Remember how the Mormon Church denied funding Prop 8, other than $2,078 in travel expenses to send an Elder to California? A lawsuit filed by Californians Against Hate seems to have changed the church’s position:
Mormon church officials, facing an ongoing investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, Friday reported nearly $190,000 in previously unlisted assistance to the successful campaign for Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.
The report, filed with the secretary of state’s office, listed a variety of California travel expenses for high-ranking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and included $20,575 for use of facilities and equipment at the church’s Salt Lake City headquarters and a $96,849 charge for “compensated staff time” for church employees who worked on matters pertaining to Prop. 8.
When I interviewed several Mormons in December, asking what they thought about the congregation members donating to the measure, they initially denied knowledge of it. When told that individual Mormons had donated nearly two-thirds of Prop 8’s funding, they acted like the number was far too big to be real. But all along, they insisted, the Mormon Church itself had never meddled in the measure; that could have been illegal, seeing how spending money to affect elections jeopardizes a church’s tax-exempt status.
Via Americablog.
The IRS has it right. Churches should be free to work as hard as they want to in favor or against any legislation or initiatives, just not candidates. My church lobbies hard in favor of marriage equality for all people. Can you imagine if Martin Luther King had been forbidden from working for civil rights just because he was a pastor? Should the churches supporting the civil rights movements in the 1960s have had their tax status revoked for putting their faith into practice?
But it’s totally right to blast the LDS church in public. Freedom of speech cuts both ways.
Yes. Please. Take away the tax-exempt status of this lying, meddling church! Show them all that the law will be enforced!
Have you heard the secrets of the mormon church? Of course lies are okay: Exhibit A is Joe Smith’s story about the gold plates and the hat!
$190,000 is more than ten times the amount of money I lived on last year, including providing 50% of the support for my child. That’s substantial.
maybe you need a real job (and a vasectomy) Dwight