The evangelicals want to see their particular sense of Christian privilege enshrined in law to the exclusion of all others. It is a sign of just how badly they are failing to get their message across. They are always the poor, persecuted victims of the godless left because they are not allowed to have their cake and eat it too. The preachers can talk about their loving Jesus from now on, but there is nothing they crave as much as power on this earthly plain. Power few groups would be more ill-equipped to exercise.
And how quickly would they call for enforcing the rules if some non Christian group were given even a portion of the privilege they receive? My guess is about 30 seconds after the words are spoken.
+++ If they ever attained the power they evidently want, they would begin killing one another over doctrinal errors almost immediately. If history teaches nothing else, it teaches the insanity of putting secular power in the hands of the clergy.
Isn't that exactly what's happening in Florida? They want Clergy in schools and when Humanists and Satanists stood up and said, "Hey, we want to be in schools too" they quickly suspended it. They want unfettered access to proselytize in schools is the issue, and they aren't about to let anyone else level the playing field.
That's right. I guess that is one of the reasons the numbers of believers in any faith is going down in Norway. In school we have classes about religions and humanism, where the main beliefs in the biggest religious or beliefe systems are thought and the differences are discussed.
Sadly, too many schools still bring their pupils to a church right before jul.
This comes from Dictatorship For Dummies, Chapter 2, How to grow your ranks without much effort.
Chapter 1 Says You will be shot in the street or hung in the townsquare if you speak out or are "intellectual". the bodies will be hung outside the gate into the city.
Ask Adolf, Putin, Marcos, they were contributors to this manual.
"I don't know how, in good conscience, a Christian can vote for an agenda that is evil.” This would in fact encourage me to vote Democratic, definitely not Republican.
Eons ago when I registered to vote (when you still had to be 21) my then husband told me I had to register Republican if I wanted to get anywhere in Bucks County. I had no idea what that meant, but I did what he told me to do. However everything I had learned in Sunday school and church about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, taking care of the poor and generally looking out for each other coincided with Democratic policies so I voted Democratic. I was quite gobsmacked when Evangelicals en mass backed djt, even after the p-grabbing tape. It's one thing to be accused, quite another to hear it confirmed out of his own mouth. How could anyone who calls themselves Christians vote for him?
By saying the quiet part out loud and normalizing hate speech, Trump gives his supplicants what they have always wanted more than anything -- to be the assholes they've always wanted to be and stomp all over people they hate. Which is pretty much everyone who isn't one of THEM. This they are drawn to, this they crave more than anything else, and by jove, NOBODY is gonna take that away from them. So when they hear DJT bragging about grabbing women, they see it as a sign of a Real Man (TM) or something. No matter what shitty, awful thing he says or does, their brains find a way to re-frame it as righteous and holy.
The oceanic levels of self-delusion in most evangelicals is mind-boggling.
Or, an after school Atheist Club, Masonic Club, Communist Club, Illuminati Club, Occult Club, Ouija Club, … really any organized behavior that challenges the hegemonic empire of Christendom.
I was absolutely gobsmacked by people cheering him say that. I was raised in Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches before I got out at 19 so I thought I understood the culture but then I heard people saying that Jesus was too liberal now. So I've lost pretty much every bit of hope that these people have any kind of critical thinking left to them. It's pathetically sad really that they've twisted themselves so much that they don't see how many signs of being the literal anti Christ Trump has displayed.
You and me both. When I saw that "never have to vote again" clip and heard the cheering, I wanted to bitch-slap some sense into every last one of them while screaming "Did you actually HEAR what was just said here, you fucking brain-dead moron?!?!?! Or did you suddenly lose your grasp of English?!?!?"
I thought that statement would have alarmed even the MAGAts ("Whaddaya mean, never vote again, dude?") But boy was I off the mark.
That is what authoritarians crave though, for someone else to tell them what to think, because their brains are not wired to think critically, or for themselves, at all. That is why they are drawn to organized religion
Not really. The Iranians worship an authoritarian god who sends people to hell for sin. The Christian right in America worship (what they think) is a different authoritarian god who sends people to hell for sin.
