Federal involvement seems to be the exploited niche of the motivated left.  For the tax code and the special tax treatments carved into the most complicated compilation in the Western world are what affords the activists their openings.

The gay marriage issue was essentially an equal treatment issue regarding Social Security benefits of surviving spouses, estate taxes, and joint tax returns.  All the emotional scenery was fluff.  It was about money and how the federal government, based on marital status, taxes some people one way and others another.

Next apparently on the docket are the churches.  The same thread will be pulled on this one: tax treatment.  The left will push for the reasoning, perhaps from the Supreme Court, why churches have tax-exempt status.  The SCOTUS will be up against the same type of equal treatment arguments.  A majority of them may welcome the issue.

Add in the possibility of churches sticking to their beliefs on marriage and losing their tax-exempt status.  The federal government has tremendous power over the survival of the church or other houses of worship, and, just as in denying federal funds to states that do not “jump through the federal hoop,” the tax status rug could get pulled.

As John Marshall noted in his McCulloch v. Maryland decision, the power to tax is the power to destroy.  And the power to deny tax-exempt status is equally destructive. 

The voucher system for schooling would be a boon to parochial schools across the nation.  Those who patronize those schools now pay double for schooling, once via real estate taxes and once via tuition.  To rectify that burden with a voucher system would be to ensure a healthy private schooling option.  Denied.  You won’t hear “it’s for the kids” from Washington, D.C. on this one.  Instead, we get the teacher union water haulers blocking the dialogue.

So the stage is set for the rapid decline in churches and houses of worship, all due to the same equal treatment canard we just witnessed in the gay marriage decision.  In conjunction, and well-known to the left, will be the collapse of church supported parochial schooling, much to the delight of the Department of Education and the teachers’ unions.