Tax Exempt Churches Must Refrain From Political Speech
Accepting tax exemption also means refraining from intervening in partisan politics. Some religious leaders have a difficult time accepting this. But the “no-politicking” rule is part of the tax code and must be obeyed. If a church wants to tell people which candidates to vote for or against, it should first give up its tax-exempt status.
Remember, this provision applies to all tax-exempt, 501 (c)(3) organizations. It’s not some special burden on houses of worship. Museums, charities, educational institutions and so on must abide by it as well. And the ban on politicking applies only to endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. It does not extend to discussion of issues. Even in a church, there is plenty of room to talk about the burning issues of the day. The pastor just can’t use the pulpit or church resources to tell you who to vote for or against.
This rule is not a stifling of free speech. Remember, no house of worship or organization is required to take tax exemption. Exemption from taxes is a desirable benefit, one that not surprisingly comes with conditions. If a church (or indeed any non-profit) doesn’t want to meet the conditions, it is free to forgo tax exemption, pay taxes and be as partisan as it wants.
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This can be difficult to talk about. Technically, the head of a church /synagogue/mosque is forbidden from specifically telling 'the faithful' how to vote . As I have a friend and a family member that work for the IRS, that I can verify.
However, some people see that if the phrase 'please vote' is mentioned by the leader of the church/synagogue/mosque (without referring to any name or issue, much less than endorsing any person/issue being voted upon) then that is political speech and the affected church/synagogue/mosque should lose its tax exempt status. Each church/synagogue/mosque has a certain belief system, some would say, that would cause an attendee asked to simply 'please vote' to vote in a certain manner, for or against certain people or issues, depending on the belief system of the church/synagogue/mosque. Some further questions arise from this.
Should religious people (regardless of religion ) be allowed to vote at all? If not, why not? Constitutionally?
If a member of a church/synagogue/mosque wishes, completely out of his/her own expenses, to support a particular political cause without the financial support or direct moral guidance (and of course no mention of the church/synagogue/mosque or the belief system espoused thereby) of their church/synagogue/mosque, does it then cause their church/synagogue/mosque to lose its tax-exempt status?
Lets assume that all churches/synagogues/mosques lost their tax-exempt status. Would there still be quarelling because 'those religious folk' may be seen to vote a certain way?
Tax exemption does not prohibit freedom of speech. If people that attend a church/synagogue/mosque and personally hold to a particular belief, then it is their personal belief. It may not agree with the belief system held to by their church/synagogue/mosque, but it may. It is the persons choice as to whether he/she will adhere to the teachings at his/her church/synagogue/mosque or not.
So, lets do away with churches, synagogues, and mosques. If a person has a particular belief about a person/issue on the ballot and is a person of faith (regardless of which faith), and said person is qualified to vote, then what is to prevent him/her from voting according to his/her belief? Do we test all voters to make sure they are not referencing any religious texts while making their decisions as to how to vote?
Or is voting reduced to a mere 'it feels good...' issue? Maybe one candidate parts his hair a certain way or a ballot issue is worded such to present only the good side of the issue but not the bad? Or maybe it is simply a matter of party line..."I am a member of party X so I will vote for all the candidates in that party and for or against ballot issues depending completely on how party X tells me to." How is that different than the voting person of faith?
Churches require youths to abstain from sex yet feel they have the right to govern the lives of all who live in this nation. If the church advocates for ANY political position they should lose all tax exemptions.
this is something that i`ve wondered about for years. how can the chruch stick their noses in campains and such, and call themselves tax exempt when all you hear about is them trying to influence votes one way or another
.. they're not a school or museum. They're not a brain dead liberal feelgood society . They law should exclude them from political restriction AS WELL as be tax free. WHY NOT TAX THE AIR? Tax people for the rain. for the sun? Tax free schools and museaums should not be politically involved because democracy necesitates they remain neutral public property of the common wealth. that's the laws design. You make no sense.
While religious organisations & their spokepersons (Rabbi, Priest, Pastor, Imam, etc.) may not endorse specific candidates , they have had, & continue to have, enshrined in law, the irrefutable right to speak out about, & advocate for socio-political issues. Such is an historically important, arguably indispensable part of the public discourse.
