The Chaff

Monday, May 16th, 2005

Cheaters do prosper after all

So a Baptist minister excommunicated 9 members of his church because they were Democrats. “He said they had to repent and agree to vote Republican. 40 other members resigned in protest.”

Normally, one would think that this violates the tax-exempt status for churches, you know, the law that says they don’t have to pay any taxes as long as they stay out of politics. But, you see, the GOP claims it doesn’t because the minister isn’t endorsing a particular candidate during an election, and that’s what the tax-exempt status laws are about.

Okay. I can deal with that.

Then please explain to me how come the First Unitarian Church in Indiana gets a call from the state GOP chariman because they have planned to have University of Notre Dame economics Professor Teresa Ghilarducci–a recognized academic expert on Social Sercurity–speak at the church about Social Security issues?

Messer said he understood that Ghilarducci was active in Democratic politics and contributed to the campaign of Joe Donnelly, who ran against Republican Rep. Chris Chocola in last year’s election.

The purpose of the state party’s call was to offer a speaker who could represent the Republican viewpoint on Social Security and point out that a tax-exempt church should not be involved in partisan activities, Messer said.(link)

Demand parisioners vote for a particular party? Not a partisan activity, and not a violation of tax-exempt status.

Invite a local expert to have a discussion and answer questions on a current issue? Totally partisan. Yank the status.

IOKIYAR.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2005 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

---

---