Roberts Warns Churches Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status For Opposing Gay Marriage

Churches could lose their tax-exempt status with the IRS if they refuse to recognize the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned in his dissenting opinion.

He cited a comment made months ago by the U.S. government’s top lawyer on the same-sex marriage case.

“Hard questions arise when people of faith exercise religion in ways that may be seen to conflict with the new right to same-sex marriage — when, for example, a religious college provides married student housing only to opposite-sex married couples, or a religious adoption agency declines to place children with same-sex married couples,” Roberts wrote.

“Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. See Tr. of Oral Arg. on Question 1, at 36–38. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”

During oral arguments in April, Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli whether schools that teach that marriage is between one man and one woman would face treatment similar to pro-segregation schools during the civil rights era.

“It’s certainly going to be an issue,” Verrilli replied. “I don’t deny that.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Eric Holder, IRS officials coached tax-exempt black ministers on how to engage in political activity

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status.

Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.

“We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,” said then-CBC chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. “In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.”

Cleaver’s session advised black ministers on “draconian laws” including voter ID laws. Cleaver was a sharp critic during the 2012 campaign of Republican Mitt Romney’s policies.

As The Daily Caller has extensively reported, the IRS harassed conservative and tea party groups during the 2012 election cycle with improper reviews of their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt applications.

“[The CBC] had the IRS members there specifically to advise them on how far to go campaigning without violating their tax-exempt status,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Daily Caller.

“I viewed the meeting as highly problematic. Eric Holder heads the agency that prosecutes organizations who give false information to the government. The Justice Department coordinates with the IRS on actions taken against not-for-profits. These ministries are given not-for-profit status on the basis that they are not engaging in any political activities. Here, the Obama administration was clearly encouraging them to maximize their efforts by showing them where the lines were drawn in federal case law,” Turley said.

“It is a fundamental precept that cabinet members should not engage in political activities. The most important of those cabinet members would be the attorney general of the United States. To have the attorney general actively advising political allies of the president showed remarkably poor judgment on his part,” Turley told TheDC.

Via: Daily Caller

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