The Hypocrisy Of Sam Yagan and OkCupid

a) filtered up to SCOTUS

b) been accepted as a case by SCOTUS.

Business and religious organizations are significantly different kinds of recognized organizations in the U.S. It's not correct to try and draw a parallel between them. Just like it's not correct to draw a parallel between U.S. criminal law and the UCMJ.

In your last example (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/30/nj-rules-against-ch...) it's possible the ruling will stand since the church was running a business outside of its normal religious functions. Here's the actual ruling http://www.aclu-nj.org/files/8713/2639/9826/CRT_6145-09_Bern...

In this case, the property was held by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. Not a church. However, majority ownership in the association is held by the United Methodist Church. Board members must be members or clergy in UMC. Meaning they formed the association as an organization outside of the Church and thus is required to follow the laws any other owned organization must follow...including non-discrimination.

This would be analogous to a church buying a McDonald's franchise and then claiming they can not hire minorities or women because of some religious tenant.

UMC owns a large number of businesses and properties that it leases for business or residential use. As a matter of fact, a better analogy is UMC might form a non-profit company that owns a low-rent apartment complex (as a social outreach program) and only allow low-income people to live there. But then deny an application based purely on somebody being gay. Or property that a restaurant leases and then demands the restaurant not serve gay patrons.

In this case the

In this case the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association owned about a square mile of beach front property that it used for both religious services (my guess would be with a fee paid to the Association by UMC) and rented out for various functions including weddings. It'd be no different than an owner of a large function hall renting it out for weddings 6 days a week and for church service on Sundays (which is actually quite common).

The Association then sought private organization (not religious) tax-exemption as part of a nature preservation agreement. A legal requirement under this exemption is that property be available for public use on an equal basis.

You can see where this is going and the rest of the opinion is good reading to help flesh out the story. It's relatively clear cut, and doesn't infringe in any way on the UMC to exercise their religious beliefs. In fact the UMC's defense was an effort to push out their religious beliefs into the public sphere in clear violation of the law. A law that, BTW makes clear exceptions for religious organizations and their practices -- even if discriminatory.

Drawing an analogy between an organized religious organization like a Church and a business like a restaurant is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. This specific dividing line has been held up over and over again in cases where religious organizations incorporate a business entity, and then wish to push particular discrimination policies specific to their practices into that business.

A White Supremacist church is free to be discriminatory, but the bakery it owns and runs as a separate business entity is not for example.

However, IIR, a religiously owned organization, like a corporation, may choose to discriminate based on religion. So the White Supremacist Church's bakery, let's say it's Lutheran, may choose not to hire non-Lutherans at its bakery. This was actually held up by SCOTUS in a 1987 decision for a Mormon church owned corporation.

edit http://www.ecfa.org/Content/TopicReligiousDiscrim

He's expressed his bigotry, he's in fact made political maneuverings to enact his bigotry. He's done nothing to apologize or rescind his bigot actions. People are judging him off his actions and lack of words, the best criteria.

> Perhaps you could explain why saying he was ruined professionally is false?

How about the dozen or so huge honchos who have so far made statements about standing with him? They clearly don't care about his actions and as you can see on this website a majority find valor in him making donations like he did, so no I don't see his professional life ruined (sadly) by his actions.

My response is that Eich didn't personally approve these ads, and may have had no way of possibly knowing what his money would actually fund. (I'd be interested in evidence about the visibility of any prior work, the timing of his donation, etc., though.)

If you find simply supporting the idea repugnant, sure, but then arguments like "he donated to a hate group" and Slate's "The Campaign for Prop 8 Was Unprecedentedly Cruel" aren't really necessary. If they pushed a law that is hateful to the core, it's less relevant how hateful or not the group itself was.

I suppose if he did see and regret the ads, he could have said so, but AFAIK has said nothing. Then again, he probably felt that doing anything other than a long thorough apology, donating to pro-gay-marriage groups, crying for forgiveness, etc., would dig the hole deeper.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...