Tax the Churches

Yeah, yeah, free speech is your fucking right.  So is being as stupidly freakazoid and conservatard as you want.  But tax exemption is a privilege, and one that you have to earn by keeping politics out of your fucking churches.

Ed Kilgore, Political Animal's liberal christian:

We all know from watching Fox News and reading Peggy Noonan that the Internal Revenue Service has been engaged in a vicious partisan war under the leadership of Obama-puppet Lois Lerner, who shocked the conscience by dragging her feet in granting conservative electioneering groups the right to hide their donors and avoid taxes by pretending to be “social welfare” entities. I suppose the tax collectors’ insane partisanship exposed them to so much righteous anger that they couldn’t dare to crush religious liberty, too (per this report from Politico’s Rachel Bade):

A record number of rogue Christian pastors are endorsing candidates from the pulpit this election cycle, using Sunday sermons to defiantly flout tax rules.

Their message to the IRS: Sue me.

But the tax agency is doing anything but. Although the IRS was sued itself for not enforcing the law and admitted about 100 churches may be breaking the rules, the pastors and their critics alike say the agency is looking the other way….

At the same time, the number of pastors endorsing candidates in what they call Pulpit Freedom Sunday jumped from 33 people in 2008 to more than 1,600 this year, according to organizers, Alliance Defending Freedom. And this year, they’ve stepped up their drive, telling pastors to back candidates any Sunday up until the election, not just one Sunday as in past years.

One guess about which party is benefiting from this civil disobedience.

The church leaders are jumping in high-profile races that will help decide the Senate and tight governor races across the country, endorsing candidates from Thom Tillis (R) over Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in North Carolina to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) over Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) in Kentucky.

Rev. Mark Cowart, pastor at Colorado Springs-based Church For All Nations, suggested good Christians should vote Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper out of office in an Oct. 19 sermon, where he endorsed his GOP rival, Bob Beauprez.

“Beauprez is against more gun control, does not support abortion and he does protect the man-woman marriage — that’s the one I’m voting for. … I’m endorsing biblical principles,” the preacher said in a video of the service, pacing a church stage and chopping his hand through the air for emphasis.

Yeah, the Bible’s real clear about the need to stockpile military weapons, isn’t it?
In any event, these folks see nothing wrong with accepting massive tax subsidies (since contributions to their coffers are tax-deductible) and then taking official political positions. And they’re spoiling for a fight in the courts. Makes you wonder if they are really the quailing, shivering victims of Police State Persecution they always claim to be.