To deny communities of faith the right of political discourse (as delineated above) solely because they are communities of faith would be the rankest of unconstitutional discrimination.
The involvement of the Catholic Church in American politics has gone way beyond free speech . When a church coerces members to vote in one way or another against the rights of other citizens, it makes itself an enemy of civil society . Not that the RCC has ever been interested n civil society or any other form of liberty. Pray politics; Pay taxes .
Church activities should be tax exempt until they reach the point when they turn themselves into lobbying machines; then they should loose their tax exempt status... not that any of our politicians, who are bought and traded like baseball cards, will do anything about this abuse of other people's liberty.
No, Mr. Tranchina the R.C.C. has not "gone beyond" freedom of speech . Just because the hierarchy may have supported some positions that you don't favour, they have not contravened any US election /non-profit laws.
Would you dare to make the same argument against the huge number of religious organisations that supported, organised & pushed for the Civil Rights Act? Or those that today fight for the rights of illegal aliens ? Not likely, since these causes have the approbation of huge segments of society .
Application of law is not based on popularity of position. Your strawman asserting a specious "link" between religious person's/organisation's exercise of their right of free expression and "abuse of other people's liberty" fails on its face, lacking both factual content & internal logic.
Perhaps you should examine your prejudices & ill-concealed hatred of both religion & the Religious before making patently false, inflammatory statements. The R.C.C. has not (recent history) sought to remove any "rights" from citizens, all that it has done is oppose the illegal redefinition of an institution to pander to a small, spoiled & vocal behavioural sub-culture.
Members of said sub-culture have the same right as all other citizens to marry a non-sanguinary, adult, unmarried member of the opposite sex . What they don't have, is any right to attempt to force an unwanted & revolting redefinition of one of society's most basic institutions.
To compare the enforced from-the-Vatican bigotry of the Roman Catholic Church to the Civil Rights movement is offensive to me as I would hope it would be to anyone who reads this, who is not him or herself a Catholic bigot. The excess of which I spoke is not an excess of speech it is an excess of coercion and and excess of influence peddling (that's the expenditure of cash).
I have neither a hatred of religion nor a hatred for Religious. That's is in your imagination. However, I will gladly confess that I detest bullies. I believe in a civil and open society , where ideas are freely exchanged and the right of anyone — even the most despised minority — to openly profess those opinions is protected.
I do, however, have opinions which I happily keep to myself when religious institutions do not seek to impose their fantasies upon an otherwise free society. You're comments about the rights of our gay and lesbian fellow citizens are expressly the sort of bigotry that is comforted by a a reactionary church with preposterous and historically discredited claims to "Divine Authority." It is idiotic to assume that this rotten institution should presume power over the rights of free citizens who do not choose to be in your cult. Isn't their something about :whited sepulchers s in your Bible?
You are correct. I believe Roman Catholicism is based upon faith in preposterous, perverted, historically-distorted nonsense, yet, as a citizen, I owe Catholics the obligation to defend their right to practice their religion in their homes, churches and schools free from any sort of coercion. I believe that I have the obligation to make that defense with my life. I believe that I owe the same obligation to Muslims ,to Jews, to Jehovah's Witnesses, to Fundamentalist Christians , to Wiccans, to Buddhists and to Animists. I even believe that I have the right to embrace my own form of tenuous religious beliefs. I believe none of these groups has the right to impose, by force-of- law , their particular cosmological vision on anyone who does not volunteer.
We all share a moment in time on a beautiful blue-green planet in an unimaginably vast and majestically incomprehensible universe. The last thing that will work in the world is for us to enforce our tenuous conceptions of the inconceivable on one another in the name of religion.
As Camus wrote" "The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind."
At to you most offensive comment : "... all that it (the RCC) has done is oppose the illegal redefinition of an institution to pander to a small, spoiled & vocal behavioural sub-culture." I will let that ugly bit of bigoted idiocy stand in the face of history.
But, I will share with you what I learned from 15 years in Catholic schools, including Jesuit university. I learned that when someone presumes to speak for God, you don't leave children alone with them. And, if you think that's just an attempt at a clever remark, I feel sorry for you.
Mr. Trachina,
Given the plethora of assumptions, glaring errors, strawmen & outright lies that you propound in your Rede Feculentia one is spoilt for choice. Nevertheless, to make a beginning, Quote:"To compare the enforced from-the-Vatican bigotry of the Roman Catholic Church to the Civil Rights movement is offensive to me"EndQuote. Your overheated prose belies your assertion in the next paragraph of your screed, Quote" I have neither a hatred of religion nor a hatred for Religious."EndQuote. First you assert that the social justice/social activism that the R.C.C. promulgates is acutally "Vatican Bigotry", then in a show of astounding arrogance, you assert that any whose opinion differs from your must be a Quote "Catholic bigot"EndQuote. You further indulge in slander by asserting that the legal , & protected activities that the R.C.C. exercises are Quote "excess of coercion and and excess of influence peddling (that's the expenditure of cash)."EndQuote. What the R.C.C does with their money in dealing with important social/moral issues is no different from what they do with their funds when administering orphanages, hospitals, hospices, or feeding the poor. Under the law , neither you or any other intolerant Theophobe can cause the creation of a multi-tiered apartheid enforcement of the tax code, wherein those that you agree with are granted full protection/privilege, & those with whom you disagree are gulag bound.
Your further ranting, Quote "...idiotic to assume that this rotten institution should presume power over the rights of free citizens..."EndQuote by this definition, any group that seeks action/redress at the ballot box is presuming power, or is it once again with you a case of this only applying to Religious/Religions?
Next we come to one of your more amusing treks into absolute idiocy...Quote "Isn't their(sic) something about :whited sepulchers s in your Bible?"EndQuote. Actually, no. If you had bothered to read the name on my postings you (unless you are extremely ethnocentric & provincial) would have noticed that I am a Jew. I certainly have no love for the Roman Curia, however in this instance they have done nothing to contravene any of the applicable tax codes, thus did I so assert & demonstrate.
When you frothed about my reference to the attempted coup d' societe of "homosexual marriage " Quote "I will let that ugly bit of bigoted idiocy stand in the face of history."EndQuote. So far out of 31 states that have had the question put to the electorate, all 31 have sent it down in ignominious defeat. Just because the majority does not agree with your pet viewpoint, you like a maddened beast lash out at any and all unto whom you wish to cause harm. As for "history", America is like a fleeting mayfly, barely 234 years old, the EU far younger and the modern "gay" homosexual is a social construct of less than fifty years. Family endures, faith, morality & simple common decency will still be the same & will hold sway long after the "modern" death-cultist extreme left-wing socialist evil is dead in its own ashes. In the end this strange aberration of near amoral societies being unduly influenced by self-obsessed petulant children will be but a rarely recalled oscillation in the steady progress of human history.
Your final bit of vulgarity imputing paedophile motives to persons religious is as revealing about your own make up as it is defamatory. Sad that you could not do better forensically, thus being reduced to gutter-slurs & infamous lies.
Finally, did you notice that (according to the Side: entry at the bottom of your posts, you are in the Yes Churches Should be Tax Exempt camp?
yehudasf:
First, I just read your title. Had I read it before I would not have bothered to respond to your post.
You don't read very well.
First, I never attacked religion . I attacked, and will continue to attack, those who manipulate the ignorant with the lowest elements of religion --- those elements that support the leverage of fake superiority over the commonality of our human lives and our human aspirations. Like everything else in life, religion is not an unmixed blessing.
Second, I never said that I was a Catholic. In fact I am not. In fact, I am a Jew, one who just got off the phone with his son who'd come in from swimming in the Dead Sea. We develop a defective vision of religion, when we remove the central focus from compassion and put it on fake certainties and the puerile power that claims to "Divine Authority" can give us over other people. I read your name, but being a Jew with an Italian last name, I do not make facile assumptions about other people's religions or culture, or politics by their names. Frankly, I was hoping you weren't a Jew... but that's my bias .
Those who use their religion as a pretext to attack other people's human rights disgrace religion. You and the Catholic Church have every right to your opinions toward our gay and lesbian neighbors; you have no right to enforce that prejudice as law against their civil rights. Any Jew who is not sensitive to the way this could be turned against us, must not see that America has a major faction in one of its two major political parties that feeds on race -hate. What will happen to minorities if our global economy fails and we enter a thirty year depression , then desperate citizens turn to that looney right-wing party? That couldn't happen here... right?
