beatrice-otter:krool-gwooptsoov:ricwulf-again:association-of-freed-people:witchesversuspatriarchy:Th
beatrice-otter:krool-gwooptsoov:ricwulf-again:association-of-freed-people:witchesversuspatriarchy:The revolution will not be televised - it will be Tiktok’d “Let’s be fed snitches” and “the revolution” are mutually exclusive concepts. It’s truly amazing how devoid of self awareness some people really are. That church should sue tbhThere is plenty of precedent indicating that pastors and priests can share political opinions from the pulpit as long as it isn’t marketed as the “official position of the church”, the same as other 501©3 organization heads can do likewise, so long as they don’t claim its the official message if the charityAnd even then, some 501©3s have proudly outspoken positions. Catholic Churches are sometimes incorporated as 501©3s, and planned parenthood claims incorporation as one tooBoth organizations opine about abortion (a hot political topic) from diametrically opposed positions. Any principled application of a “gag order” (assuming an actual violation) would strip both the church AND foundations like planned parenthood of their 501©3 statusBut we all know the people pushing this aren’t principled in the slightest. Ahahahaha. Aha. Aha.No.You do not understand the law as it pertains to “what charities can and can’t say” and why the lines fall where they are.As it happens, I am a Christian minister, and we actually had a required class in this at my seminary, so I have some knowledge on the subject.The laws regarding tax exemption get updated occasionally, but the basic framework was established in the 1890s and was pretty much set in stone by the 1960s. To maintain a tax-exempt status, where you do not pay taxes because you are a charity, your organization has to fulfill a number of requirements. One requirement is that you have to do something the Federal government considers a public good. Such as being a religious organization, or distributing food to hungry people, or providing medical care (like Planned Parenthood does), or encouraging arts in the community, or being a school, or whatever. Another requirement is that you stay out of politics. If you breach the conditions required of a 501©3 organization, and you still try to maintain your tax-exempt status, you are committing tax fraud. Basically, you are lying about what sort of organization you are in order to get a special tax status.To maintain a tax-exempt status, you cannot openly promote a political party or candidate. This is why, for example, if you donate to Planned Parenthood, none of your money will be used for political messaging or lobbying or anything like that, and no Planned Parenthood newsletters encourage any tangible political action. If you want to donate to political advocacy about abortions, you need to donate instead to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, a completely separate group that does political advocacy in support of abortion and Planned Parenthood clinics. If you went to a pro-abortion rally, it was run by the PPAF, not Planned Parenthood itself. PPAF is not a 501©3, and donations to it are not tax deductible.For churches, the rules are slightly more complex, because religious beliefs and political beliefs usually impact one another. Because of separation of church and state the government can’t tell a church what they can and can’t believe. However! this does not mean that all politics are fair game for churches to participate in. A church can have a position on a political policy, but not on a political party. For example, a church can teach that abortion should be legal; another church could teach that abortion should not be legal. Both churches would be well within their rights to preach that from the pulpit. Holding a religious belief that impacts politics does not breach tax-exempt status. And telling your members that that belief should impact who they vote for also does not breach tax-exempt status. HOWEVER. When you move from an ethical position to a voting position you are on the very edge of what is allowed. And the second you tell your people which party or candidate they should vote for, you have crossed the line and are legally in danger of having your tax-exempt status revoked if someone tells the IRS about it.Here are some examples in practice of what is permissible and what isn’t:A minister can’t tell congregants what party or candidate they should vote for during a church function (worship, coffee hour after worship, Bible study, youth group, women’s circle, work day, whatever)If a minister is at a neighborhood barbecue and wearing a t-shirt and is off the clock, they can say anything they please, the same as any private citizen, and it won’t affect the church’s tax status.A minister (or anyone else) can’t tell people who to vote for in a church newsletter or other church publication.A church can tell its members what they should think about a particular political issue.A church can tell its members that issue should rank highly in their decision of who to vote for.A church can’t tell its members that they can only consider that policy when voting, or should chose a candidate or party based solely on that issue.A church can host a political debate with candidates from both parties.A church can’t host a visit from (or fundraiser for) a single candidate.A church can host a currently elected politician to talk policy, as long as they do not advocate for voting for them in the next election. (There may also be something about “as long as it’s not too close to the election” but tbh I can’t remember for sure.)A church can encourage its members to voteA church can hold a voter registration driveA church can organize people going out to drive voters to their polling places … as long as they don’t discriminate based on political party.A church can’t tell its members who to vote forA church can send a delegation to a protest, as long as they are clear that they are protesting for/against a policy, not against specific parties or politicians.A church can’t send a delegation to a political rally for a specific party or politician.A church can send people to meet with politicians to advocate for specific policies or legislation.A church can encourage its members to write to their political representation to advocate for specific policies or legislation.A church can’t promise its members votes to politicians in exchange for policy considerations.Note that the punishment for breaching these requirements is that you have to pay taxes. That’s it. You’re not being persecuted, you’re not in danger of going to jail or being discriminated against, you just have to pay the same taxes that any political advocacy organization does. If you are going to act like a political advocacy organization, you should pay taxes like a political advocacy organization.Note that if a church wants to do political advocacy while also maintaining tax exempt status, they can do the same thing Planned Parenthood did, and set up a separate non-tax-exempt group to handle the political advocacy and messaging. There are religious political advocacy groups on both sides of the aisle!None of this is new, this has been in place since at least the 60s, and I’m pretty sure it was the law of the United States by the 1920s.What changed was that in the 1980s, the Evangelicals and Fundamentalists allied with the Republican Party. Reagan defunded the IRS so they didn’t have the manpower to investigate most tax fraud (whether committed by rich people or by organizations). And if the IRS did remove tax-exempt status from a conservative religious organization because it was breaching the 501©3 conditions, Republican politicians would raise hell about how they were “persecuting” Christians! (by … requiring them to adhere to the same standards as everyone else.) On the other hand, there are right-wing groups that scrutinize left-wing groups for tax law violations, so while right-wing churches have been free to ignore the law with impunity for the last 40 years, left-wing churches get slammed if they set one toe out of line.Basically, for the last forty years, conservative churches have believed that the laws should apply to everyone else but not to them, and whenever people try to say they should be held to the same laws that everyone else (including other churches!) are held to, they claim they’re being persecuted. -- source link