If the logic of same-sex marriage as a constitutional right is pushed to the limit — and its giddy supporters show no sign of restraint, looting the culture like a horde of victorious Vikings — the federal government could soon strip orthodox churches of their tax exemptions. Then they’ll send church leaders the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars. Property taxes will be assessed on cathedrals and soup kitchens, on hospices and pregnancy shelters, on nursing homes and universities. School principals will pay business tax on the tuition scraped together by low-income families to shoestring religious schools, so they’ll have to raise it or close them. The money you give to your church will not be tax deductible — as it would have been if you gave it to Planned Parenthood. The state will treat your tithes the same as the money you lost in Vegas; perhaps you can write some of it off as an “entertainment expense.”

And I wonder what the leaders of our churches will do. I speak here as a Catholic, though I’m sure that my Protestant brethren are wrestling with their own set of anxieties. I was cheered when the Sunday after the same-sex marriage decision, the bishop here in Dallas had a statement read in all parishes, reaffirming our church’s commitment to natural, biblical marriage. But I have been less than inspired by other things that I’ve seen. On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly complained that his producers had approached bishop after bishop, seeking some spokesman to give the Church’s position. No one would do it.

Source: John Zmirak, https://stream.org