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After examining the long history in the United States of exempting religious institutions from taxation, the Court determined that the exemption has not resulted in the excessive entanglement of religion and the government. In fact, the Court found, taxing religious property could increase government entanglement by giving rise to tax valuation of church property, tax liens, and tax foreclosures. Further, demanding that religious institutions support the government by paying taxes would also create entanglement.
After examining the long history in the United States of exempting religious institutions from taxation, the Court determined that the exemption has not resulted in the excessive entanglement of religion and the government. In fact, the Court found, taxing religious property could increase government entanglement by giving rise to tax valuation of church property, tax liens, and tax foreclosures. Further, demanding that religious institutions support the government by paying taxes would also create entanglement.
That decision did not rule it unconstitutional to require churches to pay taxes. If it were, tax exemptions could not be revoked, as we know they sometimes are. Please read the entire link without cherrypicking lines from it, and if you can't admit you were in error, at least stop being intentionally obtuse.
That decision did not rule it unconstitutional to require churches to pay taxes. If it were, tax exemptions could not be revoked, as we know they sometimes are. Please read the entire link without cherrypicking lines from it, and if you can't admit you were in error, at least stop being intentionally obtuse.
It was a brief statement on the ruling. I am fully secure in my position.
It was a brief statement on the ruling. I am fully secure in my position.
"Moreover, while finding no constitutional barriers to the imposition of taxes on religious organizations and individuals, the Court in one decision found the establishment clause to bar an exemption from taxation for a religious entity. In Texas v. Bullock the Court held unconstitutional, 6-3, a Texas statute that exempted from the state's sales and use taxes only those periodicals and books that promoted the teachings of a religious faith." p. 69.
Are you now going to stick your fingers in your ears and yell "I can't hear you..."
Militant homosexuals irk me as much as militant homophobes...neither can resist forcing their beliefs on everyone else. Like moths to flame they must do it.
Except that they didn't. Anyone can look it up and find out for themselves.
The most conclusive language on the point being discussed is in Brennan's concurrence:
"The [tax] exemptions have continued uninterrupted to the present day. They are in force in all 50 States. No judicial decision, state or federal, has ever held that they violate the Establishment Clause. In 1886, for example, this Court, in Gibbons v. District of Columbia, 116 U. S. 404, rejected on statutory grounds a church's claim for the exemption of certain of its land under congressional statutes exempting Washington churches and appurtenant ground from real property taxes. But the Court gave not the slightest hint that it ruled against the church because, under the First Amendment, any exemption would have been unconstitutional. To the contrary, the Court's opinion implied that nothing in the Amendment precludes exemption of church property..."
They're suing the city to try and remove anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodation and employment.
Transvestites and transsexuals need to be protected from exactly what and how does free access to the opposite sex's restroom provide this protection?
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