Google Discriminates Against Churches

Not sure why one would consider this discriminatory. They offer a service, and have determined that religions are not applicable. Why should they give a discount to huge churches, such as the LDS, Catholic, or Southern Baptists, when they themselves are trying to earn a profit?

Perhaps there are other reasons not to give churches the discount. Maybe they do not want to give discounts to fraudulent or terrorist based religions. Yet, if you provide for one religion, you must provide it for all.

They are still allowing churches and religions to use their services. Just not get a discount. Again, THIS IS A BUSINESS with the responsibility to its shareholders to make a profit!

Besides, there are alternatives to Google’s services. Microsoft has its new MS 360 degrees program, and there are other free or cheap offerings available, as well.

Now, if Google had said they would give the discount to some religions and not others, THEN it would be discriminatory.

Oh, and it is not a church tax. A tax is placed by government or an organization that can take the money by force. No one is forcing the church to use Google’s services. And Google is not forcing the Church to use its services, either.

Now, that said. Is it smart for Google to do this? Will it impact negatively on churches so much, that their pastors will encourage their flocks to use Yahoo, Microsoft, or others’ products instead? How will it affect Google’s bottom line in the long run? And for a business, that should be the key focus: bottom line, and not whether a religion or other group received a discount.

Making a profit for their shareholders is apparently consistent with discounts for non-religious non-profits.

Most churches are not, of course, large organizations with deep pockets.

On the other hand, many non-religious non-profits ARE large organizations with deep pockets.

Your defense of Google is incoherent. The only good points are the ones where you attack strawmen (Church tax? Don’t mistake invective for dispassionate classification. Come now.)

I’m with Ram. If this is discrimination, then so is the practice of charging more for customers who are not old enough to get a senior discount.

Sorry, Books., but that’s a non-analagous analogy.

Offering a discount to non-profits, BUT ONLY if the non-profits don’t have a religious affiliation, is invidious.

Ooh. You sent me to the dictionary. I first thought you meant insidious, but I had a confused understanding of invidious and insidious. Thank-you.

I suppose it is a bit insidous of Google too.

It reflects the new PC. Google is now a new real-life example, a new cultural paradigm, reflecting this progressive PC mind-set.

That mind-set has now moved from the realm of ideas and discussion, and now has solidified into a high-profile real-life example.

However, I’m now of two minds on this.

I still have a libertarian attraction to the concept of freedom of association. I’ve long been of the opinion that people have a right to discriminate in their personal and business dealings. From a libertarian viewpoint, anti-discrimination laws seem to cross the line into coercion of conscience.

But, I just remembered that “discrimination” as defined in US law, does include _religion_ along with race and national origen.

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964

Though I wonder if the concept of discrimination in _places_ of “public accomodation” apply to purely non-physical-presence kinds of business transactions. In today’s PC climate, I would think they do. Not giving discounts to reglions, under the spirit of the Civil Rights laws, would be tantamount to not giving discounts to any other protected class.

Though Google’s defenders would say that they are not discriminating _between_ one religion and another, the counter to that would be religion versus non-religion is still discrimination based on religion.

Google’s management are rather young people. Page and Brin are 38, and most of their management is in the same age range or younger.

The seeds of this attitude were first planted over 25 years ago when the Liberal/Progressive movement exploded, as the 60′s radicals became the “establishment” in academia, media, and politics.

This is an example of the culture war that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been screeching about for years. *This* is what they’ve been talking about.

So… I wonder if it’s time for religions to sue for discrimination under the various Civil Rights acts. After all, religion, ie religious affiliation, is one of the protected classes.

Books,
you may be right as a legal question. I’m sure Google has rafts of lawyers, but it still sounds like a possible case to me.
I was not, however, making a legal claim. I was arguing that discrimination against religions is wrong.

Freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience includes the freedom to disparage and denigrate (as in downgrade) religion.

This policy of Google’s is nothing new. It’s the fruit of seeds that I saw planted in the 1960′s with progressive radicals. Those progressive radicals infested academia and mass media by the 1980′s, and now the consumers of media who started watching TV in the 80′s, and the students (who are in their 30′s now, Page and Brin are 38) of those radicals, are starting to run things as “the establishment.”

The progressive radicals have multiplied their effectiveness rather efficiently by taking over media and academia. So anyone who was raised by parents who abdicated their parental responsibility to schools and the boob-tube, has now been programmed (by the TV and academia) and put “in charge” of much of our institutions.

