Do you beleive in these plates?Follow

eh, I would say a church is a non-profit organization, but it is clearly different then other non-profits.

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 3:49pm by Xsarus

Except they do support lobbying, just not in a blatantly illegal manner. If churches were wholly charitable organizations that genuinely kept within the political boundaries set for them, then it wouldn't matter to me.

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 3:55pm by Allegory

Accepting donations and supporting political policies doesn't violate your tax exempt status. If it did, a whole bunch of non-profits would be ineligible. In fact the IRS rules allow for some wiggle room on political agendas provided they don't make up a significant portion of the group's activities.

Churches do have to apply for their tax exempt status. It's not automatic. They're also threatened with losing it when they delve too deeply into the politics scene such as the IRS investigations of Obama's old church once the campaign began and calls to support Obama were inevitable. But stuff like "We're anti-abortion" doesn't disqualify the Catholic Church any more than "Save the Pacific speckled nuthatch from logging in federal forests" disqualifies the WWF.

Edit: Glancing over the rules, there's a few minor benefits to being a church, namely that you're safe from audit unless the IRS had reasonable cause to believe you're in violation of your status.

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 4:23pm by Jophiel

Re: Tax exempt status. Joph is right on. Lots of non-profit tax-exempt organizations involve themselves in politics. Some much much much moreso than any church. What I think a lot of people don't get is that the rules have to be the same regardless of whether an organization is religious in nature or not. Excluding an organization from a government status or qualification purely because it is a church is a violation of the first amendment.




Ridiculous. Religious symbols are to be treated no differently than non-religious ones as far as the state is concerned. Even to the point of not recognizing that they *are* religious symbols. You would never say that if the state decides to include one non-religious symbol it must include all of them, would you? No one would rationally argue that the state choosing to include an Elvis plate, but not a Big Bopper plate somehow violated their rights in some way.

And guess what? If the state chooses to include a plate with a cross on it, but not one with a native American Shamanic Totem on it, that would also not violate anyone's rights. Specialty plates are usually determined based on demand and requests from the people of the state. If enough people want a specific type of plate to warrant the expense of making it (cause they'll get it back in the increase costs for each plate), then they may decide to make that plate. If that's the criteria they use to determine what designs they put on their plates, then that same exact criteria must be used even if the design includes religious symbols. To use a different criteria only when religious symbols are involved is a violation of the first amendment.

You realize that a Dem would never win national office again if this happened, right? The volume of political activism conducted by non-profits in ways which help Dem election chances outweighs that done by religious organizations a good 10 to 1. Easy. And that's assuming all churches support the GOP, which is very clearly not the case.


There's a reason why the focus is on "churches" involving themselves in politics and not non-profits in general. And it's not out of a desire to be "fair"...

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 3:15pm by gbaji

Even assuming this is true, it wouldn't make these organizations stop existing, it would just make them taxable entities starting from the time the IRS determines they've lost their status.

Edit: Noting Smash's comments, I'm speaking of 501(c)3 organizations such as the WWF. And I only keep using WWF because I assume most folks know of it so it's a handy example.

Edited, Nov 11th 2009 5:28pm by Jophiel

I find it interesting how quickly you leap to support a "separate and non-equal" condition when it's a religious group getting the short end of the stick. How exactly do you justify that?

The fuck? I don't support tax exempt status AT ALL. Have you ever read any of my posts?

Oh wait, let me run your post through the GBAJIDREAMLAND translator. Let's see.....

"I am wrong, and desperately need to change the subject by accusing someone of some sort of inconsistency and hoping they take the bait and the thread can be diverted from me being proven wrong, trivially, yet again in a matter of seconds after I posted"

Ohhhhh. Gotcha.

Well, as Smash noted, you're talking about the wrong tax exempt status anyway. The folks you're thinking of aren't (largely) 501(c)3's.

Off topic, but I saw the story today (but missed the episode) that Jon Stewart caught Fox News plainly using old event footage from August/September to make it look like the most recent teabagger event in DC had many times more people than it actually drew in. Pretty funny stuff.

Yes! Sunday afternoon upside-down crucifixions! I'd love to hear Dan Dierdorf trying to explain why the nails have to go in at a certain angle...

Irrelevant. The statement was about "non-profits" as a whole. Smash indicated that he believed that no non-profit organization should be allowed to involve themselves in politics. Of course I know that he really wants is "no churches" to involve themselves in politics, while organizations which overwhelmingly support his "side" can do what they want, but that's not what he said.

Um... yes. And you just said that they shouldn't be. You feeling ok? This was like a slowball...


Hi. I didn't. It felt like a slowball because you misunderstood something. I'm not sure what, maybe it's literally lack of observation, but in the future, when it seems like I've made an obvious mistake, pause and reconsider.


Yes. Separate and unequal. I get it. I was just commenting out strange is it that you seem perfectly ok with this.


I'm not sure you do get it. It's possible that, now that I've explained it to you superficially, you have a vague understanding of it, but probably not. At any rate, once again, I'm not ok with any organization qualifying for tax exempt status. I don't think tax exempt status should exist. This isn't the first time I've posted this. I am, hello, a fucking SOCIALIST. I believe you are aware of this.

That aside, the idiocy of your attempt at argument here is, genuinely, almost painful. An organization that advocates for a cause, let's say the right to Abortion, is not an analog for a church. They are in no way related. The only thing that makes them similar in any way is the tax exempt status they both qualify for. Taking this arbitrary status, applied to them for distinct reasons, and using it as the source of their commonality to complain about it being unequally applied is adorable, in a retarded grocery bagger sort of way.



And why is this ok with you? I'm just trying to figure out how someone who eternally attacks anything which can remotely be labeled as "separate but equal" is not only perfectly ok with having different laws apply to different organizations based solely on religious status, but actively supportive of the idea that those laws should be unequal in terms of how they treat those groups.


Yet again, I don't. Once again, that aside, I'm not sure why anyone would have an issue with groups who shout "we shouldn't have to pay taxes because we gather together to raise money for the invisible man in the sky!!" having to adhere to different standards than groups who shout "we hate cheese and will work to end the legal sale of cheeses throughout the country, but we're not looking to make any money at it, just to end cheese sales!"



This would seem to be inconsistent with your own professed political beliefs and I'm curious how you reconcile them with anything other than something akin to "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"?

No, it wouldn't seem to be inconsistent at all. Probably because it isn't. Reconcile what? Wait, is this secretly about your latent homoerotic fantasies, again? Is this an attempt to argue gay marriage for the 1000000th time? We get it, you love ****, you can't deal with it, so you offer increasingly bizarre nonsensical reasons to be against gay rights. /yawn. Let it go, old man, no one cares.