no one could claim someone who isn’t Catholic is qualified to be a priest. Religious institutions as a whole are exempt from anti-discrimination laws.
However they are not exempt from requirements of a government when they are receiving money from that government to provide a what is effectively a government service. Your points though about them recognizing non-Catholic marriages for their employees though is totally valid.