Any chance he’ll head out to Utah to do some of his undercover research?
There’s a small problem with his article:
The endgame of gay activists is to strip the Boy Scouts (and by extension, any other organization that morally opposes gay marriage) of its tax-exempt status under both federal and state law.
Except 501 (c) 3 status isn’t what the Boy Scouts have been prevented from being sponsored by government entities in some places.
Scouts have been prevented from being sponsored by government agencies because of their discrimination policies. Even then they get equal access to government property under federal law that any other group gets, they just don’t get government sponsorship given they have specific religious tenants they require members to hold.
Churches would still have equal access to public facilities as they do now, but just as now, they couldn’t be sponsored by a government agency–the same restriction on the Boy Scouts in some states. Furthermore, churches may choose to marry only who they wish including the ability to discriminate on interracial marriages. No law prohibits churches from discrimination based on race even if they choose 501 (c) 3 status.
Where organizations are discriminated upon based on policies towards race is if they choose to accept federal funding such as Bob Jones University when it banned interracial relationships or if a church wants to carry out a faith based charity that is funded by government funds.
Curiouser and curiouser… I wonder if Petey will start hanging out at Palatine’s Unitarian Church?
Sonja the fundamentalist conservative found out something about one of the speakers at the recent District 214 book banning meeting and she subsequently calls for righteous fury or something of that nature…
I won?t get into it too much (I already did that ina lengthy and heated thread at Illinoize a few months ago, and was finally able to ?agree-to-disagree with most?), but
Just for clarification purposes, the ‘problematic’ quote is actually from an article by Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University School of Law, reprinted from the May 26th Chicago Tribune. Although LaBarbera does call it ?an excellent opinion article,? it should be noted that the quote is not actually his.
Furthermore, I don?t think that Kmiec actually says that 501 (c) 3 status has anything to do with the ability of government entities to sponsor BSA units. Rather, he is predicting that in addition to denying the BSA such sponsorship opportunities, ?gay activists? hope to strip the organization of it?s tax exempt status?.thereby making donations to it non-tax exempt, which could threaten it?s survival financially.
You have to understand: non-profit membership organizations like the BSA require access to both a recruiting base and financial donations. In a way, Kmiec is actually acknowledging that the BSA?s opponents are – if nothing else – at least cunning enough to know this, and attack on both vital fronts.
I must have edited out Kmiec, but yes it’s his article.
The problem is that 501 (c) 3 status has nothing to do with the policies adopted by the non-profit. This is specifically in the code to protect churches which may discriminate based on faith including on characteristics the law usually protects. The Boy Scouts have the same protection churches do and without a fairly significant change in non-profit law that no one is proposing, it couldn’t be done.
Sponsorship by government if the BSA is going to claim to be a religious organization then government can’t be in the business of supporting it. However, 501 (c) 3 status has nothing to do with whether a non-profit has specific belief structures.
That Kmiec guy sure does get referenced *a whole lot*…
Larry,
I think there is some confusion here. I think there are two different questions getting tangled?let me try to restate and untangle them:
1) Will the loss of 501(c)(3) status affect the ability of BSA groups to obtain government sponsorship, and 1(a) is that what Kmiec was really saying?
2) Is the BSA really in any danger of ever losing their tax exempt status?
Here are my answers:
(1) Simply put: it’s unlikely but possible, and 1(a) no. To the point, Kmiec never even touches on the concept of ?sponsorship? in his piece. Rather, he fears that loss of this status will affect their ?access? to public facilities; and while you may not think this is a rational fear, I can tell you from experience that it is. Many government entities whose leadership is hostile to the BSA ? like the Oak Park School District – would LOVE to find a legal way to distinguish the BSA as ?unequal? to outside groups seeking to use it?s buildings and rooms, thus enabling them to give ?unequal access.? Furthermore, he fears the loss of ?chartable donations? to their cause if those donations are no longer tax-deductible. I think that?s a no-brainer.
