IRS
Threatens Political Speech
US House ^ | 24 Jul
| Congressman Ron Paul
Posted
on 07/27/2006 8:20:43 AM PDT
Five years ago, I wrote about
threats made by the Internal Revenue Service against conservative churches for
supposedly engaging in politicking. Today, the IRS is
again attempting to chill free speech, sending notices to more than 15,000
non-profit organizations—including churches—regarding its new crackdown on
political activity.
But
what exactly constitutes political activity? What if a member of the clergy
urges his congregation to work toward creating a pro-life culture, when an
upcoming election features a pro-life candidate? What if a minister admonishes
churchgoers that homosexuality is sinful, when an initiative banning gay
marriage is on an upcoming ballot? Where exactly do we draw the line, and when
does the IRS begin to violate the First amendment’s guarantee of free exercise
of religion?
I agree with my colleague Walter
Jones of North Carolina that the political views of any particular church or
its members are none of the government’s business. Congressman Jones introduced
legislation that addresses this very serious issue of IRS harassment of
churches engaging in conservative political activity. This bill is badly needed
to end the IRS practice of threatening certain politically disfavored faiths
with loss of their tax-exempt status, while ignoring the very open and public
political activities of other churches. While some well-known leftist preachers
routinely advocate socialism from the pulpit, many conservative Christian and
Jewish congregations cannot present their political beliefs without risking
scrutiny from the tax collector.
The supposed motivation behind
the ban on political participation by churches is the need to maintain a rigid
separation between church and state. However, the First amendment simply
prohibits the federal government from passing laws that establish religion or
prohibit the free exercise of religion. There certainly is no mention of any
"separation of church and state," yet lawmakers and judges
continually assert this mythical doctrine.
The result is court rulings and
laws that separate citizens from their religious beliefs in all public
settings, in clear violation of the free exercise clause. Our Founders never
envisioned a rigidly secular public society, where people must nonsensically
disregard their deeply held beliefs in all matters of government and politics.
They certainly never imagined that the federal government would actively work
to chill the political activities of some churches.
Speech is speech, regardless of
the setting. There is no legal distinction between religious expression and
political expression; both are equally protected by the First amendment. Religious
believers do not drop their political opinions at the door of their place of
worship, nor do they disregard their faith at the ballot box. Religious
morality will always inform the voting choices of Americans of all faiths.
The political left, however,
seeks to impose the viewpoint that public life must be secular, and that
government cannot reflect morality derived from faith. Many Democrats, not all,
are threatened by strong religious institutions because they want an
ever-growing federal government to serve as the unchallenged authority in our
society. So the real motivation behind the insistence on a separation of church
and state is not based on respect for the First amendment, but rather on a
desire to diminish the influence of religious conservatives at the ballot box.
The Constitution's guarantee of
religious freedom must not depend on the whims of IRS bureaucrats. Religious
institutions cannot freely preach their beliefs if they must fear that the
government will accuse them of "politics." We cannot allow churches
to be silenced any more than we can allow political dissent in general to be
silenced. Free societies always have strong, independent institutions that are
not afraid to challenge and criticize the government.