Calling the IRS
Church-state watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State is urging the IRS to investigated "biased" voter guides for the presidential election.
In complaints filed with the IRS today, AU says the American Family Association and WallBuilders have made "guides" that "are clearly designed to promote Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee." (Does Barry Lynn have the IRS on speed-dial yet?)
The guides, which you can find on the groups' Web sites, list a buncha issues, from "traditional marriage" to "business freedom." Only Huckabee gets a "yes" stance on all the issues.
"I am particularly outraged that these voter guides indicate that they are suitable for use in churches and other tax-exempt organizations,'' said AU's Barry Lynn. "They are not. Any church that distributes these biased guides is risking it's tax exeption and casting aside its integrity."
posted by DB at
2:39 PM
1 Comments:
Americans United is to be highly commended for standing up for our Constitutional rights.
The Voter Guides are identical, though it is not clear who concocted the distortion of the issues.
These guides are clearly inapproprite for distribution or other uses in churches. That is true on legal grounds. It is also true on theological grounds, on moral grounds, and on Biblical grounds.
These guides have little to do with family values--except in the highly warped way in which the Religious Right uses that political term.
There is obviously no Biblical basis for their "Human Life Amendment," their opposition to an assault weapons ban, their misnamed "Business Freedom" issue, their pleadge of no new taxes, their opposition to gay pride celebrations, their opposition to removing troups from Iraq, or their grossly misdescribed "moral education" issue.
The is all pure politics of the right wing sort. Any church that knows and believes what the Bible teaches would recognize that almost all of this is directly contrary to that Bible.
If the publishers of the voter's guide had been interested in a balanced consideration of moral and/or religious issues they would have included several other matters. Such as: fair wages for the workers, poverty, harassment and abuse of immigrants, millions without health care, creation care (environmental protection). Those have the advantage of actually being clearly Biblical vaues that the churches should be seriously concerned about.
1/31/2008 04:18:00 PM
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