A Stitch in Haste

It seems to me that the Roman Catholic Church has just forfeited its tax-exempt status:

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wants all Roman Catholics to oppose marriage between same-sex couples by supporting a federal constitutional amendment that would ban it.

"Today there is a growing sense shared by many people, including a wide range of religious leaders, that a marriage protection amendment is the only federal-level action that ultimately will protect and preserve the institution of marriage," Bishop William Skylstad wrote in a letter dated March 27 and made public Monday.
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"I am aware that the time is short for taking action, so I urge you to do whatever you can, given the situation and the resources available to you," Skylstad wrote, noting that the Knights of Columbus have initiated a national postcard campaign to support the anti-gay legislation.

Of course, I'm speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek about the tax exemption (but see here). And officials of tax-exempt institutions of course don't forfeit their First Amendment rights when they assume office. Still, it seems to me that clerics should stick to spiritual matters rather than temporal ones and strive to win converts rather than to damn sinners and heretics to a political Hell on Earth. To mix a metaphor: Tend to your own flocks and stop worrying about the ones in Wyoming.

Meanwhile, I know for a fact that I have Catholic lay readers who oppose anti-gay bigotry. Maybe you could shoot off a few postcards yourself?

And, if we're going to pull off the gloves, then I have a question for Bishop Skylstad: Shouldn't Catholics also be sending postcards supporting a "Federal Priests Raping Children Amendment"?

Of all the holier-than-thou hypocrites within the bigot brigades, the Roman Catholic senior clergy are the most hypocritical, the least Christian and the most damnable.

For their sake rather than mine, I truly hope they're wrong about the existence of Hell.

"To be tax-exempt as an organization described in IRC Section 501(c)(3) of the Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for one or more of the purposes set forth in IRC Section 501(c)(3) and none of the earnings of the organization may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates."
--IRS Website

The chronic inaction of the Internal Revenue Service regarding the patently illegal political activities of fundamentalist Christian churches and clerics will one day go down as among the great scandals of American governance.

But today is not that day:

The Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention has dubbed June 4 “Marriage Protection Sunday,” and is requesting pastors to preach about gay marriage and encouraging Southern Baptists to tell their senators to vote for the amendment.

“Supporters of traditional marriage need to bombard their senators’ offices with e-mails and phone calls,” ERLC President Richard Land told Baptist Press, “and preachers across America need to let the pulpit ring forth in clear and no uncertain terms on Marriage Protection Sunday, June 4, and help create a groundswell of support for this amendment.

Note that these are, by and large, the same sort of people who were so eager to denounce the law schools that dared to challenge the anti-gay Solomon Amendment's threat to their federal funding if they denied access for military recruiters. Since there is no difference in principle between receiving government funding and receiving a tax exemption, how are these bigots anything other than miserable, odoriferous little hypocrites?

If they're so eager to protect their parishioners from the Others Who Are Ruining America™, then these anti-gay "Christians" should have the intellectual honesty and the moral courage to surrender their tax exempt status.

Don't hold your breath.

(Via Good As You. More thoughts at Pam's House Blend.)

"O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God?"
--Book of Mormon, Chapter 8, Verse 38

Just quick footnote to my previous post on the ongoing abuse of IRS tax-exemption by religious organizations that are politicking for the Federal Marriage Amendment:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has spent millions of dollars campaigning against gay marriage, on Sunday urged members to lobby U.S. senators on the proposed constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to being between a man and a woman.

The Church sent a letter to its congregational leaders throughout the United States that was to be read to the congregations Sunday.
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The letter noted that the Senate was scheduled to vote on the proposed marriage amendment on June 6, and said, "We urge our members to express themselves on this urgent matter to their elected representatives in the Senate."

Read the letter, then try to argue that the Mormon church has not willfully broken the rule against tax-exempt organizations interjecting themselves into legislative debates.

On the other hand, the Book of Mormon is accurate about one thing: "ye hypocrites" is exactly right.

Via Good As You.

The New York Times on a purported clash between religious bigotry and anti-discrimination laws:

"No one seriously believes that clergy will be forced, or even asked, to perform marriages that are anathema to them," [American Jewish Congress attorney Marc] Stern has written. But for other individuals and institutions opposed on religious grounds to same-sex marriage, its legal acceptance would have "substantial impact."

He has in mind schools, health care centers, social service agencies, summer camps, homeless shelters, nursing homes, orphanages, retreat houses, community centers, athletic programs and private businesses or services that operate by religious standards, like kosher caterers and marriage counselors.

One example, which he did not anticipate when first undertaking his analysis, was the Boston Catholic Charities' decision to withdraw from providing adoption services because the state license required placing children with gay married couples on the same basis as heterosexual married couples.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Here's the thing about "schools, health care centers, social service agencies, summer camps, homeless shelters, nursing homes, orphanages, retreat houses, community centers, athletic programs and private businesses" -- they're not churches! First Amendment freedom of religion simply does not apply. There is no such thing as "First Amendment separation of hospital and state" or "First Amendment separation of summer camps and state."

There may be perfectly good libertarian reasons to allow bigots to discriminate in the privacy of their own charitable and civic undertakings. There may even be other First Amendment prongs (i.e., freedom of association) that guarantee them the right to do so.

But these religiously sponsored, yet non-church, institutions and the clerics who exercise command-and-control authority over them are hardly libertarian and should not be allowed to disingenuously borrow and cherry-pick libertarian principles only when it suits them.

The single best illustration of this hypocritical posturing, as I've hinted at previously, is the use (and abuse) of charitable tax exemption. A tax break is a government subsidy no different in principle than a welfare check. Religious leaders don't just want to discriminate; they want to discriminate with the blessing of the IRS.

Remind me again who relentlessly insisted that government subsidization can come with strings attached? Oh right, these very same religious types, during the whole Rumsfeld v. FAIR debacle. Carte blanche, "have your cake and eat it too" government funding and tax breaks for me but not for thee? How is that in any way a principled "religious" conviction?

Say what you want about Bob Jones University, but after they lost in court, they stuck to their principles (as neanderthal as they happen to be). They chose racism over tax exemption. Pathetic and contemptible, yes -- but also consistent and unhypocritical.

And let's keep in mind, as an example, what really happened with Catholic Charities in Massachusetts. The organization itself had no problem with placing children with gay couples. They were shut down, involuntarily, by Massachusetts' bishops. This supposed "conflict" of dogma versus nondiscrimination more often than not has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the dedicated people in the trenches of these hospitals, orphanages and summer camps -- most of whom are not bigots and are often not even members of the religion sponsoring the institution. The "crisis" is strictly top-down histrionics -- the clergy are the ones who care about defending their "religious principles" (as neanderthal as they happen to be) and are the ones engaging in civic brinkmanship over this issue. The doctors, nurses, social workers and camp counselors generally couldn't care less. They just want to do good deeds.

Separation of church and state is a wonderful thing. Which is exactly why it shouldn't be diluted by flimsy reasoning and apocalyptic threats. The clergy should stay in their pulpits and leave humanitarianism to real humanitarians.

Back in May I blogged the following:

The chronic inaction of the Internal Revenue Service regarding the patently illegal political activities of fundamentalist Christian churches and clerics will one day go down as among the great scandals of American governance. But today is not that day...

Still, it's getting closer:

The Internal Revenue Service has been warning churches and nonprofit organizations that improper campaigning in the upcoming political season could endanger their tax-exempt status.

In notices to more than 15,000 tax-exempt organizations, numerous church denominations and tax preparers, the agency has detailed its new enforcement program, called the Political Activity Compliance Initiative[.]

Under the initiative, the IRS plans to expedite investigations into claims of improper campaigning, no longer waiting for an annual tax return to be filed or the tax year to end before launching a probe.

The horror stories in recent campaigns, especially with fundamentalist Christians preaching bigotry from the pulpit in the form of flagrant campaigning for passage of state anti-gay-marriage amendments, were enraging in terms of both their intensity and their frequency. And essentially nothing was done, either proactively or after the fact.

And it is very much ongoing:

A nondenominational church in Texas that has donated $1,500 to the local Republican Party should be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
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"This appears to be a blatant violation of federal law," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United.
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"When church-goers place their hard-earned money in the collection plate, they do not expect it to wind up in the hands of politicians," Lynn added. "That's an abuse of the people's trust and a flouting of the law."

The money went to Republicans. Go figure.

Of course, one puny redneck church in Texas hardly means anything. Pat Robertson in jail for tax fraud is closer to what must happen before this omnipresent law-breaking by supposed "Christians" will end.

