Why Some Clergy Might Be Holding Their Tongues

Shelob pointed out to me last neap tide that I should address some more current issues. Probably a good plan. So I had him cull some newsfeeds for me and redirect till I understood what was going on.

I ran into this dilemma. Shelob? Correct me if I get these numbers wrong:

1. 1 in 10,000 or more clergy are involved in publicly protesting the lifting of the same-sex marriage ban in Virginia.
2. 100% of declared religious groups have an official stance on same-sex marriage.
3. The clear majority of religious groups are officially against same-sex marriage, but growing numbers of congregations are taking the path of tolerance with and sometimes without approval by their clergy
4. The numbers don't match up.

Point 1: No way to collect exact number at this time. Small percentage.
Point 2: If 'no comment' is official stance, then this is correct. (One instance.)
Point 3: Apparently correct. No sociological variance data.
Point 4: Correct. Subjective interpretation to follow?

You betcha.
I'm all for tolerance and avoiding condoning what you can't approve of, but this interesting idea leapt out at me. There ARE other motives for clergy staying silent. What I'm curious about is how many people agree with my rating of commonness. Let me explain after showing you this graphic.

Herr D, heromachine.com. He's started referring to these as 'snap-works.' I'm going to be sending some small crawlers back through here, because he noticed some crediting errors. My goal is to fix all those by 8/31. --Hairy Deewon

The first motive I'm defining is 'PR-moderate image' or PRmi. I'm sure a lot of clergy are worried that extremists and fundamentalists are depicted as way too common. Frankly I haven't given Shelob the kind of processing power it would take to determine if religious protesting in America completely fell off after the unfortunate events of 9/11. But I think it's moderately likely. Clergy of every kind probably want to distance themselves from the kind of [roughly translates to hypocrite] that would kill other people or even act extremely hateful in the name of a supreme being. Like a supreme being would allow humanity to survive at all if it was hateful! You Humanity would be SO toasted. Too many victimizers by far.

The second motive is the 'sin reduction ratio' or srr. Clergy who believe, or at least profess to believe, that same-sex relations are sin have this interesting problem. If more people who like that kind of thing are in monogamous relationships, they aren't encouraging more people toward it. That might be looked at as encouraging less sin. Now THAT'S a dilemma. Clergy with this on their mind can't comment on same-sex marriage at all if they are trying to follow both their religion AND their own conscience.

I'm suggesting that the clergy who aren't publicly speaking out most commonly have BOTH srr and PRmi in mind, that second most commonly have just srr in mind, and third most commonly have just PRmi in mind.

How many of you think a different order is more likely?