More on church-state separation

While on the topic of the separation of church and state, the concept has the potential to be a panacea for many other problem issues besides gay marriage. Here's one: Taxes.

You see, unlike any other charitable organization, churches are allowed to engage in religious discrimination, political fundraising, private education, and a host of other activities that are banned from receiving tax dollars (or sometimes even legal permission) for any other type of organization. A non-profit organization that engages in hiring discrimination based on religious beliefs, tries to instill those beliefs in impressionable children, and serves as a fundraiser for one political party would never be allowed - unless it called itself a church.

Most egregiously, these churches receive tax dollars both directly (under Bush's 'faith-based organization' slush fund for his supporters) and indirectly, by having their revenue stream be tax-free; in fact, their income qualifies as tax-deductible for those who fund it!

The separation of church and state, properly enforced, would acknowledge that churches are a business, with income, and should be taxed like any other private business and legislated like any other private business. That would include a legal responsibility against hiring discrimination in any non-BFOQ endeavors - i.e., they cannot discriminate against non-members when they hire teachers or janitors or cooks or accountants. They could only discriminate towards their own religious beliefs in a BFOQ situation - say, when hiring a new minister.

I am in favor of school competition and a limited voucher system experiment, but only if there is an exclusion for religious schools - no tax dollars should go to support a religion and the inculcation of its doctrine in young minds. In practice, as most schools receiving vouchers are Catholic or evangelical Protestant, that would effectively undermine all current programs - and just as well, as the teaching of religion is persuasively argued to be a far more insidious and important form of child abuse than the better known molestations by Catholic priests.