So, conservative churches explicitly wish to give up what few ethics they have left in order to keep all their money without transparency as a propaganda arm of the NSGOP. Got it.
We need legislation taxing them just like everybody else. I haven't seen any reason to think churches can be trusted with money anyway; I do have reason to wonder just what their definition of 'charity' is.
“ They say they want the freedom to preach whatever they want, including political endorsements, and they don’t want the government telling them what they can’t say. ”
And they have that freedom right now. Just like me, they can pay taxes and say any damn thing they want.
Sometimes I wonder how many currently registered US "churches" wouldn't exist if not for the tax immunity thing. Not as in "wouldn't be able to support themselves and pay taxes," but "would never have been founded."
This is the rethug work-around. By getting the Johnson Amendment struck down, political contributions which are not tax deductible become just that when washed through Jeebus and his preachers here on Earth...
That creepy little twit in a suit makes me want to projectile vomit. The fact that he is low-key (compared to Trump and his Trumplings) and looks fairly normal just makes him that much more dangerous.
Tbh, Black churches are probably already endorsing Harris. When I attended church, I’d see signs like “African Americans for Obama” and politicians would speak from the pulpit up push their candidacy.
Illegal, yes, but I'm not seeing unconstitutional. If the government isn't going after nonreligious violators or one religion more than others then there's nothing about the JA which is first amendment problematic. It's a 'regular law' decision about whether the US government wants to give tax breaks to organizations that endorse candidates.
There is (IMO) a constitutional issue with letting religious nonprofits avoid the paperwork non-religious nonprofits have to do. In my opinion that's a clear case of special treatment. But unfortunately, we've already lost that case, so don't expect that to change. Zubik v. Burwell, better known as the 'Little Sisters' case, the courts told HHS that they couldn't force a religious organization to fill out a form every other organization needs to fill out, because even merely filling out the form was an undue burden on their religious freedom. And it's worth pointing out that SCOTUS was *unanimous* in that ruling, so we can't expect that some future scenario like Harris appointing a liberal judge to replace Thomas would change it.
I didn't know the whole entire Supreme Court had gone insane because that's insane. It's just sickening how they think Christianity has the right to control us. I dislike them very much!
Which is why I hope that Harris not only wins, but wins big, and also gets the supermajority in congress by a wide margin, so she can expand the US Supreme Court. That wouldn't solve everything, but it would be a good start. *sigh*
This is part and parcel of the rethuglican modus operandi - get a rethug judge to strike down a law which inconveniences them and push it through to the supremes - a court they bought and paid for. The supremes will no doubt pull some legal hocus hocus out of Alito's or Thomas' ass and declare it unconstitutional. This court may make it impossible to regulate anyone or any entity the rethugs don't want regulated. We are in a heap of trouble, folks.
Summary: the Johnson Amendment is toast, and the U.S. is another step closer to being a Christian theocracy (despite claims about the demise of Christianity and so-called rise of the Nones).
Cornerstone church is in my community. They are a pox on our community, in my opinion. I’ve been occasionally tuning into Gary Hamrick (& his two sons, also pastors at Cornerstone, so it’s quite the Hamrick dynasty!)
I feel like I’ve heard Gary bragging about how they got out of paying penalties to the IRS. I’d be very interested to know if this is true. He’s due to preach his “Election Sermon” within the next week or to. He’s been pumping up his congregation for it recently.
I’m not exaggerating when I say every one of his sermons has red meat for the Maga congregation involving insulting or mocking Democrats, especially Biden and Harris.
The church has grown exponentially at the expense of other churches in our area. Anyone who is still Maga attends Cornerstone.
In the dictionary, under "scofflaw (n)," it should say, "See Cornerstone Church." This brand of blatant and unabashed taunting of the law should be intolerable, and yet it continues with Cornerstone and other suchlike churches, without let.
It is past time these outlaw churches were called to task.
