Hey, I thought only Born Again Christians could run US politics?
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
So a friend pointed out how the campaign against same-sex marriage in Maine created some strange financial bedfellows. In particular, Catholic Churches from around the country gave a lot of money to defeat same-sex marriage in Maine.
For instance, Savannah, Georgia’s Catholic Diocese gave $2000 and the Roman Catholic Foundation in Baltimore gave $2500 and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia gave a whopping $50,000.
What? There are no pressing problems in Philly that Christians should attend to? Unemployment? Poverty? Sucky sports teams? They have to go and send fifty grand to Maine?
Welcome to the Public Campaign Finance Page for the State of Maine.
Now call me stupid, but I was under the impression that the Church and State had to be separate in the US. I thought a religious organization could not be involved in politics unless(and here’s where it gets confusing- please excuse the constitutional law terminology),
it’s one of those bleeping Born Again Christian types who has met and spoken with Jesus Christ personally and Jesus told them that America is His favorite country and therefore we should bomb all those other countries where they don’t know Jesus personally back to the Stone Age so they could evolve into the sort of people who can rely on Jesus for foreign policy advice as well as tips on with whom to have sex and whether or not it’s okay to slap your children upside the head if they come home with some crazy uppity ideas about the so-called science of Evolution.
I told you this was complicated. I mean, there are basic issues of the Constitution at stake here. So I’m going to spare you all the other fancy shmancy legal talk and just say this:
Turns out the whole separation of Church and State thing was mostly about not having the State interfere in the Church- not the other way around. Thomas Jefferson, who really and truly believed in the principle, also used federal money to teach those Heathen Natives about Jesus Christ. And of course the likes of Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Rehnquist have consistently argued that religion cannot and ought not to be kept out of public life.
But, it does seem that some laws were violated in the Maine campaign because not all of the money came from Catholic dioceses in the US. About $252,000 seems to have come from the magic and bottomless purse that is the Vatican. Which would be a foreign country unduly influencing a political process in the US.
I am not sure what Jesus would say, but I am pretty sure that even the most conservative of Supreme Court Justices would have to say the anti-gay-marriage campaign in Maine violated basic principles of US law.
Oh, and by the way, if I could have a personal conversation with Jesus, I am pretty sure He would have said to spend the money on feeding the poor and healing the sick. Right after He smote all those unconstitutional and ultimately unChristian sorts who wasted time and money on hate rather than love.
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Wow zowie, I think you might be on to something. Want to see updates on this.
$50,000? Think of how much food for a food pantry that could buy. How much rent that could pay for homeless families for a year.
If you don’t like homosexual marriage, and want people to marry the opposite sex, then why not invest in marriage counseling programs? In mental health programs? In HIV and AIDS prevention programs? In poverty programs or financial literacy? Pretty much anything you can do to help families is going to help marriages.
I hate it when the church is against something rather than for something. Church is supposed to be about love and kindness. Do something positive instead of just hating people. Ridiculous!
Jesus would have fought the Nazis in WWII: http://www.badkarmaproductions.com/jc/?p=52
Not only is Jesus a ninja in this cartoon, but he’s super Aryan looking too. It’s a win win situation.
In response to another comment. See in context »I always loved Lewis Black’s comment that if the President had said he spoke to Jesus Christ through a hair dryer, we’d have a national crisis on our hands, so how is it o.k. if you remove the hair dryer?
Wow, Laurie! You will have single-handedly solved the national deficit problem if the church gets caught at this and loses its non-profit status.
In general terms, I agree that Separation is as much meant to protect the church from the state as the state from the church.
Nonetheless, the huge failure of progressivism since Jimmy Carter’s debacle of a decent Christian presidency has been that the we made the tactical error of fighting religious fundamentalism with secular humanism rather than to fight it with religious humanism such as the Rev. Bill Moyers manifests.
Obama, probably prompted by Howard Dean, was smart to make Christian (religious) values a major centerpiece of his campaign. We should be very supportive of Christians who are trying to reclaim the true message of Jesus: have the courage to risk anything in order to experience love.
OK, I need some clarification here. Are you referring here to the Roman Catholic church where people go to pray and be told what to do or the Roman Catholic church the mega-corporation? We know we allow corporate money into elections so I think the US branches get a pass. A similar duality might exist for the Vatican (sovereign country and multi-national corp) but I’m less clear on that. I do remember that the Pope used to tell JFK how to govern.