Bill puts political spin on religion

Florida Times Union Metro ^ | 7/27/02 | By Matthew I. Pinzur

[Aric2000]

Lyndon Johnson was facing his first re-election as a U.S. senator in 1954, and he wanted more than a victory; he wanted to thrash his opponent and beat back the party's McCarthyite right flank so thoroughly that it would never challenge him again.

[Aric2000]

For some reason my comments did not post, but my thought is this, if theya re going to do it for church non-profits, shouldn't they do it for ALL non profits?

[Illbay]

Ah, those were the days, when you had conservatives--and "moderates"/lefties--in BOTH political parties.

Too bad those days are gone.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

.

[gdani]

This bill is total BS pushed by greedy houses of worship & shameless, opportunistic politicians.

Houses of worship are absolutely free to opine about the moral & social issues of the day w/out fear of repercussions buy the IRS. They know this.

What they are not free to do - if they are registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization - is to endorse candidates and engage in political lobbying. This is the same for all 501(c)(3) organizations, religious or not. In addition, no one is forced to become a 501(c)(3).

If a house of worship does want to endorse candidates & lobby it can simply drop it's 501(c)(3) status or modify it's status & become a 501(c)(4) organization.

Simple enough.

[oyez]

These days both sides have drifted so far left one party has a edge into socialism and the other gone compleatly over to socialism. There are those in government now that would like to do away with privite property all together. We could be very well on the trip back to the dark ages.

[ELS]

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonpartisan Washington-based group.

prompted Lynn to brand the bill as partisan as Lyndon Johnson's original amendment.

If AUSCS is really nonpartisan (cough, cough), then wouldn't they want to bring the situation back into balance given their recognition of the partisanship of Johnson's amendment? Sheesh, Pinzur thinks we're idiots.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

"It is a challenging area for us to administer," testified Steven Miller, the agency's director of exempt organizations, who said the IRS usually tries to help churches come into compliance rather than take away their exempt status.

Yeah, their idea of help churches to come into compliance is to threaten them and make rather unreasonable demands.  I have heard of quite a few horror stories wherein churches ended up paying up lots in attorney fees to make the IRS back up and admit that they were overstepping their bounds.