OpinionJournal is engaging in a bit of inconsistency:

Under the 1954 Revenue Act, 501(c)(3) organizations risk losing their tax-exempt status if they "participate in, or intervene in ... any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for political office." Over the past two years scores of organizations have faced scrutiny for allegedly mixing their political convictions with their religious ones. And this summer the IRS expanded a program it first launched in 2004 to take direct aim at political advocacy inside houses of worship.
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It is true that the prohibition on church-centered political activity is decades old. But it is also true, as the IRS admits, that there is no "bright line test" to determine what constitutes political activity. Churches have always tried to influence voters on moral issues. What is different now is that moral issues -- abortion, stem-cell research, same-sex marriage, war -- are now hot political issues, and the IRS is pushing religious communities out of the debate.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Remind me again who insisted that government money -- which a tax exemption certainly is -- can come with strings attached?

Oh, right -- OpinionJournal -- back when they (along with other anti-gay factions) liked it when strings were being attached to government beneficence, in the form of the anti-First Amendment Solomon Amendment back when it was being (unsuccessfully) challenged in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, No. 04-1152 (2006):

In any event, there should be no legal question about Congress's right to put conditions on grants of federal funds to universities. It does this all the time -- including requirements that colleges adhere to certain civil rights and gender standards. With a few exceptions, universities have no trouble going along and courts have no problem letting them.

Universities are tax-exempt; churches are tax-exempt. Universities have First Amendment protections; churches have First Amendment protections. The Solomon "strings attached" apply to all universities equally; the tax-exemption "strings attached" apply to all churches equally. Most universities "have no trouble going along" with the strings attached for them; most churches "have no trouble going along" with the strings attached for them.

And yet OpinionJournal endorses one while condemning the other. Go figure.

Sometimes you can just choke on the hypocrisy of social conservatives.

When it's against the only institutions lower on the moral ladder than taxing authorities, sure: (WSJ -$)

Local government officials say they are levying taxes because churches are running businesses that don't have a charitable mission. At a time of greater federal scrutiny of religious finance, these efforts are targeting fast-growing Protestant megachurches and television evangelists, as well as established Catholic and Jewish congregations.
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The changing nature of churches "forces both courts and agencies and tax commissioners to decide what's a religious or charitable use," says John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta.

That bothers some religious scholars. "When you have a taxing authority trying to decide what's your ministry and what's not, I see a problem here," says James E. Vaughn, a law professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

The professor sees a problem — um, why? There is no First Amendment right not to have your church taxed.* It's a mere policy overlay wrapped up in the general heuristic that non-profit activities should be tax-exempt.

The government only comes close to the line when the churches come close to the line first.

Don't turn your pews into pizzerias, and don't confuse your pulpits with your politics, and you'll have little difficulty with the IRS.

(Via Religion Clause.)

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Meanwhile, I wonder whether the professor "sees a problem" with a local government using eminent domain to give land to a religious group to build a private school.**

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*Bob Jones University v. U.S., 461 U.S. 574 (1983).

**In Re 1839 North Eighth Street, No. 36 EAP 2006 (Supr. Ct. Penn., December 27, 2007) (PDF - 11 pages).

Sundays are for church. Or football. Or both.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill [S. 2591] this week that would allow houses of worship to show football games on big-screen televisions.

The legislation was among a flurry of action taken this week as the result of an article Friday in The Washington Post reporting that churches were canceling Super Bowl parties out of fear of lawsuits from the NFL if they showed the game on jumbo TV screens.
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Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), a former Redskins quarterback and evangelical Christian who has spoken at church Super Bowl parties, plans to introduce legislation similar to Specter's in the House by the end of the week, a Shuler spokesman said yesterday.

As prologue, I think it is obnoxious that the NFL would harass churches in this manner. I think it is obnoxious that the NFL is exempt from federal antitrust laws. I think it is obnoxious that we have antitrust laws.

But four wrongs don't make a right. Churches deserve no special treatment, none whatsoever, for any activity other than bona fide worship in a bona fide church. No property tax exemptions, no charitable donation privileges, no regulatory exemptions, nothing.

Unanswered, meanwhile, is the pesky question of why only churches? Why can't any tax-exempt organization enjoy the same privilege? (Or at least those rich enough to build 2,000-square-foot auditoriums with 55-inch televisions — God bless Evangelical austerity!)

