Stop tax subsidies for criminal
religious organizations
Originally posted September 1, 2019;
updated October 20, 2019
South Carolina's Bob Jones University, founded by
Christian evangelist Bob Jones Sr., excluded black applicants until
1971, and then admitted them only if they were married. In 1975, the
university began admitting unmarried students, but continued to exclude
those in interracial marriages or known to advocate interracial marriage
or dating. In January 1976, the IRS revoked the university's tax-exempt
charitable status due to its racially discriminatory admissions
policies. The IRS' action was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in May
1983, but its decision dealt "only with religious schools—not with
churches or other purely religious institutions." (source:
Wikipedia)
No organization, including "churches or other
purely religious institutions", should be granted tax-exempt status if
they discriminate on account of race, sex, sexual orientation,
disability or nationality or if they routinely engage in unlawful or
immoral activities. That would include several of our mainstream
religions. I will discuss some of the top offenders, but before that, I
would suggest that tax exemptions for all religious organizations be
eliminated. That way, we can avoid the argument over which of them deserve
exemptions and which don't. People and organizations who do good work do
not need to be rewarded with a tax exemption. A tax exemption is, after
all, a subsidy, and has to be funded by the rest of us. The religious
tax exemption has been estimated to cost $82.5 billion a year, and that
doesn't include the following: (source)
Local income and property tax
Sales tax
Self-employed contributions (SECA) exemption
Related business income tax
I couldn't find a figure for the property tax loss
for the whole country due to the religious exemption, but
this story says it was $26 billion for New York state alone, and
that doesn't include the tens of millions from religious schools and
clergy residences. In Clearwater, Florida, home of
the Church of Scientology's spiritual headquarters, the church owns 58
properties, 49 of them downtown. The church spent $103 million over the
last 3 years buying up those properties. Seventy-three percent of them
are tax-exempt. (Tampa
Bay Times, 10/20/2019)
Here are four of the top criminal religious
organizations:
The Catholic Church. The scale of the Catholic Church’s criminality still shocks.
That is the headline for an
August 14, 2018 editorial in the Washington Post. It's about a
grand jury investigation in Pennsylvania that found that some 300
predator priests sexually abused at least 1000 victims. Much of the
information came from the Church's own records, showing that Church
leaders were fully aware of the abuse and not only failed to report it
to the authorities, but allowed predators to continue in positions where
they had access to children. Abuses of a similar nature have been found
in other states. The 2015 movie
Spotlight
was about the Boston Globe reporters who uncovered widespread child sex
abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston area. And an
investigation into abuse by Michigan priests is in progress.
Sexual abuse by priests is not the only problem
with the Catholic
Church. Women are traditionally denied leadership
positions;
nuns are subservient often to the extent of exploitation. Gay
marriages are not performed in the Church although ruled legal by the
U.S. Supreme Court in 2015. "[T]he Vatican still treats homosexuality as
“objectively
disordered” — a policy that persists even though the
representation of gay men in the priesthood is higher, probably far
higher, than in the general population." The Church also condemns
"abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization and stem-cell
research." (source)
The Church of Scientology. Scientology was
created in the latter part of the 20th century by the late science
fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It has
little resemblance to traditional religions. "Scientologists ... believe
that people have innate, yet suppressed, power and ability which can
be regained if cleared of enforced and unwanted behaviour patterns
and discomforts. Scientology is described as 'a religion to help
people use scientific approaches to self-actualize their full
potential.' Believers reach their full potential 'when they
understand themselves in their true relationship to the physical
universe and the Supreme Being.'" (source:
Wikipedia)
David Miscavige, who took over leadership after
Hubbard's death in 1986, has been accused of physically attacking
subordinates and forcing them to endure prison-like conditions for
months at a time at a facility known as "The
Hole." Other members are expected to work long hours at low pay and
to spend large sums of money on classes and "auditing".
Child abusers are protected.
Leaving the Church
is not easy, especially for members at the upper levels of the
organization. One tells of
escaping by hiding in a car trunk. Successful escapees are tracked down by Church operatives who
pressure them to come back and "route out properly". Critics of the Church are harshly
harassed under the Church's
"fair game" policy.