I believe prejudice in the public marketplace, or anywhere, is wrong (as in sinful), however my libertarian streak has always been against government attempting to enforce any restriction on freedom of association and freedom of conscience.

I should be able to do business with whomever I choose, under any conditions which I and the other party agree with. No one should be forced by government to do business with me, and I should not be forced to do business with anyone under terms not of my choosing. Public utilities/monopolies, such as electricity, water and gas are one exception I can think of.

The various civil rights acts of the 1960′s had good intentions and worthy goals. However, I do not condone enforcing such goals by government action. They were bad means to achieve good ends. And, the principle of government action to ensure “fairness” also resulted in _bad_ things, such as quotas, lowering of standards, reverse discrimination, paternalism (lowered expectations) towards minorities, dependency on government programs, increased illegitimacy, and higher crime.

In the same line, denigrating religion to be a lower class of non-profit is wrong. And though I see a remedy in Civil Rights law (since religious affiliation is, by definition, a protected class in terms of discrimination), I’m having a hard time getting worked up.

I’m all for the tax breaks offered non-profits, but I’d rather see the elimination of the idea of “protected classes” in terms of “fairness.”

I would like to see government get out of the “thought police” business altogether.

Related subjects: “hate crimes” and forced acceptance of same-sex marriage.

Bibliography: Various columns by Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell.

Books.,
you persist in seeing this as solely a legal question. Morality and outrage should in no way be reduced to questions of legality. You, a claimed libertarian, should know that more than any.
The policy very much is something knew. The impulses behind it, not so much, but that’s true of most outrages since the eating of the apple.

I do see it as a moral issue. It’s still a matter of freedom of conscience on the part of Google, their stockholders, and their management.

As much as I think G is an evul organization, along the lines of a pre-cursor to sky-net, until such time as they are declared a monopoly of a necessary utility, I have to support their right to set their prices as they wish. They have the moral right of conscience to effectively say “religions suck” by not offering religions the same pricing as other non-profits. They’ve just found a new way to say it.

At the same time, I support the wedding photographer who declined to take on a lesbian couple as clients, and photograph their wedding.

Both are moral issues, as they are discrimination that is tied into freedom of conscience.

In my book, “discrimination” is not necessarily a bad thing. The technical meaning is to discern and choose between two or more alternatives. The meaning was hijacked in the 1960′s to exclusively apply to situations where a choice was made against someone apparently because they were a member of a protected class.

As I see it, discrimination, the choosing among two or more options (whether choosing to eat at Pizza Hut or Domino’s, or choosing to do business or not to do business with someone) is a moral right that falls under the heading of freedom of conscience.

Google’s price discrimination is a new form of anti-religion. I’m sad to see our society increase in anti-religion. It’s denigrating to all religions.

But this fight was lost when the people who now run Google were watching TV growing up, and when they were in college.

My question is whether parents who teach contrary to what TV and academia are teaching, can raise more children than parents who abdicate the teaching of their cihldren to TV and academia.

This is a generational fight. The liberals have been fighting for two generations and conservatives have allowed the liberals to win two key battlegrounds of tremendous influence: the media and academia.

Unless those two are won back, it’s a lost cause. Otherwise, TV/media and academia will just churn out more libs.

I feel like Mormon. It’s a lost cause, but we have to keep the fight up for the sake of our own integrity.

It’s very hard to convert an entrenched liberal to right thinking. The only real answer is to ensure the right thinking of future adults. And as long as liberals control TV and academia, the only efforts that can now be made seem to be in families and churches.

I think there is an additional reason to not invoke discrimination laws. I have long observed that Europe has long had trouble with anti-semitism, despite the fact there are numerous laws against it, even laws that impinge on freedom of speech. The United States in contrast, just treats them like kooks and we have much less trouble.

Here in the United States, we have numerous laws trying to bring racial equality, and yet it seems the more laws we pass, the bigger an issue it becomes. I wonder if Europe has similar trouble?

I offer this by way of correlation, though I acknowledge I can not conclusively show causation.

However, certain forms of justice, I suspect, will never come by legislation. Never. It has to come from us, or it will never come.

The sacred rights of conscience are very much by the way, since no one here has proposed taking it away from anyone. To the extent a corporation can have a conscience, Google’s is malformed and acting against the best interests of God, man, and society, by discriminating against religion. Google therefore deserves condemnation. All this rights talk is at best irrelevant and at worst helps to perpetrate the wrong.