I wouldn't trust their word on it. "The big bad government tried to repress us, but we showed them!!!11!!" is a juicy narrative, and an easy lie to get away with given that the IRS seems to actively avoid releasing information on their Johnson amendment investigations and actions.
Hemant said he couldn't verify Cornerstone's claims, so that's another reason to distrust them.
Though I'm guessing he hasn't FOIA'd the IRS on it (yet), because those enquiries often take a lot of time. In any event, if the IRS has an open investigation they woludn't be required to give out any info on it, I think ongoing work falls under the 'deliberative' exemption.
All atheist Americans should stop paying taxes and send a letter to the IRS saying that you’ll start paying taxes again as soon as you read in the papers that the IRS is making all churches pay taxes if they promote one political party above any other.
Not that long ago, I tried to do a search on IRS action against churches that had violated the Johnson Amendment ... and came up with NOTHING. If there have been any actions taken by the IRS in that regard, it hasn't made the major OR minor news organizations, at least not that Google knows about.
This is an issue which has been on my mind, one way or another, since I first declared myself to be an atheist and became aware of the Johnson Amendment. The utter blatancy with which some churches have thumbed their noses at that codicil should be reason enough for the IRS to engage them in court. Yet it hasn't happened, at least not to my knowledge. And NOW a group of preachers want to vitiate an amendment which has rarely been exercised, while they continue to seemingly DARE the IRS to spank their behinds for their misdeeds. What they want is to formalize what has been a de-facto situation: the current impotence of the Johnson Amendment.
Which strikes me as about time that the Johnson Amendment was well and properly reinforced, funded, staffed, and supported to its primary purpose: the prosecution of those 501(c)(3) organizations who seem to think they can act as scofflaws with regard to it. So can we do that ... PLEASE???
This is self-funding. Not only can they levy fines but once they determine a church should lose it's tax-exempt status, being the IRS they can revoke it back in time and then go through the church's books and present them with a tax bill. Any GAAP violations would result in more fines, which would be inevitable because the accounting rules for a church are non-existent.
The big unspoken problem, and the highest likelihood reason why the IRS doesn't enforce this rule, is because Congress controls the purse strings.
Conservatives already want to cut IRS funding (even though the IRS makes money for the government), and going after churches would create even more popular support for such a move. Congress could also, at any time, zero out funding for Johnson Amendment investigations, as Congress puts directives of the type 'spend $X on A, but only spend $Y on B" in pretty much every budget they pass.
My guess is IRS leadership has decided that the potential benefit of enforcing the JA is not worth the potential downsides of doing so, as it might cause Congress to disrupt much larger and more important tax enforcement operations. A kind of "don't catch the eye of the king when he's in this mood" sort of strategy.
Yeah, maybe so. Still, I've written President Biden about this issue, and if we can get Harris and a blue Congress in this November, I mean to write her AND my representatives about it.
Perhaps, but there's also the matter of "due process." I think that having a trial, going through discovery, revealing all the myriad ways that a given church has flaunted the Johnson Amendment and putting all that in the public eye is a necessary step in getting their leaders AND their congregations to understand that there are consequences for taking the law lightly.
I want religious and secular non-profits to play by the same rules. I'm really pretty apathetic on whether those rules allow the endorsement of candidates or not, just so long as the rule is applied evenly. I think houses of worship should have to go through the same process to be granted non-profit status and be required to file the same paperwork to keep it as secular non-profits.
Even and equitable laws for those given the privilege of minimal/no taxes.
My fear is with the current right wing zealots we have on SCOTUS they'll win. And then these ultra right evangelicals will have Carte Blanche to spread as much political propaganda in their churches as they please.
Even if he was real, I don't want to even be in the same room with someone who tells people to drink his blood and eat his flesh, much less literally worship him.
If the only documented case of the IRS actually pulling tax exempt status was a case where the church endorsed a Democratic candidate, then these arguments have no leg to stand on. Their argument is that the IRS unfairly targeting conservative churches and organizations, but the IRS doesn’t enforce the law, when it did, it enforced it on the other side.