In the 1970s, the Church conducted "one of the
largest infiltrations of the United States government in history,
with up to 5,000 covert agents...Scientology operatives
committed infiltration, wiretapping, and theft of documents in
government offices, most notably those of the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service. Eleven highly placed Church executives, including Mary Sue
Hubbard (wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard and second-in-command of the
organization), pleaded guilty and were convicted in federal court of
obstructing justice, burglary of government offices, and theft of
documents and government property." (source:
Wikipedia)
Nevertheless, the IRS granted Scientology a
religious exemption in 1993. This was after being badgered for years with
multiple lawsuits and harassment of IRS officials.
Scientology policy enabled years of child sexual abuse, lawsuit says
Jehovah's Witnesses. The
Jehovah's Witnesses also have a child molestation problem and are facing
lawsuits. Their problem is that it is Church policy not to take action
against an accused molester unless there were two witnesses to the act,
making the religion a great one to belong to if you are a pedophile. The
Church also expects women to be subservient to their husbands, and
instances of domestic abuse are routinely blamed on the abused wife. The
religion's cruelest rule prohibits blood transfusions. People die as a
result of this rule, including children who have no choice in matter.
Getting out of the Church is made traumatic by "disfellowship",
the Church's term for shunning. It is used for unacceptable behavior
such as smoking, drinking and fornication, but also for questioning
Church doctrine or leaving the Church. Disfellowship means no
association with the person by other members, even to say hello - even
if the person is an immediate family member.
Members are warned not to associate with people
outside the Church. "Witnesses are taught that association with
'worldly' people presents a 'danger' to their faith, and are instructed
to minimize social contact with non-members to better maintain their own
standards of morality. Attending university is discouraged and trade
schools are suggested as an alternative." (source:
Wikipedia)
The Church is lead by a "governing body" of eight
non-elected men who control all operations through branch committees.
They and the supporting staff live on over
700 acres of untaxed property owned by the Church in Putnam
county, New York. "In
2001 Newsday listed the Watch Tower Society as one of New York's forty
richest corporations, with revenues exceeding $950 million". (source:
Wikipedia)
This comes not from tithing, but donations from members, often requested
to allay the cost of periodic "conventions". The costs of these huge
meetings are suspected to be greatly exaggerated, resulting in
substantial gain to Church coffers. Revenue is also gained by selling
Kingdom Halls. Although built and paid for by their congregations, they are
designed and owned by the governing body. One ex-member has observed
that they resemble credit unions more than places of worship, which
enhances their marketability. (That ex-member has an excellent website
called jwvictims.org.) No one seems to know what the governing body does
with all that money.
Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention
is a
fellowship of more than 47,000 Baptist churches and 15 million members
across the United States and its territories. It is the country’s
second-largest faith group after the Catholic Church. An investigation
this year by the Houston Chronicle found that "nearly 400 Southern Baptist church
leaders and volunteers have faced sexual misconduct allegations in the
past two decades. As many as 700 victims — some as young as 3 — were
sexually abused, some raped and molested repeatedly, according to the
report." (source)
Southern Baptist are against abortion and do
not believe homosexuality is a valid lifestyle. Women are of equal
value to men but are not eligible to serve as pastors. (source:
Wikipedia)
Even the United Methodists, the church I was
brought up in, bans gay marriages and LGBTQ clergy. In February of this
year, delegates from around the world voted 438 to 384 against easing
those restrictions. The United Methodist church is the second-largest
protestant denomination in the U.S. (source:
NPR)
Mormon Church has misled members on $100 billion tax-exempt investment
fund, whistleblower alleges
The main purpose of some churches is squeezing as
much money as possible out of their congregants for the benefit of their
leaders while providing twisted spiritual guidance and sexually abusing their children. Some shouldn't be allowed
to exist, let alone granted a tax subsidy. They should not only be
taxed, but all other special rights should be eliminated. Variations of the
word "religion" should not appear in any laws in the U.S. Religious
organizations should be treated no differently than any organization. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof",
but free exercise should not require exemption from the laws everyone
else must follow. "Decades of legislation and court rulings have
effectively expanded the First Amendment into a shield that puts faith
groups beyond the reach of many laws." (source)
Those laws must go. There should be no special rights for religion,
period.
O'Rourke says churches against gay marriage should lose tax benefits,
draws backlash
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