There are two articles in the Times today about how religions are not subject to the law in the same way as other corporations/organizations. One is about how churches are not subject to the same regulations about land/supervision of programs that a secular body would be, and the other is about how employees have little recourse against churches if they are fired.
The obvious thing strikes me is that christians want to have their cake and eat it, too, as regards the separation of church and state. So, religious types want to put prayer in public school, keep the word "God" in the pledge of allegiance, pursue their political agenda, demand money for faith-based programs, etc. And then they demand that the government not tell them how to use their land. And as long as an overwhelming majority of congress-people are religious, this is probably just the way it will be. We live in a democracy run by Christians. If you want to let these people vote, you have to follow their rules. Deal with it.
The second thing is that I really don't care if churches fuck over their employees. The reason I think everyone (including me) gets upset about priests abusing kids is, they are KIDS. Their parents put them in this situation, and they have no good way to speak out or defend themselves or escape, and their parents drive them to church week after week to get molested. But I have no such sympathy for, say, a Nun who gets dismissed from her order because she has cancer. If some whack hospital thinks that collective bargaining and unions "defy Christ’s admonitions that behavior must be directed by individual conscience” and “is inherently disruptive” of the church’s healing mission, you know what, that is splendid. KEEP CRAZIES OUT OF THE 21st CENTURY. Churches marrying gay people, women becoming priests, unions for religious institutions, any kind of respect for human decency--- if you belong to some religion that frowns upon these things, it is your own stupid fault that you expect to enter the 21st century and get married/become a nun/have a union. Mainstream religion is not like Scientology. The Catholic Church is not a bait-and-switch. You know what you are getting into. If anything, it is *more* liberal now than it promised to be in the previous century, which is why you have Mel Gibson-style wingnuts.
The same goes for Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, as for Catholics. Bummed out that your two-thousand-year-old beliefs don't gel with your progressive attitude? GET A CLUE. I am not interested in redeeming or reforming or hearing complaints about your religion. Unless some new scroll gets unearthed, if you are Jewish, and you don't like what is in Deuteronomy, TOUGH LUCK. Unless the virgin Mary appears in an english muffin telling you to be a woman-priest, I don't care. The one real virtue of Religion is that it is UNDISGUISEDLY STUPID. Arguing about whether bread turns into bloody-flesh in your mouth, and an intelligent discussion of collective bargaining: these things need to be kept separate.
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I had this same argument with someone a few months ago, they missed my point. The person relied on the old, "the Bible contradicts itself and can be interpreted in many ways," defense. People like that seem to view the Bible, and the views which have their root in it for that matter, as a nebulous mass of faith which yields infinitely many interpretations, it's not.
it's like a Rorschach test. but trying to run a civilization according to a Rorschach test is *probably* a bad idea.
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