Of course, that won’t matter to the corrupt judges Trump installed throughout the judicial branch.
The evangelicals want to see their particular sense of Christian privilege enshrined in law to the exclusion of all others. It is a sign of just how badly they are failing to get their message across. They are always the poor, persecuted victims of the godless left because they are not allowed to have their cake and eat it too. The preachers can talk about their loving Jesus from now on, but there is nothing they crave as much as power on this earthly plain. Power few groups would be more ill-equipped to exercise.
And how quickly would they call for enforcing the rules if some non Christian group were given even a portion of the privilege they receive? My guess is about 30 seconds after the words are spoken.
+++ If they ever attained the power they evidently want, they would begin killing one another over doctrinal errors almost immediately. If history teaches nothing else, it teaches the insanity of putting secular power in the hands of the clergy.
Isn't that exactly what's happening in Florida? They want Clergy in schools and when Humanists and Satanists stood up and said, "Hey, we want to be in schools too" they quickly suspended it. They want unfettered access to proselytize in schools is the issue, and they aren't about to let anyone else level the playing field.
They know full well the survival of their cult depends on indoctrinating children before they've reached the age of reason.
That's right. I guess that is one of the reasons the numbers of believers in any faith is going down in Norway. In school we have classes about religions and humanism, where the main beliefs in the biggest religious or beliefe systems are thought and the differences are discussed.
Sadly, too many schools still bring their pupils to a church right before jul.
This comes from Dictatorship For Dummies, Chapter 2, How to grow your ranks without much effort.
Chapter 1 Says You will be shot in the street or hung in the townsquare if you speak out or are "intellectual". the bodies will be hung outside the gate into the city.
Ask Adolf, Putin, Marcos, they were contributors to this manual.
+++
Yes, and they aren't above beating it into them.
"I don't know how, in good conscience, a Christian can vote for an agenda that is evil.” This would in fact encourage me to vote Democratic, definitely not Republican.
Eons ago when I registered to vote (when you still had to be 21) my then husband told me I had to register Republican if I wanted to get anywhere in Bucks County. I had no idea what that meant, but I did what he told me to do. However everything I had learned in Sunday school and church about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, taking care of the poor and generally looking out for each other coincided with Democratic policies so I voted Democratic. I was quite gobsmacked when Evangelicals en mass backed djt, even after the p-grabbing tape. It's one thing to be accused, quite another to hear it confirmed out of his own mouth. How could anyone who calls themselves Christians vote for him?
By saying the quiet part out loud and normalizing hate speech, Trump gives his supplicants what they have always wanted more than anything -- to be the assholes they've always wanted to be and stomp all over people they hate. Which is pretty much everyone who isn't one of THEM. This they are drawn to, this they crave more than anything else, and by jove, NOBODY is gonna take that away from them. So when they hear DJT bragging about grabbing women, they see it as a sign of a Real Man (TM) or something. No matter what shitty, awful thing he says or does, their brains find a way to re-frame it as righteous and holy.
The oceanic levels of self-delusion in most evangelicals is mind-boggling.
🎯
Or a Liberal christian sect.
Or, an after school Atheist Club, Masonic Club, Communist Club, Illuminati Club, Occult Club, Ouija Club, … really any organized behavior that challenges the hegemonic empire of Christendom.
I will bring the Kool Aid.
Those don't exist or if they do they are heatens so they deserve every bad thing coming to them. Right?
Heretics, is I believe their preferred term.
Evangelicals: 'vote for Trump and you'll never need to vote again.'
https://Dictatorforadayshow.com
I was absolutely gobsmacked by people cheering him say that. I was raised in Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches before I got out at 19 so I thought I understood the culture but then I heard people saying that Jesus was too liberal now. So I've lost pretty much every bit of hope that these people have any kind of critical thinking left to them. It's pathetically sad really that they've twisted themselves so much that they don't see how many signs of being the literal anti Christ Trump has displayed.
