Speaking of Hypocrisy
I was just reading this post on Freyne Land about the liberal love fest for Bernie and Welchie at the Unitarian Church Meeting House in Burlington yesterday.
Scroll down to the second picture. Yeah, that's a church.
In case I need to spell it out, the liberals scream take away their tax exemption!!!! anytime someone inside a church building mutters a word that might resemble something even remotely Republican. Yet this is okay?
I don't think any church needs to have their tax exempt status taken away, but I think the scene in that picture is appalling. I would be pretty upset if I drove by my church and it looked like a political campaign's headquarters.
But then, the only time I have ever heard talk about any politicians at my church, it was in the context of them all being equally...um, lacking in values.
13 comments:
You clearly don't understand the tax code surrounding tax exempt status and political speach.
Not understanding the law never seems to stop you from spouting off.
Political rallies have been held in tax exempt organizations all over this state. There is no law against that.
The law says that tax exempt dollars may not be used to endorse specific candidates.
Unitarian Church did not make any expenditure for this event. The Unitarian Church has endorsed no candidate for office.
The Unitarian Church received payment for providing services to a political group. There is no law against that. In fact it’s very common.
There is no hypocrisy here, because no law was broken.
Here's a reality check for both of you: I never said a law was broken.
And any time I have read liberals "spouting off" about churches and tax-exempt status no law was broken there either.
If this was an evangelical church housing a Republican rally, I'm willing to bet your comments would be very different.
"And any time I have read liberals "spouting off" about churches and tax-exempt status no law was broken there either."
Not true. Acording to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson:
"While the vast majority of charities and churches do not engage in politicking, an increasing number did take part in prohibited activities in the 2004 election cycle."
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650200101,00.html
It isn't just the liberals who are concerned about this. It's law enforcement.
Try to do a little research before you spout off.
Heh. "Reality Check" ... nice work.
You lefties can be purposely obtuse about this all you want. The fact of the matter is when there is any remote link between conservatives/Republicans and religion, you have hissy fits about church and state issues and how our country is becoming a theocracy.
Any link between leftists/Democrats and religion elicits nary a word of protest from you, nor anything about an impending theocracy. This tells me that the conservative courting of religious people bothers you because they are actually genuine about their faith, whereas the lefties just reach out to the religious to paint themselves as something they are not so they can finagle more votes.
Face it, you're hypocrites.
The law is very clear on this. The law bans the use of tax exempt funds to endorse a specific candidate.
No such thing happened at the Unitarian Church event that Charity refered to.
The IRS has found cases of churches violating the law.
The IRS is right to uphold the law.
The public library in Rochester is frequently used for 60's style teach-ins on a variety of political and enviro subjects.
Reality Check, what I said wasn't about law. If that happened at a conservative evangelical church, people would be complaining about it, even if it wasn't a violation of law. If you are not one of those people, then it is not you who is a hypocrite.
Well, the easiest (and fairest) way to deal with this is to tax all churches? Why the hell should they be exempt?
And chanman, the reason us lefties don't get all fired up when one of ours talks about religion is because we look at it very differently than you do. It (or lack of it in my case) is a personal choice, not something to ram down everyone's throat like the GOP does.
The fundamentalist/Biblical literalist version that has taken over the GOP is more like a perverted form of Christofascism. I'm not gonna tell people they can't believe that some magic sky fairy created the world in seven days and then for some reason, killing his son in a brutal way somehow forgives us of some fictional 'original sin'. I don't care if one wants to worship a can of beans, either. But I don't want those superstitious beliefs guiding public policy, either.
Most of us lefties aren't authoritarians. Nowhere does that difference manifest itself more greatly in the way we look at religion.
It’s typical political BS to claim that you know what your opponent “WOULD” do “IF” … instead of listening to your opponent to find out what he would actually do.
The fact is that you can’t find one case of a Democrat coming out against politicians speaking in churches, because Democrats have never been against that.
Liberals are against breaking the law, which states that tax-exempt dollars can’t be used to endorse specific candidates. This is the issue.
To say otherwise is to misrepresent the Democratic position on this.
j.d. ryan - Care to give some examples of how the GOP is allegedly ramming Christianity down people's throats? Name one law in which they are forcing Christianity on you.
Well, fortunately I live in a state where the separation of church and state is still important, so I can honestly say I haven't personally been 'persecuted'. But in the national/societal picture, there are lots of problems, aside from hearing the pious drivel everytime Bush opens his mouth and talks like the nation is one big Colorado Springs...
Most of the horrid anti-science attitudes in the government are due in large part to the efforts of Christianist fundamentalists, and even as a conservative you must know that is true, whether you agree with the issues or not... abortion, opposition to stem cell research, the dumbing down of students with 'intelligent design' theory, and the constant gay-bashing. It's getting really old. And to hear Christians, a lorge majority in this country act like they are somehow 'persecuted' makes it even more ridiculous.
It's really quite an embarrassment, not only that our highly advanced country is so damn religious, but a lot of it is the worst kind of obnoxious anti-intellectual anti-human anti-progress fundamentalist Christianity.
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