Beto O’Rourke wants the government to punish anyone who has the wrong beliefs. That is, if you’re a church that doesn’t subscribe to liberal orthodoxy on same-sex marriage, why should you have nonprofit, tax-exempt status?
At Thursday night’s CNN LGBT town hall, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, the Texas Democrat and mediocre presidential candidate went beyond his usual snipes at Christians to declare all-out war on religious freedom. Churches and religious organizations that don’t support same-sex marriage, he said, should be stripped of the tax-exempt status that allows them to stay afloat financially.
2020 hopeful @BetoORourke said tax exempt status, under him, would be stripped from religious institutions that did not support same-sex marriage or discriminated against anyone in any way.#EqualityTownHall pic.twitter.com/BpQQVR5FeX
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 11, 2019
The candidate just spit in the face of the First Amendment. Whether you support gay marriage or not (I certainly do) this amounts to a pernicious form of government viewpoint discrimination. O’Rourke wants to use the weight of the government to punish religious groups he disagrees with.
It’s bizarre, immoral, and shameful.
Tax-exempt status is supposed to go to groups and organizations based on their nonprofit status, not based on whether or not politicians of the day approve of their beliefs. O’Rourke should really reconsider: After all, if he opens this Pandora’s Box, when conservative politicians eventually gain power, it could be the American Civil Liberties Union or Planned Parenthood whose nonprofit status is in jeopardy.
For many of these organizations and churches, losing tax-exempt status would amount to a financial death sentence. There’s little doubt that if every church that followed biblical teachings on homosexuality lost tax-exempt status, thousands upon thousands of churches would likely have to shut their doors.
This includes many Catholic churches, and O’Rourke says he’s a Catholic!
His own stated policy would have the government effectively shut down many churches he supposedly aligns with, all because they disagree with liberals on one moral issue.
This is insane, unconstitutional, and authoritarian. For Beto O’Rourke, it’s pretty on-brand.
