Posted on 07/31/2014 6:16:51 PM PDT by jazusamo
First Amendment: Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage.
A lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) asserted that the Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches' violating their tax-exempt status by routinely promoting political issues, legislation and candidates from the pulpit.
The FFRF has temporarily withdrawn its suit in return for the IRS's agreement to monitor sermons and homilies for proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay marriage and criticism of ObamaCare for its contraceptive mandate.
The irony of this agreement is that it's being enforced by the same Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division of the IRS that was once headed by Lois "Fifth Amendment" Lerner and that openly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Among the questions that the IRS asked of those targeted groups was the content of their prayers.
Those who objected to the monitoring of what is said and done in mosques for signs of terrorist activity have no problem with this one, though monitoring what's said in houses of worship is a clear violation of the First Amendment. Can you say "chilling effect"?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Shut down the IRS.
Make them all go get real, productive jobs.
Problem solved.
I do agree.
“mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage”
This relates to the moral teachings of the religion. It SHOULD be a breach of the First Amendment for the government to tax that. How long will our courts uphold our First Amendment freedoms?
I think it may come down to the other alphabet soup "group" to fix the IRS.
You know, the AR, AK, FN-FAL, SKS, MAC, HK, S&W, etc.
This is going to be much much worse than most realize.
Stop and think about how many churches are in your neighborhood.
And try to imagine how many there are in the US if most areas are similar to yours.
There must be millions.
Now imagine an IRS agent in each church to monitor the sermon.
Obviously not possible, although it might be a good thing. Maybe some of the agents would get religion and mend their thieving ways.
So the end result will be that the IRS will start out with asking pastors to send a copy to the IRS of the sermon preached last Sunday along with an outline of the weekly activities.
But as it always happens in a government staffed by brain dead bureaucrats, it will end up that churches will have to submit their sermons and activities in advance.
Like we now must pay income taxes in advance.
The end result will be that the preacher can only preach what has been approved by the IRS.
It is called censorship.
Maybe the IRS will get some religion from sitting in a few pews.
Seriously, what business do they have in “monitoring” a church for mentioning the right to life or traditional marriage? Since when did we lose our freedom of speech?
Six years ago I’d have said “no way” but now I’m not so sure, it is now a distinct possibility.
If you are a 501c3 expect this. But at anytime, you can dissolve that 501c3 entity, start another, or start a non-501c3 entity.
Hi Girlene...In my view they have no business monitoring free speech nor religion and hopefully they’ll find that out real soon.
bump
They will take reports from any leftist group about what happened in church.
Joel 3:10 - Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.
Their intent is obvious; to lay the foundation to stifle free speech in churches and stop political talk. It’s obvious that the Feds wan’t to take away their tax exempt status if they speak against god government. Sort of reminds me why 3 ships sailed from Great Britain a few centuries ago o escape that mess. Of course, Muslims can preach about enslaving, taxing, lying to, and killing Christians with impunity. They can even store weapon caches in their basements and teach self-demolition techniques for maximum blast radius no problem. All because the AntiChrist in office is Muslim.
This “should” be the beginning of the end for gov’t employee unions.
If America survives long enough to elect a conservative majority, many of these agencies should just be shut down.
Those that remain need top management fired and replaced.
At the same time every gov’t employee should be able to be fired, which means the unions must go.
Will the monitor wear a arm band or other identification?
This is almost Gestapo
Who is assigned to the rev. wright’s church?
As well as all of the other churches that preach the left side of the political spectrum?
When you have a organization under the status of 501(c)(3) tax-exemption they have limits on what can be spoken in public.
“Section 501(c)(3) organizations are restricted in how much political and legislative (lobbying) activities they may conduct. For a detailed discussion, see Political and Lobbying Activities. For more information about lobbying activities by charities, see the article Lobbying Issues; for more information about political activities of charities, see the FY-2002 CPE topic Election Year Issues.”
These limits are never applied to leftist organizations.
Churches should not be registered, period.
They’ve been that way for decades!
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