On Church and State

On the front page of the Athens paper this morning was an article about a pastor telling his sheep how to vote. Yup. The Reverend Jody Hice of the First Baptist Church in Bethlehem, GA is taking on the IRS. He's one of 31 pastors that have decided that prohibiting such announcements in order to maintain tax-exempt status is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Can you believe it?

If he wants to tell his flock how to vote, fine. Let him pay taxes like the rest of us do. See what happens then. As soon as he has to put his money where his mouth is, he'll come around. Count on it.

Given that Barack Obama is rising in the polls, watch for the Republicans to drop another bomb in the cultural war in the weeks ahead. I'm putting my money on abortion. To be clear, I am opposed to abortion. But as a gay man, it's not an issue I've ever had to confront in a personal way. Consequently, even though I am opposed to abortion, I don't see how it's any of my business if someone else chooses to have one. I can't walk a mile in her shoes, so I don't feel like I could ever understand what it would be like to have to make that decision.

Gay marriage is another possibility. If you ask me, the uproar over gay marriage is much ado about nothing. For starters, I don't think it's possible for us homos to do any more harm to the institution of marriage than straight folks have done in the last 60 years or so. Second, I thought marriage was a religious institution, and that we in the United States have freedom of religion. So if a church decides it's ok for two men or two women to marry, what say does the State have in whether that wedding should take place or not? How can the State justify denying the economic benefits of marriage to same-sex couples? I have no idea.

Seems to me the so-called cultural war is really about uptight rightwing religious conservatives wanting to control how others live their lives. Ever heard of free will? Guess not. I hate to think about what this world would look like if the pastors weren't dictating behavior.

Mark my words...the Republicans will stir up one of these issues--or both in the hopes of getting pastors across the country to order the sheep in their flocks to vote for McCain. The really scary part is that it's a strategy that has worked well in the past. Just another thing that makes me...

The Crotchety Old Man