You and me both. When I saw that "never have to vote again" clip and heard the cheering, I wanted to bitch-slap some sense into every last one of them while screaming "Did you actually HEAR what was just said here, you fucking brain-dead moron?!?!?! Or did you suddenly lose your grasp of English?!?!?"
I thought that statement would have alarmed even the MAGAts ("Whaddaya mean, never vote again, dude?") But boy was I off the mark.
That is what authoritarians crave though, for someone else to tell them what to think, because their brains are not wired to think critically, or for themselves, at all. That is why they are drawn to organized religion
It was inevitable really, Voltaire predicted it. "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit attrocities."
There is a considerable similarity between the Christian right in America and the Iranian government
Right wing government and conservative religion are natural allies. It is a symbiotic relationship that has dealt humanity nothing but misery.
Not really. The Iranians worship an authoritarian god who sends people to hell for sin. The Christian right in America worship (what they think) is a different authoritarian god who sends people to hell for sin.
Fundies of every religion have more in common with each other than any of then do with their non-fundamentalist co-religionists.
🎯And they are the ones that give every religion a bad name.
Yup.
And the current government of Hungary.
Yes, and much professional jealousy as a result.
So, conservative churches explicitly wish to give up what few ethics they have left in order to keep all their money without transparency as a propaganda arm of the NSGOP. Got it.
We need new legislation requiring churches to have to fill out form 990 every year.
We need legislation taxing them just like everybody else. I haven't seen any reason to think churches can be trusted with money anyway; I do have reason to wonder just what their definition of 'charity' is.
That's easy, themselves.
They have any ethics?
“ They say they want the freedom to preach whatever they want, including political endorsements, and they don’t want the government telling them what they can’t say. ”
And they have that freedom right now. Just like me, they can pay taxes and say any damn thing they want.
Sometimes I wonder how many currently registered US "churches" wouldn't exist if not for the tax immunity thing. Not as in "wouldn't be able to support themselves and pay taxes," but "would never have been founded."
This is the rethug work-around. By getting the Johnson Amendment struck down, political contributions which are not tax deductible become just that when washed through Jeebus and his preachers here on Earth...
Gives a whole new meaning to "blood money."
Two words: Mike Johnson :)
That creepy little twit in a suit makes me want to projectile vomit. The fact that he is low-key (compared to Trump and his Trumplings) and looks fairly normal just makes him that much more dangerous.
🎯Most of them.
If they got the Johnson amendment repealed, how many would cry foul when black churches endorse Harris?
100 % of them I guess. That is what I believe my crystal bowl is showing me right now.
My magic 8 ball agrees.
“Outlook good”
Tbh, Black churches are probably already endorsing Harris. When I attended church, I’d see signs like “African Americans for Obama” and politicians would speak from the pulpit up push their candidacy.
What a cacophony of bitching and belly-aching that would be from the "rules for thee but not for me" crowd.
This seems as clearly and demonstrably unconstitutional as anything could possibly be. Separation of church and state, so essential.
Not if your eyes or glasses distort reality.
And especially if those glasses are God-Glasses™.
Are those like beer goggles?
Illegal, yes, but I'm not seeing unconstitutional. If the government isn't going after nonreligious violators or one religion more than others then there's nothing about the JA which is first amendment problematic. It's a 'regular law' decision about whether the US government wants to give tax breaks to organizations that endorse candidates.
There is (IMO) a constitutional issue with letting religious nonprofits avoid the paperwork non-religious nonprofits have to do. In my opinion that's a clear case of special treatment. But unfortunately, we've already lost that case, so don't expect that to change. Zubik v. Burwell, better known as the 'Little Sisters' case, the courts told HHS that they couldn't force a religious organization to fill out a form every other organization needs to fill out, because even merely filling out the form was an undue burden on their religious freedom. And it's worth pointing out that SCOTUS was *unanimous* in that ruling, so we can't expect that some future scenario like Harris appointing a liberal judge to replace Thomas would change it.
I didn't know the whole entire Supreme Court had gone insane because that's insane. It's just sickening how they think Christianity has the right to control us. I dislike them very much!
