[Wednesday: 3 miles with the pup; yesterday: 6 miles with the wife]
I’m getting a bit of a chuckle from the recent pronouncements by B-team presidental candidate Beto O’Rourke that religious institutions who oppose same-sex marriage should be stripped of their tax-exempt status.
Dude, for your own good, I’m saying you don’t want to go there.
For almost 20 years I gave money through the United Way program at my employer. United Way is a clearing house for local charitable organizations. They hold a big fund drive and allocate the money to all of the organizations in their collection. But I didn’t give to the general United Way fund for the specific reason that many of the charities that they underwrote promoted what seem to me to be immoral or unethical causes. Instead I used the mechanism they provided to designate where my funds went.
My point was to not give my contributions to causes with which I disagreed. Beto’s idea goes one step further than that. He proposes that charities which are disagreeable to him should not qualify as charities at all.
Ok, so follow with me here. Beto says that these religious groups are too judgmental and so should be outside the box of what a charitable minded person should be encouraged to support.
Even if you agree with his assessment, don’t you see how he is getting into a mud slinging judgment show-down with the people he claims exceed his own inclination toward judgementalism? Do you like Planned Parenthood having tax exempt status? Or NPR? or all of the various LGBT charities? But you think it is a good idea to open that box and let all of the church ladies and bible thumpers and Handmaid’s Tale Evil Male Suppressors contend for the ability to pull the plug?
Religious institutions…. these are literally the people who invented lists of do-s and don’t-s. “I know!”, Beto must be thinking, “We’ll beat them at their own game.” Dude, you have no idea who you are up against.
Have you learned nothing from the Trump administration(?): when you pass out power chips, you can’t dictate (or even predict) who will end up holding them.