Robert Francis O'Rourke. The Hill/Getty.
Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke said on Thursday that he would pull tax exempt status from churches who disagree with gay marriage. The Hill. He was asked the question at CNN's LGBT forum for the 2020 candidates. O'Rourke said that he would make it a priority to "protect rights" and remove the tax exempt status. CNN also asked 2020 candidate Corey Booker, who was more non-committal. The statement is sure to draw condemnation from religious groups.
My Comment:
Sometimes I wonder if Robert Francis O'Rourke is a GOP plant. He's confirming a lot of fears that the Republican Party has about the Democrats. Not only has he threatened to ban AR's and AK's, he wants to go door to door to pick them up. And now he is threatening to pull tax exempt status for churches that believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. This is sure to enrage Evangelicals who will certainly vote for Trump despite any misgivings on this issue alone, assuming someone more relevant that O'Rourke will bring it up. I'm not even that religious and even I am disgusted with this just on 1st amendment grounds alone.
Regardless of you beliefs on gay marriage, it's not the government's place to punish churches for having wrongthink about LGBT issues. The 1st amendment protects freedom of religion and freedom of speech so if you simply target only churches that disagree with you politically, I don't now how any such law would survive judicial review.
I think if he said that he was going to pull tax exempt status for all churches that would be something different. But I don't think you can just do it because you disagree with the churches view. For example, Scientology is a noted scam and pyramid scheme that has done all kinds of horrible things, but their tax exempt status still remains. If the IRS can't pull Scientology's tax exempt status, what chance do they have of doing the same to more mainstream churches?
As usual, CNN and Don Lemon missed a very obvious follow up question for O'Rourke. Someone needs to ask him this: "will you be doing the same things to Muslim mosques?" Muslims generally consider homosexuality to be a terrible sin and Muslim countries often punish people for being gay. Naturally, you would think that O'Rourke would have spoken out about this as well, but it seems to not have happened.
It is, of course, another example of how fragile the Democratic coalition is. If O'Rourke punishes Muslims to protect the LGBT faction, he might push them to the GOP. If not, he risks angering the LGBT crowd for going back on his word. He would have been much smarter if he had kept his mouth shut.
It also seems that O'Rourke is more interested in punishing his opponents than actually solving issues. Both gun violence and LGBT discrimination are problems (though I'd argue both of them are fairly minor) but his solution to both of them won't do anything to help and could very obviously make things worse.
Just as trying to ban guns would inevitably lead to violence, I think this move would lead to more discrimination towards the LGBT community. Most people in the GOP I know, including myself, have either come around to the idea of gay marriage or have adopted a live and let live attitude for it. But if it becomes clear that it's not possible for people who disagree with gay marriage to even have a church that agrees with them, it's going to look like the LGBT people are the ones that are discriminating. Much like the wedding cake controversies it seems as though certain activists can't adapt the same live and let live beliefs that so many among the GOP have taken up.
As for O'Rourke's presidential campaign, this again seems like a desperate attempt to remain relevant. O'Rourke started out as fairly centrist but has lurched to the far left as it was clear that there was no centrist lane open for him. This hasn't helped him at the polls one bit and it's very clear that O'Rourke has no real chance of being president. He is, however, doing a very good job at exposing how extreme the Democrats are in 2020 where his extreme ideas seem to get a fair hearing in the media...
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