Links for 06/29/15 | National Catholic Reporter

Links for 06/29/15 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: On Accidental Beatitude: The Church is still objecting to the overturn of sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas and is thinking that if someone treats gay civil marriages the same as straight civil marriages than they have become a party to their sex act.  When you put it in these terms, the answer is that the Church is obviously wrong and indeed, guilty of bigotry.  The Church as employer should serve families and not condemn what they do in the bedroom.  It can still preach in this area, although if you really look at the biblical sourcing in this area, there really is little difference between St. Paul and St. John Paul expressing their view of homosexual relations, which is from a natural law POV, and the Rebbi for Baghdad who are largely responsible for the Old Testament writings.  I argue that natural law teaching is not privileged revelation, especially if there is natural law evidence that it is flat out wrong.


A re-examination of the tax status of non-profits is, and should be, part of the debate on tax reform.  Of course, since wealthy people fund this debate in large measure, both by funding (tax exemptly) both think tanks and legsilators, there will always be equity issues unless you can convince them that paying taxes faster is better.  As for a tax exemption over gay marriage - for employers, there administrative routes that don't involve tax exemption - and students have been having all kinds of extra-marital relations in Catholic college for a long time, just not openly.  No gay couple caught having sex in such a setting has ever sued under Lawrence v. Texas as far as I know - but that is the operative case.  Now, I personally favor, for tax reform, ending both payroll and income taxes and imposing a Subtract Value Added Tax - with no receipt visibility but with the ability to decrease the tax by giving a child tax credit to employees, health care, education at all levels and for some functions, diverting the money to Churches to adminster programs and schools.


Katherine Franke seems to have written her Slate piece before 9:59 a.m. last Friday.  Loving was used as the precident, which stated that there is a right to marry - and essentially who you marry is private regarding.  Private here does not mean secret, it means that the legislature has no business excluding people based on race.  This decision extends that privacy to sexual orietation.   This principle has already been laid out in Roe. v. Wade.  Justice Thomas' approach to ending abortion is to simply rule that privacy does not apply because embryoes and fetuses are objects of law rather than chattel to their mothers.  There are no other takers to such a position and he is among the older justices.  Scalia would put the issue in state hands, which is a stupid idea and its why we have a 14th Amendment.  The 14th Amendment itself, and seeminly the decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart (which incorrectly used the Commerce Clause) allows Congress to adjust who a person is in this matter - not 51 legislatures, but Congress.  Would Obama go along?  He indicated he would make a deal on both the Partial Birth statute (which really protects no one) and all late term pregnancies.  Even mid-trimester, I suspect.  I don't see anyone doing anything on the matter of first trimester embryoes (no one is a fetus until the second), because the equal protection problems are huge - as miscarried embryoes and aborted embryoes would have to have the same legal status - and that is perilous for both the criminal law and for tort law - and if you don't think so, you don't know many lawyers.  Dignity does not make the impossible, possible.