I am angry as anyone about the Mormon church's involvement in convincing Californians to deny rights to same sex couples. In fact, before the election - and to the dismay of the No on 8 campaign - I wrote about the Mormon church's hypocrisy in targeting African-American people to vote Yes on 8 when it wasn't so long ago that the Mormon church carried the banner for segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. But this endeavor is hopeless. There is no chance in hell that the IRS will even seriously consider stripping the Mormon church of its tax-exempt status. In order to strip the church's 501(c)(3) status, it would have to be shown that a "substantial part" of the Mormon church, as a whole, is devoted to influencing legislation. By any measure, the church's involvement here is not a "substantial part" of the church's overall operations. For example, courts have held that when less than 5 percent of an organization's activities are devoted to lobbying, it is presumptively not a "substantial part." Seasongood v. Commissioner, 227 F.2d 907. Does anyone really think that the Mormon church devoted more than 5 percent of its global activities to influencing Prop 8? And let's take this legal argument to its logical conclusion. The Humane Society of America is a tax-exempt organization under the same tax code section, 501(c)(3), as the Mormon church. In the eyes of the IRS, the Humane Society and the Mormon church are the same. The Humane Society was the critical force behing getting Prop 2 (treatment of farm animals) passed. It donated $3.7 million, helped get the proposition on the ballot, and carried the torch in getting it passed. Should the IRS strip the Humane Society of its tax-exempt status for advocating Prop 2? Of course it should not. Legal arguments aside, any progressive should be repulsed by the ultimate goal of the campaign to strip the Mormon church of its tax-exempt status. After all, its not the tax-exempt status that we're after. The goal here is to stifle the right of religious groups to speak (and act) as they choose. I am as disgusted as anyone about what the church said about my community and my marriage to Brian. I know that they used lies to play on irrational fears. But are we really willing to go so far as to say that they shouldn't be allowed to speak because we disagree or detest what they have to say? It is sophomorically cliché, but I will quote Voltaire anyway: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." A hopeless effort to strip the Mormon church of its tax-exempt status also pours salt on the wounds that we need to heal. Like any civil rights movement, ours needs to be multi-faceted. Not only do we need to stand up in court for the legal protections that we deserve, but we also need to change the hearts and minds of people who disagree with us. For the most part, those people who oppose marriage equality are deeply religious and they have been misguided by intolerant forces in their religion to believe that their God condones hatred. (This is no different than during segregation when some churches (including the Mormons) taught that it was okay to treat backs as less than whites because anyone with black skin was a descendant of Cain who was marked by God to be punished.) But the way to heal this divide is not to give religious people more reasons to hate us or to reaffirm their existing fears. For example, the advertisements for the Yes on 8 campaign warned that if Prop 8 failed, churches could lose their tax exempt status if they did not perform same-sex marriages. This was an outright lie and our side called them on it. We had law professors explain that our Constitution protects the right of religious groups to freely practice their religion and that no religious group could be forced to agree with or participate in the "gay agenda" to keep their tax exempt status. And now where are we? We're playing right into the irrational fears that the Yes side stirred up. We're saying that by taking a public position that we disagree with, the church should lose its tax exempt status. We need to engage people of faith in dialogue, not battle. It will not be easy and it could take a long time. But look how far we have come already. My friend Raoul Kennedy represented a group of over a hundred religious organizations that filed an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court supporting marriage equality. The groups he represented included people of just about every faith: Mormon, Baptist, Lutheran, Jewish, Presbyterian, Muslim, Catholic, Unitarian, and so on. By working with these churches, we have changed their minds. They have moved from fear and hatred to tolerance to celebration and now to the point where they are willing to stand with us to fight for equality. These are the bridges that will lead to equality. Bombing these bridges with a hopeless and silly campaign to revoke a religious group's tax exempt status will only set the movement back several steps. It will force people of faith to entrench themselves in their current views rather than being open to change their views. |
