In New York State, Satmar Jews marry within their church but remain single in the eyes of the law. They cohabit but the women and children collect state and local services as if they were single.

The group along with the Lubbovitch sect are a huge constituency for Chuck Schumer and they are encroaching on other areas in upstate New York.

Like everything else, individual contact serves to get past initial impressions, but as a whole the group votes as a bloc and is very determined to get their own way in the long term which is a lot longer than most people realize, I’m talking decades.

This could be the bizzaro world version of the gay themed Angels in America play that was protested by the religious right, who demanded funding be cut to arts organizations that supported it. Ironically, the opposition was was made the play so newsworthy and successful.

I think the Mormons would happily take a financial hit if they could be seen by more Christian’s as fellow Christian soldiers. Unlike most religions, Mormons do almost all the work for the Church for free, so they may see this as another self righteous sacrifice.

The intrusion of churches into the civil aspect of marriage is a curious American institution. Does anyone know how we happened to do that particular stupid thing? In most of Europe, if you want to marry to have to visit the registrar’s office and handle the civil contract. At that point, it’s a done deal as far as the government is concerned.

If you need to go have symbolic intercourse in front of goD [sic] and everybody, well, that’s your deal and you have to make arrangements with the parish bosses.

The really curious thing about CoJCLDSers is that their marriage sacrament is so holy and especial that it has to happen in a Temple, and blaspheming unbelievers like me can’t go. Why do they want to soil such an especial chingadero with a tacky license from the same government that denied them their right to marry 27 wives if goD told ‘em to?

There’s been a trend of late among Christian churches generally to play the “discrimination” and “hate crime” cards whenever someone criticizes them in the least bit publically or vocally. Google “PZ Myers cracker” for an idea what I’m talking about. Playing the victim gets their worshippers to rally round, rather than ask themselves whether their church might be going too far. It’s a great tactic, if you own lots of TV and radio stations.

But it dawns on me, that there’s a more fundamental problem with it. The genuine fundamentalist formulation would be, “God said it, that settles it.” What the bumper sticker is really saying is, “What settles it is, that I believe it. My beliefs rule. When you come right down to it, even God is irrelevant.”