[Soft*Silver]

I read your post and smiled...I too want seperation of religion from government. In fact, whenever I have been vocal about this, I have gotten into heated ugly debates. As a 4H agent, I declared that our camp would not just say xtian prayers or sing xtian songs. If one religion's music and prayers were to be at camp, we had to include other religions materials too. Good lord, I really thought I was going to be tarred and feathered! I was trying to uphold our affirmative action policy AND honor the non xtian parents of children who called in and did not want to send their children to a camp that touted xtianity to such a large degree. It got really ugly...including bringing children to executive committee meetings so they would cry because I was changing the traditions of camp...

but I digress....

I respect what you had to say....I think we are more alike than not...

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Softness:

Okay, here's where I have the courage of my convictions. While I think what the church-run school did was odious, bigoted and needlessly small-minded, I ALSO believe that they had the right to do so. In fact, they have a right to do so that supersedes the right of this lesbian couple to send a child to the school of their choice? How so? Because I want to be protected from the Catholic church making public policy (law) in America. The method that protects me from that is the First Amendment. The *price* for "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion..." (which protects me from having the 80+% of Americans who DO believe in some god or another forcing it down my throat by the use of the democratic process) is that churches can, for the most part, discriminate however they choose, against whomever they choose, for whatever reasons they choose to do so. I may think that discrimination is wrong. I may think that discrimination is odious. I may think that the church doing the discrimination deserves to be roundly excoriating from every hilltop and soapbox in the country. However, that does not mean that I can assert a 'right' to some service that the church provides and expect to have the government enforce that right.

Do the parents of this child have the right to choose a school for their child? Yes. Do the parents of this child have the right to expect that ANY school they choose must accept their child? No. Is that discrimination? Yes. Am I defending discrimination as right? No. My argument is not "the Catholic diocese is correct". My argument is "the Catholic diocese is within their rights to discriminate" because by granting them that right, I keep them on the far side of my government where the amount of harm they can do is mitigated (at least a little bit).

If we state that the parents of this child have a right to send their child to a Catholic school and that the Catholic school is in violation of some non-discrimination clause or another, then we are telling the government to tell the Catholic church how to conduct their affairs. If the government can do that then the Catholic church is within its rights to turn around and petition the government to have its vision of morality foisted upon the rest of us who may not share their belief in a divine being. That foisting, if it were to come to pass, would almost certainly involve laws preventing this lesbian couple from having their child. To prevent that, I may have to put up with things I consider odious or offensive--and those are precisely my judgements about the dioceses' decision regarding this child attending the school.

Our commitment to certain rights are not tested when we are talking about OUR rights. My being in favor of the First Amendment in as much as it benefits *me* tells you nothing about my level of commitment to its underlying principles. It is far more telling how we feel about those rights being applied to those we most vehemently disagree with. My position is not an easy one for me to take because my reflexive sympathies lie with the lesbian couple. However, I value and treasure my right to be non-theistic, to be *openly* and *vocally* non-theistic and not worry that I will have some religious police or inquisition come-a-calling in the middle of the night to take me someplace for reeducation. If having to swallow my disdain for the bigotry on display by some Catholic diocese is the price I have to pay for it, then it is a price I am more than willing to pay no matter what kind of bad taste it leaves in my mouth.

Cheers
Aj

p.s. Please don't take my position on Catholicism to be about Catholicism. I am not fond of ANY form of monotheism or, for that matter, theism of any sort.