I don't hate religion; in fact, quite the opposite is true.
AS Elie Wiesel wrote: "The opposite of faith is not atheism it is indifference."
This is my conception of the central tenets of my faith
“What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law : all the rest is commentary”
--- Talmud Shabbat 31a “The Great Principle”
“None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
--- Number 13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths”
"This is the sum of duty to not do to others what would cause pain if done to you."
--- Mahabharata
"My religion is kindness." say the Buddhists.
Obviously, in Christianity, that used to be called "The Golden Rule." It has since been omitted in favor of the convictions of Popes and TV preachers who have the power of "Absolute Truth."
“The only way to isolate extremists who would manipulate religion to justify violence is to mobilize the mainstream centrist belief in tolerance, respect and moderation and compassion that is in the core of so many religious traditions.”
--- Rabbi David Saperstein
You wrote: "As for "history", America is like a fleeting mayfly, barely 234 years old, the EU far younger and the modern "gay" homosexual is a social construct of less than fifty years." You can't be serious. Do you really know so little of history? 50 years? Go read a book . The history of gays and lesbians goes back to the beginnings of virtually every society . Both the tolerance and persecution of gays and lesbians have existed throughout history. How could a Jew, who must know the history of the holocaust , feign ignorance of the persecution of homosexuals under the Nazis, How can you remember only YELLOW STARS and not remember PINK TRIANGLES,
As to your comment: "So far out of 31 states that have had the question put to the electorate, all 31 have sent it down in ignominious defeat." I'm sorry, but any Jew who thinks people's basic human rights should be subject to a majority vote , has neither a sense of decency nor one of history. How many times in the last 3500 years, has our right to practice our religion been voted down by bigoted majorities. Do you consider those expulsions, pogroms and persecutions "ignominious defeats" for Jews? In contemporary thinking, ignominious defeat was accorded to the majorities in those evil plebiscites. I believe that is how this victories for bigotry in California and in Maine, etc. will be viewed.
PS.. If you has read my post, you would have seen that I voted YES, that churches should be tax exempt, but they should not be free to influence political campaigns with tax-free money. How does anybody in their right mind think that that is a good idea?
Since when did sin become a human or civil right? We sin because we are human, that doesn't mean we should protect our sins with civil rights laws.
Did you not read the whole explanation? If you read the whole thing, you would see that it refutes your free speech argument.
Organizations that meet the criteria have the OPTION to become tax exempt. By CHOOSING to be tax exempt they are AGREEING to not use the organization to endorse political candidates. If they fail to uphold their side of the agreement, then they should lose their tax exempt status.
Those leaders can choose to speak out; BUT CANNOT portray or proclaim it as the official stance of their organization. Whether religious or otherwise, this is the regulation and agreement of being tax exempt.
Like many ultra-leftist, secular jihadists, both you and the so-called "expert" are in gross error. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with the IRS tax codes can tell you, religious organisations are completely free to voice, advocate & unequivocally endorse any "political" issue. What they cannot do is to specifically endorse any individual, or political party, nor may they utilise the setting of regular religious service for a strictly political activity. If you have trouble comprehending this, take the time to review the (copious) information from the Pew Forum, which exhaustively dissects, exposes & explains the complete status (permitted v. prohibited) of political activities by religious organisations. Herewith Link to Pew Forum . One may download (separately) the full 23 page pdf of the relevant IRS codes. Read the materials & familiarise yourself with the law so that you appear less viscously partisan (at the expense of accuracy) & more a participant in an intellectual debate .
Merely wishing that a thing were so, (your & so-called "expert's" desire for unconstitutional muzzling of expression of communities of faith ) does not actually make it so.
Umm... That's what I said:
"By CHOOSING to be tax exempt they are AGREEING to not use the organization to endorse political candidates ."
And umm... So did the expert:
"And the ban on politicking applies only to endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. It does not extend to discussion of issues."
herewith the Pew IRS-Religion/political activity link
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=281