UCCtruths

Four months later, the WSJ covers the story. There's very little new information here except that Brotherhood Mutual seems to be the only insurance carrier that applies an arbitrary level of risk to denominations (not the churches themselves) like the United Church of Christ that support gay marriage.

Ms. Thomas didn't have any examples of violence attributable to a church's support for gay clergy or same-sex marriage. She added, however, that disputes over gay marriage and clergy have led to splits in other churches and congregations, resulting in costly litigation.

Ms. Thomas said she wasn't aware of other churches Brotherhood Mutual turned down because of positions on gay clergy or marriage, but the insurer has rejected churches because of other controversial positions. "Advocating violence, militia groups, we have turned down for that. Picketing at military funerals, making statements against religious leaders of other faiths...are some of the reasons," she said.

I spoke out against Brotherhood Mutual back in September when this story broke and sent an email to the President of the insurance company. Some people may want to twist this story into a pro-gay/anti-gay thing, but this has more depth than that - this is about arbitrary discrimination.

As I stated back in September, the logic that a stated position by a separate, national body would automatically disqualify a local church from insurance coverage because the stand is controversial is absurd. It's also absurd that Mitzi L. Thomas (Assistant Vice President–Corporate Communications for Brotherhood Mutual) would put the gay marriage issue on par with "advocating violence, militia groups" especially when there doesn't seem to be any connection at all to increased risk and she doesn't provide examples of risk. I'd like to think Thomas might be read the article this morning and realize just how dumb she sounds.