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I have to quibble with two points.
They may not be hateful, but I’m guessing they are hypocrites, in addition to being misguided. There are churches who encourage their parishioners to sign petitions and support “gay marriage.” I don’t see people who are opposed to “gay marriage” pushing to have those churches’ tax exempt statuses removed.
You may be right.
This philosophy of winning hearts through cooperation would seem in opposition to their attack on a large religious organization. Although the Catholic Church in Maine was a major political rival in the gay marriage debate, it still is widely respected and supported so an attack on it can’t help but to poison the feelings of many.
So maybe the Enpowering Spirits Foundation is moving away from its soft tactics and embracing hard political tactics instead.
First they’ll try the IRS. If they don’t succeed there, watch for them to file a lawsuit. They’re so use to seeing judges in California legislate from the bench, they’ll think they can get a friendly judge to bypass the legislature and make a ruling to take their tax exempt status away and not let the people decide.
Looks like it. There’s also a lawsuit against the Diocese of Portland.
It’s certainly possible they are hypocrites. However, just because their tactics are different from an opposing group, doesn’t make them, or the other group, hypocritical.
Maybe those who are Pro-“Traditional” marriage should fight back by suing Pro-SSM groups who claim non-profit status. The same tactics could be used against the Pro-Infanticide crowd (i.e. NARAL).
Not all non-profits are tax exempt. Personally, I don’t believe in such tactics, because I don’t think that limiting your speech should be a criteria for any tax break.
Well, I don’t like these tactics either, but I am sick and tired of these liberal non-profits, assuming they are tax exempt, running around spewing pro-“gay” marriage and pro-choice/abortion/infanticide garbage and then trying to say it is ‘social activism’ or some such craziness.
This whole thing started down in Texas where a bunch of ministers were telling their congregations specifically not to vote for a particular politician. Said politician got the IRS involved, which started the ball rolling on regulating speech in churches. Up until now, so long as the minister or priest didn’t name names or tell their people to vote for a particular party, that was OK. Now the pendulum is swinging so that taking ANY side on a controversial issue may be considered a violation of the rules regarding political speech and tax-exempt organizations.
Right. I don’t even agree with stopping pastors/ministers from making their views about specific politicians known to their congregations. What’s the big deal?
Interesting…are you saying that the poor (non-taxpaying citizens) don’t have a right to question the system? This is my point regarding the tax-exempt status. If one must pay taxes in order to participate in political dialogue, then we should remove all non-taxpaying citizens from the ability to vote.The truth is that any tax paying citizen has a right to question the system. This would include questioning the tax-exempt status of any organization.
The problem when you take such action as a come back is that it does not produce the desired results. Instead of sympathy for your cause or opening up doors of fraternal charity, these actions trigger anger and sometimes intolerance where there may have been none in the past.
Fraternally,
JR
Interesting. I wonder how they’re going to feel when the various diocese are forced to close their hospitals - you know, the ones that treat HIV patients - if the tax laws change and they become impossible to fund.
Well said. It seems tax exempt status is used as a pay off to Churches to keep quiet.
Simple. They’ll just blame the Church for letting those people die. The Church is rich enough – if they wanted to, they could fund the hospitals, soup kitchens, etc. This is just the Church’s way of getting back at the people who wanted the Church to pay its fair share.
If you think the removal of “tax-exempt” status is imminent, have you checked with your local government to see what the annual taxes would be on your church, if your church had to pay taxes?