Posted on 07/27/2006 8:20:43 AM PDT by xzins
Five years ago, I wrote about threats made by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative churches for supposedly engaging in politicking. Today, the IRS is again attempting to chill free speech, sending notices to more than 15,000 non-profit organizations—including churches—regarding its new crackdown on political activity.
But what exactly constitutes political activity? What if a member of the clergy urges his congregation to work toward creating a pro-life culture, when an upcoming election features a pro-life candidate? What if a minister admonishes churchgoers that homosexuality is sinful, when an initiative banning gay marriage is on an upcoming ballot? Where exactly do we draw the line, and when does the IRS begin to violate the First amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion?
I agree with my colleague Walter Jones of North Carolina that the political views of any particular church or its members are none of the government’s business. Congressman Jones introduced legislation that addresses this very serious issue of IRS harassment of churches engaging in conservative political activity. This bill is badly needed to end the IRS practice of threatening certain politically disfavored faiths with loss of their tax-exempt status, while ignoring the very open and public political activities of other churches. While some well-known leftist preachers routinely advocate socialism from the pulpit, many conservative Christian and Jewish congregations cannot present their political beliefs without risking scrutiny from the tax collector.
The supposed motivation behind the ban on political participation by churches is the need to maintain a rigid separation between church and state. However, the First amendment simply prohibits the federal government from passing laws that establish religion or prohibit the free exercise of religion. There certainly is no mention of any "separation of church and state," yet lawmakers and judges continually assert this mythical doctrine.
The result is court rulings and laws that separate citizens from their religious beliefs in all public settings, in clear violation of the free exercise clause. Our Founders never envisioned a rigidly secular public society, where people must nonsensically disregard their deeply held beliefs in all matters of government and politics. They certainly never imagined that the federal government would actively work to chill the political activities of some churches.
Speech is speech, regardless of the setting. There is no legal distinction between religious expression and political expression; both are equally protected by the First amendment. Religious believers do not drop their political opinions at the door of their place of worship, nor do they disregard their faith at the ballot box. Religious morality will always inform the voting choices of Americans of all faiths.
The political left, however, seeks to impose the viewpoint that public life must be secular, and that government cannot reflect morality derived from faith. Many Democrats, not all, are threatened by strong religious institutions because they want an ever-growing federal government to serve as the unchallenged authority in our society. So the real motivation behind the insistence on a separation of church and state is not based on respect for the First amendment, but rather on a desire to diminish the influence of religious conservatives at the ballot box.
The Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom must not depend on the whims of IRS bureaucrats. Religious institutions cannot freely preach their beliefs if they must fear that the government will accuse them of "politics." We cannot allow churches to be silenced any more than we can allow political dissent in general to be silenced. Free societies always have strong, independent institutions that are not afraid to challenge and criticize the government.
It's time voters paid attention to how much influence they can have with Congress. It can be considerable, but not if we all sit on our hands and say "oh, that'll never happen" or "we can't do that". You just don't realize how powerful motivated voters can be.
Do you have any data to work from to show how the FairTax benefits taxpayers as requested in #293???
We'll probably see some of them show up on this thread ... they follow the FairTax around like Squirrels in heat and they're not hard to spot.
Do you have any data to work from to show how the FairTax benefits taxpayers as requested in #293???
"What is the government granted privilege in question here? A privilege to not pay taxes if you engage in charitable activities."
Churches operated free of taxation and engaging in all sorts of political talk since our founding. With the advent of the LBJ's amendment, churches are now 'free' to do what they always did IF they jump through the right hoops.
"If a church were to become a commercial operation (and a few of them closely resemble such) and only gave five percent of donations to charity, should they still have a charitable tax-exempt status?"
Apples and oranges as to this argument, but if it a commercial enterprise that generates a profit then it should not enjoy tax exempt status. That being said, get rid of the damn IRS and the IT and replace it with the FairTax and this would cease to be an issue.
"How is engaging in political activity any different? All this does is remove the government-granted tax break if the terms of that tax break are removed. Once the tax break is removed, the entity in question is treated the exact same as any other political organization. How, then, have their rights been revoked if they have equal standing to engage in political activity?"
Religion specifically enjoys 1st Amendment protection. Political speech is really what the Founders had in mind. They wanted us to be free to criticize our government. The problem is not with the speech or even the church, it's the damn tax code. It needs to be ripped out at the roots and replaced with the FairTax.
[What the government grants, the government can take away.]
That was PART of my comment. Thank you for removing the context. I guess that it was bothersome to you in some way.
"Uh, the government doesn't grant me nuthin'; we gave it certain powers and retained the rest."
No s***, Sherlock. I've posted that a 1000 times myself, but when you removed the context you lost the meaning of what I said.