(2) Again, unlikely but possible. Remember that all laws are ? for better or worse ? subject to constitutional approval and interpretation by the judiciary and executive agencies, respectively. Kmiec?s hypothesis may be unlikely, but it is certainly possible. If nothing else, an over-reaching jurist could force the hand of executives and the legislature to spin off religious based organizations into another status separate (and unequal) to 501(c)(3), which would take us back to question 1.
Now, how likely is that? Weel, consider: the sort of logic that Democrats use to rail against Bush?s ?re-distribution of wealth to the wealthy? through tax deductions, or condemn school vouchers as unconstitutional taxpayer-directed government subsidaries could (horrifyingly) be adopted by a judge, and lead to the establishment of a seperate and unequal status for churches and religious based organizations.
== Rather, he fears that loss of this status will affect their ?access? to public facilities; and while you may not think this is a rational fear, I can tell you from experience that it is.
Except federal law on this matter is very strong and Congress repassed it with stronger protection and broad bi-partisan support in relation to equal access to public facilities after the court interpreted it too narrowly. The record states exactly the opposite of what you are fearing. I just don’t see how 501 (c) 3 status is a big deal in the issue because the right established in the federal law has nothing to do with a non-profit’s status.
==Furthermore, he fears the loss of ?chartable donations? to their cause if those donations are no longer tax-deductible. I think that?s a no-brainer.
But the only people pushing for any significant change in 501 (c) 3’s are religious conservatives who want to loosen the restrictions on political activities by such organizations. The (c) 3s are so broad in what kind of organizations are involved it’s hard to imagine how this would work to deny a non-political organization such as the BSA to lose the charitable donation deduction and Democrats/liberals would never support such a change in the law because they go to church and their churches are also involved in many causes for which they utilize the protection. Especially in black churches the modest help of a tax write off helps marginal churches maintain themselves. Black ministers would throw a fit that no Democrat would dare fight.
Direct support in the form of vouchers (which I don’t think is unconstitutional given we give all sorts of aid to students at religious colleges including my alma mater) is a very different thing from a charitable contribution to a 501 (c) 3.
The only reforms around 501 (c) 3s even discussed are only concerning political activity with some calls for crackdowns on organizations like Americans for Tax Reform and some conservatives wanting to relax rules for churches.
BSA would even fall into a slightly different and more protected category of a religious based charity and not a church in and of itself–to revoke it’s charitable status would take revoking Catholic Charities tax exempt status and that’s not happening.
The problemis that even in the early 1970s when the PCA broke from the PCUSA over a couple issues including integration, nothing challenged their tax exempt status because they remained segregated for a time (that’s no longer true). If they had wanted sponsorship or public funding for a charity they couldn’t have been sponsored as a church anyway and any charity would have had to abide by non-discrimination if it received public funds.
Hell, the Council of Conservative Citizens has a foundation that is a 501 (c) 3 and as repugnant as they are on race, no one tries to nail them except on the political activity rule–which BSA doesn’t have any problem meeting.
Points taken. At this point, I think we simply disagree over just how much of an alarmist Kmiec is being. Having seen the effects of ACLU?s 25 year legal war on the BSA first hand, I am admittedly a little ?jumpy? about what might be next.
g.o.p. — You do know the ACLU would gladly support the Boy Scouts of America if they were ever unConstitutionally discriminated against, don’t you?
NW – no, I don’t ‘know’ that. And while no one knows what the future might hold, I do know that in 25 years, the ACLU has done nothing – not a single thing – regarding the BSA that didn’t involve restricting their ability to function as an organization.
The ACLU is needed to keep the BSA honest. For example, the BSA continued to issue charters to public schools to run Cub Scout Packs, even though the BSA knew that public schools couldn’t legally exclude atheists from such a school-sponsored youth group. The ACLU had to threaten the BSA with lawsuits in order to get them to stop this dishonest practice (and the BSA still has about 3,000 units that they haven’t rechartered, even though they’ve had more than a year to do so).