[Guest post] Tax the Churches

Some politically motivated quasi-religious gored oxes think they deserve a triple-plus-special deal for their religious beliefs. Even though there are an average of 24 churches per town in the USA, religious icons are everywhere, and religious dogma is inextricably intertwined with our society, these greedy zealots pretend there's some sort of War on Religion being waged. Recently, they've outdone themselves in hyperbolic paranoia, claiming their fragile "religious rights" have been significantly injured by laws like the Affordable Care Act. They want special exceptions to this law to protect their religious rights.

Sorry. I don't think so.

Why their request for a "special deal" should be denied was expressed best by Reagan-appointed Antonin Scalia. This conservative justice authored the majority opinion in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith finding that religious liberty is insufficient grounds for being exempt from generally applicable laws. In Smith, the Court established a standard anyone (even a gored ox) can understand. The standard asks simply whether the governmental action is neutral toward religion and whether the action is generally applicable (whether it applied to all relevant activities without exception). As long as a generally applicable law does not single out religious activities for special restrictions, those that argue such a law limits their religious freedom do not have a constitutional remedy. As part of his opinion, Scalia quoted from Reynolds v. USA, a case from 1878 finding that religious duty was not a suitable defense to a criminal indictment. Wysocki calls me a liberal, but on this point of denying religious exceptions to general laws I agree with conservative and devout Catholic justice Scalia.

What's more, it's absurd to accuse the government of taxing religion. As exceptions to general laws go, how about that double-plus-special exemption for churches granted in the IRS code? Is that exemption not the heavenly Father of all special-interest deals? In case you don't know about this loophole, let me explain. Unlike all other charitable organizations and non-profit corps that come under 510(c)(3) regulations (yes, including Universities like RPI, Wy), a church does not need to petition for tax exempt status, nor does it need to open its books to prove ongoing compliance. Nope: no form 1023, no form 990. Churches simply are trusted as tax exempt entities with no requirement to apply, be audited, or publish reports. Don't believe me: look for yourself. I can't think of a bigger special deal and license to free exercise than an a priori presumption of tax free status. God bless you US taxpayer. Do you think a default, unaudited exemption like that might lead to some abuse? What scandals lurk behind that exemption, I wonder. Can you imagine the IRS simply trusting the rest of us to decide if we owed taxes?

My point is this. Although I'm an atheist myself, I do rather believe in belief. Thus, I have no serious beef with modern, mainstream religion. I know that most churches are run on the up-and-up and they do objective good in the community. The corrupt exceptions are, well, regrettable exceptions. I'm cool with much of it. What I'm not cool with is a vocal minority of political activists leveraging the presumed moral authority of religion to achieve political ends. Good arguments tell me that freely available birth control can lower the generally shared burden of health care costs by a significant margin, so there are no fiscal "damages" to Catholics by making birth control available. Catholics won't be "paying for people to have sex". Nobody is forcing Catholic women to use birth control, although a large fraction of good Catholic women certainly choose to do so. The total cost to everybody is lower when birth control is available freely through insurance. Why should the rest of us pay more so that these partisan zealots can score political points and possibly win yet another special exception that even their own legal scholars admit they aren't due?

Posted at 09:17 by Nadz   [/guest/nadz]   Comments | Perm Link |
Technorati Tags: religion birth-control law morality   |   Tweet