Before returning to Massachusetts, I lived in a state where the dominant church, unable to attract adherents to its brand of Christianity by spreading the Gospel and the Teachings of Jesus because their interpretation was rather hateful, endeavored to force-convert everyone in the state by making civil law correspond with its interpretation of the New and Old Testaments.

They were like Charlemagne and his Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae which prescribed death to Saxon pagans who refused to convert to Christianity. Their desire was  Conversionem Leges ab.

I now attend church only on extremely rare occasions, mostly weddings and funerals. This wasn’t always the case, but as time went on, it had changed. I consider myself somewhat spiritual, but organized religion had become too political and judgmental for my taste.

I am familiar with churches both large and small, and I am aware from past experiences that at times improvements have to be made to the structure of a church building and any facilities connected to it. The money came from the congregation of those churches, and not from people who were not members. I was a member of a church that needed its roof fixed, and a loan was obtained with the amount of money that was collected at each mass each Sunday as proof of the ability to repay the debt. But people who belonged to other churches, or no church, were not forced to help pay for the roof. That would have been unthinkable.

So let me see if I got this straight.

I pay income tax and through my rent property tax. Others pay direct property tax if they own a home.

I pay sales taxes.

All this tax money goes to pay for the common good.

I choose not to go to church, so, no church gets my money because I am not there for the collection on Sunday. So if any church wants to do something, I do not pay for it. I have the e afreedom to choose whether or not I will be a member of any given church, and if I choose to give money, I have a choics to which one.

There is a church across the street from my apartment building, and while it is protected by the police and fire department supported through my taxes, and can avail itself of any public infrastructure for which it pays nothing, it can now go to the government when it wants something and get more of my money without me getting anything in return even if it is one of those churches that speaks vitriol and spreads misinformation about me and those like me to engender hate toward us.

Now any church that rejects me as a person and whose belief system is as unacceptable to me as I am to it, can be supported by me through pressure.

Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the government cannot ban a religious organization from receiving taxpayer funds for programs that they claim do not have religious intent.

A tax exempt, public utility using church in Missouri had been denied funds from a state taxpayer funded program that gives funds for schools who resurface playgrounds with materials made from recycled tires.

Why not use other people’s money for their own project?

SCOTUS ruled that because an organization is based in religion, the government cannot discriminate against it by denying it funds for projects or programs that are not religious in nature.

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“Listen to this about Jesus, kids, and then I will let you play on the swings.”

“I’ll let you all climb on the monkey bars right after I tell you that the Bible says all Homosexuals should be put to death. Oh, and while you are climbing on them, remember that homosexual tax money paid for them.”

Such a possibility exists since it was an anti-gay hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom, that argued the case, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, on behalf of the church.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion.

“The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution . . . and cannot stand.”

Apparently, not handing other people’s tax dollars over to a tax exempt, public infrastructure using entity, amounts to hostility toward religion.

Missouri’s former solicitor general said Trinity Lutheran

 “remains free, without any public subsidy, to worship, teach, pray, and practice any other aspect of its faith however it wishes. The state merely declines to offer financial support.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated from the bench,

“To hear the Court tell it, this is a simple case about recycling tires to resurface a playground. The stakes are higher. This case is about nothing less than the relationship between religious institutions and the civil government—that is, between church and state. The Court today profoundly changes that relationship by holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church. Its decision slights both our precedents and our history, and its reasoning weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both.

Properly understood then, this is a case about whether Missouri can decline to fund improvements to the facilities the Church uses to practice and spread its religious views. This Court has repeatedly warned that funding of exactly this kind—payments from the government to a house of worship—would cross the line drawn by the Establishment Clause.

So it is surprising that the Court mentions the Establishment Clause only to note the parties’ agreement that it ‘does not prevent Missouri from including Trinity Lutheran in the Scrap Tire Program.’ … Constitutional questions are decided by this Court, not the parties’ concessions. The Establishment Clause does not allow Missouri to grant the Church’s funding request because the Church uses the Learning Center, including its playground, in conjunction with its religious mission. The Court’s silence on this front signals either its misunderstanding of the facts of this case or a startling departure from our precedents.”

So a religious organization can now get funds from taxpayers by claiming that what they want to spend money on will not be used for religious purposes.

What happens when it IS used for religious purposes after what they got money for is built?

Perhaps things could be better if churches, desiring to use taxpayer money, join the taxpayers and contribute.