Religious Nonprofits, Plan Now For Tax-Exemption Battles

[Draggingtree]

The Federalist: Religious Nonprofits, Plan Now For Tax-Exemption Battles

If the Supreme Court nationalizes gay marriage, as most expect, it will threaten tax exemptions for religious organizations and churches.

By Leslie Loftis MAY 7, 2015

While most commentators are still focused upon marriage and federal versus state power, the actual questions before the United States Supreme Court on its gay marriage decision show consequences that were once dismissed as alarmist now seem prescient.

 

In the oral arguments for Obergefell v. Hodges last week, counsel told Justice Alito that if the court found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, then religious institutions’ tax-exempt status is “certainly going to be an issue.” I concur with this reaction from Michael Greve

[Draggingtree]

June 7, 2015

Getting Government Out of the Marriage Business

By Michael L. Grable

It seems surreal a single unelected lifetime judge could decide that the nation’s supreme law requires its unwilling states to derail human history’s central social institution. The bad news is that’s likely to happen this month. The good news is that unwilling states can sidestep it.

 

The lifetime judge is Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The supreme law is the U.S. Constitution. The unwilling states are Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The social institution is heterosexual marriage. The case is Obergefell v. Hodges. The issue is whether the U.S. Constitution compels unwilling states to license homosexual marriages. And Justice Kennedy – the balance of power between the Court’s four conservative and four liberal judges – will swing that issue’s decision one way or the other.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/getting_government_out_of_the_marriage_business.html