Remember, the excuse for this theocratic pandering is that these post-sermon shindigs are family-friendly and alcohol-free (a requirement not in Specter's bill, incidentally). So if a university, Elks lodge or VFW post wants to have a similar free-and-dry event, then why shouldn't they be extended the same opportunity?

Oh right — theocratic pandering. Sorry, I forgot.

As for the Establishment Clause issue, the long-standing guidance comes from Everson v. Board of Education*:

The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. ... No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. ... In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State."

(Remember, this is not a religious school, so the less restrictive Lemon v. Kurtzman** test would not apply. See also Walz v. Tax Commission***, upholding a state property tax exemption "given equally to all churches, along with nonprofit hospitals, art galleries, and libraries receiving the same tax exemption.")

So I ask again: Why does Specter's bill apply only to churches?

Bottom line: God loves a level playing field — even a level football field.

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*330 U.S. 1 (1947)
**403 U.S. 602 (1971)
***397 U.S. 664 (1970)

To review (and, with the California gay marriage decision, to preview): The Internal Review Code requires all tax-exempt institutions to abstain from endorsing candidates for office as a condition of their preferential status. The restriction does not apply only to churches and does not apply to issue advocacy generally. Only endorsing particular candidates for particular offices is proscribed.

So how is this anything other than a disingenuous stunt aimed at the misinformed?

The Alliance Defense Fund announced a new initiative Friday that will challenge the tactics of groups that use the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate churches and pastors into silence on important issues of the day.

"Pastors have a right to speak about biblical values from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley. "The government can't demand that a church give up its right to tax-exempt status simply because the pastor exercises his First Amendment rights in the pulpit. Groups like Americans United intentionally trigger IRS investigations that will silence churches through fear, intimidation, and disinformation."

The new initiative will equip, protect, and defend pastors who wish to exercise their First Amendment right to openly discuss the positions of political candidates and other moral and social issues from the pulpit. Participating pastors across the country will deliver a sermon along these lines in their own churches Sept. 28.

Read that again: "The government can't demand that a church give up its right to tax-exempt status simply because the pastor exercises his First Amendment rights in the pulpit."

To use the theocrats' favorite jurisprudential stunt: Where in the Constitution does it say anything about a "right to tax-exempt status"?

"The First Amendment" is not an answer. The tax-exemption in no way unfavorably* singles out churches relative to other civic institutions. Any assertion to the contrary is an un-Christian lie. Nor does it force any such institution, religious or otherwise, to do anything or refrain from anything. Any assertion to the contrary is an un-Christian lie. Any church or cleric is free, at any time, to say anything they want about any candidate they want. All they have to do is give up their tax-exempt status (which, recall, Congress could simply abolish any time it wished). Any assertion to the contrary is an un-Christian lie.

The theocrats (whose Bibles seem to have been miraculously redacted of that pesky "render unto Caesar" passage) appear perfectly willing to completely misrepresent the First Amendment, the Internal Revenue Code, the case law**, and the nature of their record of flagrantly illegal (and un-Christian) abuse of the tax-exempt status that allows them to suck so shamelessly at the taxpayer teat.

Some have suggested that the true purpose of this stunt is to generate a test case in the courts. Yeah right, good luck with that. There is simply nothing to test — because, again, there is absolutely no theory of constitutional interpretation, by anyone of any political orientation, that would dare suggest that there is a First Amendment "right to a tax break." It is beyond absurd.

More thoughts at Americans United, Religion Clause, Wall of Separation.

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*Indeed, some elements of the tax code actually treat churches more favorably than other civic institutions:

Although most organizations seeking tax-exempt status are required to apply to the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS" or "Service") for an advance determination that they meet the requirements of section 501(c)(3), a church may simply hold itself out as tax exempt and receive the benefits of that status without applying for advance recognition from the IRS.
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The unique treatment churches receive in the Internal Revenue Code is further reflected in special restrictions on the IRS's ability to investigate the tax status of a church. The Church Audit Procedures Act ("CAPA") sets out the circumstances under which the IRS may initiate an investigation of a church and the procedures it is required to follow in such an investigation.
--Branch Ministries v. Rosotti, 40 F. Supp. 2d 15 (D.D.C. 1999)

**Especially Regan v. Taxation With Representation, 461 U.S. 540 (1983):

Congress has not infringed any First Amendment rights or regulated any First Amendment activity. Congress has simply chosen not to pay for ... lobbying. We again reject the notion that First Amendment rights are somehow not fully realized unless they are subsidized by the State.