One reader (perhaps we can call him Mere O’s very own Professor Kingsfield?) of Friday’s post raised another possible mechanism that could be used by courts or legislatures to target conservative religious groups: the fear of “religious extremism.”
Jake —
You said, “ But such a move would probably be a bridge too far as that box includes a lot of organizations that even many progressives would be reluctant to see lose tax-exempt status. (It also would be relatively easy to spin such a strategy in the media as being anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic, which would create major problems for the supporters of such a move.) Thus there would need to be some kind of legal mechanism for removing tax-exempt status from religious organizations that discriminate against protected classes while preserving it for non-discriminatory organizations.”I wonder if you can do it, UK-style, under the banner of “counter-extremism.” Then, for the general public, it doesn’t have to become anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic, it becomes anti Islamist extremists, or anti Jewish extremism. Once the general public starts to see orthodox Christianity as “extreme” — dangerous with respect to “social cohesion” and “child safeguarding” (to use two popular British terms) — then I wonder if you couldn’t see more state-and-social-defense-through-offense moves (i.e. remove tax status, greater scrutiny of what’s being taught to children in ‘non-school education’ settings, etc.)
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