What I did say was when our rights are abridged and handcuffed with so called 'reasonable restrictions' our inalienable rights are transformed into government granted privileges and what the government grants. . . .
"What we're doing right now, tapping away on these keyboards? This isn't speech, but a `strawman' like moose-limbs communicating their intention to harm us, a clear and present danger? Gee, are you with the NYT? If it is speech, well, then according to the 1st Amendment I should be able to `say' anything I want here on FR, right?"
Are you an ass all the time or do you just play one here on FR? Obviously you need to get a better understanding of just what a right is and what it entails. When you want to engage in a conversation or even a vigorous debate without the insults, let me know.
"Burning the US flag is a form of `speech'. Are you in favor of that?"
If you want to burn your flag and it doesn't endanger anyone else, then I absolutely agree that it is protected. Burn MY flag or burn yours on my property and you'll get a quite different response. The flag is a symbol of our liberty and burning one might get the burner a well deserved ass kicking, but as long as it is his flag and no one is endangered, where is the crime? Go to North Korea and Red China if you want to see countries that believe that burning the flag is wrong. They probably don't even bother codifying it, but if you burn one, the police or army will be the last boots you see for a while. Is that your image of America? No thanks.
"How about threatening the life of the president?"
Again, you display your ignorance. Learn something about rights and come back.
"I could go on and on but I think you're just being obstinate. There's more: life's not fair, then we die."
Obstinate? I made one frigging comment to you and you started at me with insults? But please do go on and give everyone a chance to see your ignorance.
AbsoFReepinglutely, pigdog!
AbsoFReepinglutely, bigun!
The issue is FReedom!
Indeed. Thanks for the ping!
I was responding to posters who were posting to me. You kept making roughly the same post over and over again in response to my posts that were not even to you. Spam.
And you were making roughly the same posts also. Spam.
I was responding to people who were posting to me, dipweed. You were butting into our responses with spam. I got your drift after the first couple of posts.
In fact I was making some observations as much for others as for you specifically. What you'd posted just offered good opportunities to discuss things for the benefit of others. It was apparent that you'd never agree with them IAE - nor was I asking you to. In fact, you're free to not read them at all if they disturb you so.
You seem to think FR is some sort of a closed society that someone can only respond to a post with his name on it. I disagree,
You are conveniently forgetting that churches willingly give up some First Amendment rights when they choose to remain a non-profit.
If it's a simple case of being a violation of free speech rights then please explain why a non-profit hasn't sued over the issue.
If they can be given up, then they are not 'rights' under the Constitution.
If it's a simple case of being a violation of free speech rights then please explain why a non-profit hasn't sued over the issue.
First, why are you trying to turn my reply into a statement of 'free speech rights'? I never said that, and I never intimated it. Second, I think there have been efforts to fight these laws along those lines, but I don't have time to do the research right now. Regardless, the words of the 1st Amendment stand on their own. Congress shall pass no law, yet they have. Therefore, the law (laws, actually) is null and void, even though it is enforced . . . and feared because of that force.
Nonsense. People give up and/or sign away their constitutional rights all the time under various circumstances.
First, why are you trying to turn my reply into a statement of 'free speech rights'? I never said that, and I never intimated it.
You are correct. I didn't read your previous post carefully enough to see you were referring to the religious liberty portion of the First Amendment, not the free speech portion.
Nonetheless, Congress has passed laws that seemingly violate religious freedom yet they've been upheld by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
It's why American Indians & Rastafarians cannot use otherwise illegal drugs as sacraments and Mormons can't legally practice bigamy.
You & I may disagree with such laws & their constitutionality but, ultimately, our opinions don't count.
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
-John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election
Actually, I misspoke. Our rights don't derive from the Constitution, they derive from our Creator and they are inalienable, as the Unanimous Declaration, well, declares. That's why I said we can't give up such rights - they are inalienable.
What the constitution does in the 1st Amendment is restrict the federal government. The federal government is not supposed to be allowed to do what they've done with the Revenue laws. But they use the threat of force (and often enough to implant fear in many, the actual use of that force) to convince the citizens that they are allowed to do what they've done.
The USSC is packed with human beings, and because they often use previous rulings and their own opinions as the basis for Constitutional rulings, rather than the Constitution itself, they make a considerable number of errors in their rulings. This is yet another example of that.
More clear?
As an old fart on SSI, I'd be more comfortable with the flat tax solution. Sales taxes raise prices and my income is rapidly approaching starvation levels as prices soar.
However I will vote for any solution that banishes the IRS and damn their torpedos.
What really hurts is the disparity in COLAs the swine pass.
As an old fart on SSI, I'd be more comfortable with the flat tax solution. Sales taxes raise prices and my income is rapidly approaching starvation levels as prices soar.
However I will vote for any solution that banishes the IRS and damn their torpedos.
What really hurts is the disparity in COLAs the swine pass.
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