Sigh.
So, on September 28th, in an action coordinated by the Alliance Defense Fund, a group of pastors is going to challenge the IRS regulations prohibiting endorsements of candidates by, you guessed it, endorsing candidates.
Just a guess — they won’t be endorsing Obama.
Rant&Reason has the details. There is some good news, though. One, this is the IRS, and they are about as likely to take this sitting down as Guiliani is to go a day without mentioning 9/11. There’s also Project Fair Play, organized by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They are taking preemptive action, including filing to have the IRS consider whether the ADF is endangering its own tax exempt status, and to investigate possible ethics violations, what with lawyers advising their clients on how to break the law and all. It’s heartening to see that a whole group of pastors is involved. There are a lot of religious folk who get these rules, and why we have them.
What’s particularly obscene in all of this is the Orwellian Doublespeak going on — apparently not allowing churches to use their resources to promote candidates kills free speech. No, folks, it doesn’t. Pastors, for instance, can promote candidates on their free time all they want. They just can’t use church resources to do so. A church can also, of course, give up its tax exempt status, and then it will be free to do whatever the frellin’ hell it wants to. It’s amazing — churches basically get a public subsidy, in the form of tax exemption, and some still want to complain because there’s a few rules about that? Sigh.
My only cynical worry in all of this is that I could well see a certain administration leaning heavy on the IRS to ignore the ADF’s actions. So it’s good to see a coordinated counteraction now, one that might force the government’s hand in court, if all else fails.
