My email to the National Organization for Marriage.

I will let you know when I get a response. Should you become inspired to write your own email to NOM, the address is contact@nationformarriage.org

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:47 PM, Tyler Breisacher wrote:

Hi there!

I've been reading the material on your website, and I'm particularly interested in the "talking points" page on your website. I'm a Californian and I was very involved in the gay marriage battle in this state last year. It's great to see the best arguments against gay marriage summed up in one place. Of course, this issue is far from settled, and is still being debated all over this state and country, so I want to continue to be as informed as possible in the event that the issue comes up when talking with my friends and family. In particular, I have a question about this point:

“Religious groups like Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army may lose their tax exemptions, or be denied the use of parks and other public facilities, unless they endorse gay marriage."

Of course it's usually hard to prove or disprove statements about what "may" happen so normally I would accept this as a very real possibility. But as Californians we have the unique perspective of a state that had gay marriage for a few months last summer, before we restored the traditional definition of marriage. I think pro-gay activists might jump on this point: "No one will lose their tax exempt status. Gay marriage was legal last year, and no one lost their tax exempt status, did they?" I wouldn't know how to respond to this. Do you have any news stories about churches losing their tax exempt status over this issue, either in California or elsewhere? I seem to remember a case from New Jersey but my understanding is that it was a fairly complicated situation, so it would be nice to see all the facts of that case laid out somewhere.

Whenever I'm discussing this kind of thing with my friends I like to be armed with as much information as possible, so if you could point me to more information on how gay marriage has negatively affected churches I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you!

Tyler

matrixfrog@gmail.com