Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition has suddenly decided that it is opposed to government subsidies for religion, if it means funding a church that performs same-sex weddings. The National Cathedral, which received a $700,000 federal grant for restoration in 2011, decided to host same-sex weddings and Reed is now demanding that they lose that grant:
In recent years, the National Cathedral has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. The Episcopal Church is one of the richest denominations in the United States and the oldest. According to Richard Ostling of the Associated Press, “the 7,364 congregations of the Episcopal Church receive $2.14 billion in offerings a year: Their buildings and liquid assets are worth untold billions.” Why is a church with untold billions in assets and asking American taxpayers to fund their church? With this policy change, taxpayers are being asked to subsidize gay marriage ceremonies for a church that can readily access millions of their own funds.
Pro-family and Pro-freedom Americans cannot sit idly by.We believe the definition of “marriage” to be the union of one man to one woman. If the National Cathedral wants to continue to receive taxpayer funding from Congress, they should respect Congressional action like the Defense of Marriage Act.
They’re right, of course, that the cathedral should not receive any federal funding of any kind. But if a group that advocates separation of church and state had made that argument (and they did) prior to the church deciding to perform same-sex weddings, Reed would have called that anti-Christian bigotry and hostility toward religion.
