Gay marriage ruling may force Catholic schools to shutter their doors

By Tom Quiner

There is a special place in heaven for anyone who sits on the Board of Education for a Catholic school.

It is a time-consuming, thankless job guaranteed to make some people mad due to the inevitable tough decisions that have to be made.

One of the perennial tough decision has to do with teachers’ salaries. Budgets are tight in Catholic Schools. Tuition doesn’t come close to covering their costs. Catholic schools depend on parish subsidies to keep their doors opened.

Teachers in Catholic schools earn less than they could earn teaching in public schools, but many stay simply because they believe in the mission. It pains the Board to underpay teachers, but that’s the way it is. Money is excruciatingly tight, and many, many Catholic schools rest on a precarious financial perch.

The perch is about to become deadly.

In Monday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court which could end up legalizing gay marriage in all fifty states, the Obama Government admitted that such a ruling could destroy private, religious schools.

Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation writes of this stunning admission by the Obama Government:

“One of the more startling portions of oral arguments today at the Supreme Court was the willingness of the Obama administration’s Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, to admit that religious schools that affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman may lose their non-profit tax-exempt status if marriage is redefined.

Justice Samuel Alito asked Verrilli whether a religious school that believed marriage was the union of husband and wife would lose their non-profit tax status.

The solicitor general answered: “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.”

If a Catholic school loses its non-profit status, its costs will increase dramatically, forcing many, if not most, to close.

As this blog has stated before, religious freedom and so-called gay marriage cannot co-exist. The “tolerance mob” pushing their gay agenda have no tolerance for people who practice a religion different than theirs.

Something has to give.