Charity or Extortion?

I'll be eating a bit of crow on this post.  Maybe.  In an earlier post I cited Catholic Charities as an example of the threat to religious liberty posed by redefining marriage to include same sex couples.  In March of 2006 Catholic Charities of Boston got out of the adoption business they had been in since 1903.  State anti-discrimination laws required them to provide adoption services to gay couples that were legally married.  They chose to stick to their religious principles rather than provide adoption services to gays.  When I first heard about this it seemed like a clear cut case of religious discrimination:  a privately funded adoption agency was being forced to compromise their religious position.  Well, it turns out that is not quite the whole story.  A Washington Post article dated Dec. 18th 2009 (link to article here) discusses a similar standoff ensuing in Washington D.C.  The mayor of Washington D.C. just made gay marriage legal in D.C.  So now Catholic Charities is in the same dilemma:  provide benefits to same sex couples or get out of the business.  What this article makes clear, however, is that "city-church contracts" are threatened if Catholic Charities doesn't comply.  Wait a minute, I thought they were a Charity.  You mean to tell me they get their funding from the city??  I did a bit of research and found the Annual Report for Catholic Charities in D.C. for 2008 (see report here).  It turns out they get 72.24% of their funding from 'grants and government contracts'.

That changes things in my mind.  If your so called 'charity' is actually a government contractor 3/4 of the time then of course you have to comply with whatever terms the government sets if you want to keep the funds flowing.  This issue highlights the problem with government run 'charity'.  How does the government get its charitable funds?  Through extortion.  Does that sound too harsh?  Think about it:  Government gets the funds through taxes.  You pay those taxes or you go to jail.  Does that sound like charity to you?  I thought a charity operated through funds that people willingly donated because of the warm fuzzies they got inside.

This story actually eases my mind about certain threats to religious liberty posed by gay marriage.  I'm LDS so I was concerned that these anti-discrimination laws could be used to put LDS Social Services out of the adoption business as well.  The difference is that LDS social services actually operates using donated funds.  Its actually a charity.  So maybe we're safe.  But just maybe.

There is plenty of precedence for the state violating private property rights when it comes to anti- discrimination laws.  Just look at the racial discrimination laws.  These laws apply to private business owners as well as government agencies.  I believe that private property is so sacred that people should have the right to discriminate against whoever they want for whatever reason if they own the property.  We may think a particular restaurant owner is ridiculous for not allowing a particular race in his restaurant, but its HIS RESTAURANT!  And if the general public finds his stance vile they will stop going to his restaurant.  These things have a way of sorting themselves out in the marketplace.  Once we give the government the power to prohibit discrimination for reasons most of us agree with, they may very well use that power in ways we don't all agree with in the future.

And no post of mine would be complete without a morally charged appeal:  If we want the government out of their so-called 'charity' business, we've gotta start actually donating money to charities.  Once our charitable institutions are healthy, demand for government 'charity' will decline.  An impossible notion?  Maybe, but its the only real solution.