They want religious organizations to not have to provide services to same-sex couples. No being forced to host same-sex ceremonies in religious spaces. A wider interpretation of the ministerial exception applied to gay married people.
Iām about as pro-gay marriage as can be, and Iām probably OK with this. Perhaps there is some obvious issue that Iām missing.
Iād have a hard time imagining a gay couple wanting to get married at a church that thinks theyāre going to hell or whatever, so it seems like kind of a moot point. Is this even something that any gay people are pushing for?
It seems a bit different from a baker not wanting to make a cake for a gay wedding scenario.
I suppose there could be some sort of angling where a bigoted hotelier doesnāt want to host a gay wedding reception and claims his resort is a āreligious spaceā. Iād be opposed to that.
It should be understandable that a gay couple might want to force a church to perform their marriage ceremony because they want revenge or they believe it can help change the churchās attitude towards homosexuality.
I think there have been cases over whether churches that own a function hall that they rent out for secular purposes can deny renting to a gay wedding reception.
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To be honest, revenge never crossed my mind. Trolling did. I guess theyāre adjacent.
LOL, really? Well I definitely didnāt think of that one either. Sounds like some of these folks need a visit from SweetSummerChild.
Yeah, I guess thatās the kind of angling that I was worried about.
Thereās also the bigger question of why churches should be able to enjoy tax free status and also conduct themselves in a way that would be discriminatory for anyone else. Hereās a policy idea - religious institutions can fuck right off.
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Yeah, Iām all for getting rid of this.
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I suspect we all are tbh.
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What about other non-profits?
And all a church or anyone has to do in order to mostly avoid federal taxes is not make a profit. Or they can still make a lot of money and not pay. FedEx and Nike paid no federal tax last year. Itās not that hard.
Property taxes are different though. Churches mostly donāt pay those, but that is up to states.
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Yeah, thatās kind of my point. Itās not an interesting question.
Are we all for this:
I think thatās more interesting and I may be the odd man out here.
I think nonprofits should not exist in the tax code. It is complete bullshit we have hospitals and universities with hundreds of mbas working to basically maximize revenue relative to cost and then call themselves nonprofit. Not to mention things like Trump family charity that are just another type of grifting. Thereās also mega rich going to some sort of $5000 dollar per plate gala to mingle with their peers and then getting to write the whole thing off as a donation.
Yeah some real charities will get hurt but I think people will eventually adapt and money will get to worthy causes.
Edit: I also know this is a politically losing position and donāt think todayās democrats should adopt it, but if I was dictator for a day kind of thing.
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FedEx and Nike still wonāt pay taxes and neither will churches or hospitals.
All taxes should be property taxes.
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Many non-profits that Iām familiar are structured as such in some part (often large) for tax dodging reasons. So, Iād be for getting rid of it for all of them. There might be a few deserving ones that get hit, but I think on balance it would be better.
If you donāt make a profit, then you donāt make a profit. You have to do something with the excess money. I imagine accounting tricks can only get you so far. If you pay it to employees, then it will get taxed at that point. I guess you could keep buying stuff with it, but if you donāt actually need the stuff, then youāre probably better off keeping the profit and paying the taxes on it.
I donāt mind tax incentives for charities, as long as there is a mechanism for validating the legitimacy of the ācharitableā activities. Churches seem to carry a legacy implication that they are selfless contributors to the community, so they get tax exemptions. Not a problem for me IF theyāre actually, you know, contributing to the community and not just conducting hate crimes in the guise of religious freedom.
Non profit bullshit creates all kinds of terrible incentives, take hospitals. They have to spend the ungodly amount of money they make, so you get endless building sprees and ever higher executive compensation as costs continue to spiral. Itās outrageous and infuriating.
The PGA Tour is a non profit. Get the fuck out of here.
I used to work in non-profit housing and ~all of the sponsors were religious groups. The immigrants being bussed from Texasā¦almost all being met by religious groups ready to support them. The people who live in their vehicles around me? Where can they park and not get harassed? Lotta church parking lots. The people handing food and water to the homeless? Food-not-bombs is the most awesome for sure, but they are a very small player compared to religious groups. The sensational news stories donāt really paint an accurate picture.
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You might want to note that I didnāt say all churches are bad all the time. I know that churches help people.
Iām not suggesting you said āallā, but I am suggesting āmostā. I will also suggest that changing things along the lines being discussed would accomplish almost nothing good (like they still wouldnāt pay taxes - just like Nike and FedEx donāt and Apple barely does) and would do significant harm (mostly because of the complexity and accounting, not actual taxes).
Even just taking down the worst offending mega churches would be worth the entire effort of confronting religious institutions about whether or not they deserve their tax subsidies.
Even if they would still pay no more taxes than FedEx?
Now if they had to pay property taxes, that would be a different story.