To Get Tax-Exempt Status –Stand for Nothing and Say the Same

Texas-based Pro-Life Revolution applied for 501(c)3 status with the IRS in January 2011.  They finally received that status some 900-days later, on June 6, 2013 in a letter dated May 19.  In the interim, they received letters asking for clarification and “more information.”  In March 2012, there was a telephone exchange in which IRS agent Sherry Wan told Pro-Life Revolution President Ania Joseph how the IRS expects tax-exempt groups to act, think, and speak. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has released a legally recorded telephone call 14-months into the application process that was supposed to last no more than 270 days.  In short, Wan told Joseph: You cannot force your religion or force your beliefs on somebody else … You have to know your boundaries.  You have to know your limits.  You have to respect other people’s beliefs.  The agent went on to say she stresses neutrality on issues because she works for the IRS, and therefore, has “to stick with the law.”  Wan also told Joseph she'd be allowed to reach out to women—including handing them a pro-life brochure—but, if she wants a tax exemption, she ought to play nice with abortion clinics.

 

Mind you, this is the IRS telling a private citizen how they should or shouldn't, can or can't, speak or act when it comes to exercising their First Amendment freedoms. 

 

Toward the end of the conversation, Wan told Joseph: “When you conduct religious activities, you have to respect other people's beliefs, other people's religion.  You cannot [go]...against other groups or devalue other groups, other people's beliefs.  OK?"  In other words, if you want a tax-exempt status, you need only be sure you stand for nothing and say the same.

 

Now don’t fall for any excuses that may come along about this being a “rogue” agent.  To be charitable to Wan, she’s undoubtedly following her training— training that apparently taught her to base her arguments to Pro-Life Revolution on a law overturned by a federal appeals court in D.C. during the Carter Administration.

 

Is it any wonder that IRS agents occupied the offices of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse last year?  Is this what our Founding Fathers originally had in mind in the Bill of Rights?

 

As a pastor, I find this chilling … for every church is registered as a tax-exempt organization.  Yet here is an IRS agent attempting to intimidate people of faith, strongly implying that they have no right to engage in the public square, and suggesting that doing so amounts to some kind of legal violation.

 

Of course, the IRS agent was wrong.  

 

But think about this: Soon this agency (the IRS) is going to have a critical role in the enforcement of Obamacare.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel