Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
- 58,308
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It seems I woke up in the mood to be a little less tolerant of idiocy than usual, so I am going to debunk all the idiots that think that churches being tax exempt is a bad thing.
If the government taxed churches it would inevitably end up in a situation where it would violate the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. Whenever a government exercises its power to tax it restricts peoples freedom. Directly taxing a church, or any other religious organization, restricts the freedom of religion. This can easily be seen when you look at the Johnson amendment of 1954.
Can anyone explain why just 3 years ago a pastor of a fundamentalist church in California could have said that Romney is not a Christian because he believes that Jesus and Satan are brothers and the IRS would not have had a problem, but he cannot say the exact same thing today without the government coming in and declaring that, because he said that, they no longer consider the same group of people a church for tax purposes? Can anyone explain that?
Taxes are an imposition from the government, and the simplest way to make sure that everyone has their right to free exercise of religion is to exempt all religious organizations from taxation. Anything less than that makes a farce of the Constitution.
If the government taxed churches it would inevitably end up in a situation where it would violate the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. Whenever a government exercises its power to tax it restricts peoples freedom. Directly taxing a church, or any other religious organization, restricts the freedom of religion. This can easily be seen when you look at the Johnson amendment of 1954.
Can anyone explain why just 3 years ago a pastor of a fundamentalist church in California could have said that Romney is not a Christian because he believes that Jesus and Satan are brothers and the IRS would not have had a problem, but he cannot say the exact same thing today without the government coming in and declaring that, because he said that, they no longer consider the same group of people a church for tax purposes? Can anyone explain that?
Taxes are an imposition from the government, and the simplest way to make sure that everyone has their right to free exercise of religion is to exempt all religious organizations from taxation. Anything less than that makes a farce of the Constitution.