Wasn't the whole S.C. going insane the whole point of DT expanding it?
Bullseye!
Which is why I hope that Harris not only wins, but wins big, and also gets the supermajority in congress by a wide margin, so she can expand the US Supreme Court. That wouldn't solve everything, but it would be a good start. *sigh*
This is part and parcel of the rethuglican modus operandi - get a rethug judge to strike down a law which inconveniences them and push it through to the supremes - a court they bought and paid for. The supremes will no doubt pull some legal hocus hocus out of Alito's or Thomas' ass and declare it unconstitutional. This court may make it impossible to regulate anyone or any entity the rethugs don't want regulated. We are in a heap of trouble, folks.
Summary: the Johnson Amendment is toast, and the U.S. is another step closer to being a Christian theocracy (despite claims about the demise of Christianity and so-called rise of the Nones).
And we will be fully on our way to a theocracy if Trump wins.
In my opinion, it's already too late. Christian fascists will take over the country whether Trump wins or not. (But please still vote!)
I believe it will be a fight to hit the brakes even if Harris wins.
I believe you are right.
This lawsuit is why the tax-exempt status for the churches needs to go. Tax them all.
Fine by me.
Cornerstone church is in my community. They are a pox on our community, in my opinion. I’ve been occasionally tuning into Gary Hamrick (& his two sons, also pastors at Cornerstone, so it’s quite the Hamrick dynasty!)
I feel like I’ve heard Gary bragging about how they got out of paying penalties to the IRS. I’d be very interested to know if this is true. He’s due to preach his “Election Sermon” within the next week or to. He’s been pumping up his congregation for it recently.
I’m not exaggerating when I say every one of his sermons has red meat for the Maga congregation involving insulting or mocking Democrats, especially Biden and Harris.
The church has grown exponentially at the expense of other churches in our area. Anyone who is still Maga attends Cornerstone.
In the dictionary, under "scofflaw (n)," it should say, "See Cornerstone Church." This brand of blatant and unabashed taunting of the law should be intolerable, and yet it continues with Cornerstone and other suchlike churches, without let.
It is past time these outlaw churches were called to task.
Hé poteau, j'pige rin à rin, tu peux jacter pour ma caboche steup ? 😁
Okay ... what about your head? 😁
It has a flaw who prevent it to understand flaw words with a prefix 😁
So ... if I broke it down and said, "Scoff law," would it make more sense? Or is that just as flaw-ed? 🤣
Actually, it does 😁
"This brand of blatant and unabashed taunting of the law" suits its MAGAt congregants.
I wouldn't trust their word on it. "The big bad government tried to repress us, but we showed them!!!11!!" is a juicy narrative, and an easy lie to get away with given that the IRS seems to actively avoid releasing information on their Johnson amendment investigations and actions.
Doesn’t the Freedom of Information Act apply here? These scams involve the public tax laws and our use or lack of public money.
Hemant said he couldn't verify Cornerstone's claims, so that's another reason to distrust them.
Though I'm guessing he hasn't FOIA'd the IRS on it (yet), because those enquiries often take a lot of time. In any event, if the IRS has an open investigation they woludn't be required to give out any info on it, I think ongoing work falls under the 'deliberative' exemption.
All atheist Americans should stop paying taxes and send a letter to the IRS saying that you’ll start paying taxes again as soon as you read in the papers that the IRS is making all churches pay taxes if they promote one political party above any other.
Not that long ago, I tried to do a search on IRS action against churches that had violated the Johnson Amendment ... and came up with NOTHING. If there have been any actions taken by the IRS in that regard, it hasn't made the major OR minor news organizations, at least not that Google knows about.
This is an issue which has been on my mind, one way or another, since I first declared myself to be an atheist and became aware of the Johnson Amendment. The utter blatancy with which some churches have thumbed their noses at that codicil should be reason enough for the IRS to engage them in court. Yet it hasn't happened, at least not to my knowledge. And NOW a group of preachers want to vitiate an amendment which has rarely been exercised, while they continue to seemingly DARE the IRS to spank their behinds for their misdeeds. What they want is to formalize what has been a de-facto situation: the current impotence of the Johnson Amendment.
