WITHDRAW TAX FREE STATUS FOR CHURCHES

http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2007/09/19/3

What can I say? It's about time that a church lost its tax free status for sticking its nose into a political issue.

One of the fair trade offs that we make in this society is the practice of allowing religious organizations to "spread the word" and offer humanitarian in a tax free environment as long as they don't use their considerable resources to influence political events. In the case above it seems to me that the Methodist Church in question crossed the line when it decided to wrap itself in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy, declaring a political issue a moral issue, and then using its considerable resources to campaign against the civil liberties of gays and lesbians, a group of people which the Methodists clearly love to hate.

As far as I'm concerned the Methodists in question got exactly what they were asking. Now if we would only take the above story as an example and apply it across the board to other churches which use their financial and political power to influence elections and political issues. A good [place to begin would be with the Catholic Church which seems bound and determined to replace American Democracy with a Vatican-based theocracy. Or, perhaps an even better place to begin, would be with some of our loonier, Protestant Fundamentalists who want to turn America into a Reich wing theocracy in which the words, theology, and practices of Jesus Christ are replaced with the words of Jesus Christ and the theology and policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Frankly I'm sick of my tax dollars going to Historical and Constitutional revisionists who seem to think that religious tyranny is better than representative democracy. It's time to hold these people, these groups and organizations accountable. If they're going to undermine the work of the Constitutional Framers then they don't deserve to use our tax dollars to do so.


Peace and Enlightenment always