Which strikes me as about time that the Johnson Amendment was well and properly reinforced, funded, staffed, and supported to its primary purpose: the prosecution of those 501(c)(3) organizations who seem to think they can act as scofflaws with regard to it. So can we do that ... PLEASE???
It seems too expensive to go after each entity. There needs to be a lien system that automatically gets applied if you violate tax rules.
This is self-funding. Not only can they levy fines but once they determine a church should lose it's tax-exempt status, being the IRS they can revoke it back in time and then go through the church's books and present them with a tax bill. Any GAAP violations would result in more fines, which would be inevitable because the accounting rules for a church are non-existent.
I like how you think. Would that the IRS would put such a process in place!
The big unspoken problem, and the highest likelihood reason why the IRS doesn't enforce this rule, is because Congress controls the purse strings.
Conservatives already want to cut IRS funding (even though the IRS makes money for the government), and going after churches would create even more popular support for such a move. Congress could also, at any time, zero out funding for Johnson Amendment investigations, as Congress puts directives of the type 'spend $X on A, but only spend $Y on B" in pretty much every budget they pass.
My guess is IRS leadership has decided that the potential benefit of enforcing the JA is not worth the potential downsides of doing so, as it might cause Congress to disrupt much larger and more important tax enforcement operations. A kind of "don't catch the eye of the king when he's in this mood" sort of strategy.
Yeah, maybe so. Still, I've written President Biden about this issue, and if we can get Harris and a blue Congress in this November, I mean to write her AND my representatives about it.
This crap has gone on long enough.
Good luck, but I'm skeptical the dems would do anything about it. Fining and shutting down local churches is bad optics for pretty much anyone.
Perhaps, but there's also the matter of "due process." I think that having a trial, going through discovery, revealing all the myriad ways that a given church has flaunted the Johnson Amendment and putting all that in the public eye is a necessary step in getting their leaders AND their congregations to understand that there are consequences for taking the law lightly.
And I would give real money to see that happen.
I want religious and secular non-profits to play by the same rules. I'm really pretty apathetic on whether those rules allow the endorsement of candidates or not, just so long as the rule is applied evenly. I think houses of worship should have to go through the same process to be granted non-profit status and be required to file the same paperwork to keep it as secular non-profits.
Even and equitable laws for those given the privilege of minimal/no taxes.
My fear is with the current right wing zealots we have on SCOTUS they'll win. And then these ultra right evangelicals will have Carte Blanche to spread as much political propaganda in their churches as they please.
Exactly. Alito and Thomas are itching to get rid of the church/state separation.
https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/457616269_1597935337806895_3347314507827060018_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s600x600&_nc_cat=102&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=b_wSckgu03cQ7kNvgHfaEmL&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-2.xx&oh=00_AYDKqJrqH5Q5zIHhdXHnvw97YghK2b5jre756V2vq6smPw&oe=66D9352B
Even if he was real, I don't want to even be in the same room with someone who tells people to drink his blood and eat his flesh, much less literally worship him.
I've said many times: Any being, deity or mortal that desires worship is not worthy of it.
I seem to remember sir Pratchett using that in at least one of his DW books.
Strictly speaking, Sir Terence.😇
Of course. Thank you.
I haven't read DW (yes, I know, but there it is).
But it's an obvious enough observation.
You should. He was obviously using his creativity to make the readers wake up.
I am still fascinated by the way he plays with words and language, as well as the characters he invented.
If the only documented case of the IRS actually pulling tax exempt status was a case where the church endorsed a Democratic candidate, then these arguments have no leg to stand on. Their argument is that the IRS unfairly targeting conservative churches and organizations, but the IRS doesn’t enforce the law, when it did, it enforced it on the other side.
Of course, that won’t matter to the corrupt judges Trump installed throughout the judicial branch.