In court filings Monday, the IRS has largely backed down on a decades-old rule that barred churches from engaging in political activity.

In a reversal of decades of legal precedent, the Internal Revenue Service said in court filings on July 7 that churches and other religious 501 c(3) organizations can endorse political candidates in certain circumstances.

The new position, which was made in a joint filing intended to end a lawsuit brought by a group of high-profile Christian organizations last year, carves out a narrow exception to the Johnson Amendment, which has banned political activity by churches since 1954.

The rule was introduced by former President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1954 when he was serving as the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. It banned all tax-exempt organizations like churches and charities from “directly or indirectly” participating in politics, specifically in endorsement or opposition of candidates.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    154·
    2 days ago

    You… hate the way he rips the mask off of things that were already happening and forces them into the public’s awareness?

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      2 days ago

      I do, yes.

      It would be different if he were a reformer and it were happening for positive reasons, but that’s not how the US Government operates.

      This corruption will be coopted and used by future administrations, and people will just forget that these practices were ever illegal to begin with, not unlike everything that became normal in the War on Terror. Everything Donald is doing now became legal and permissible because of the egregious abuses that were normalized by Obama and Dubya.

      It’s clear Democrats are comfortable with this too, because their only opposition, if you can call it that, is sternly-worded letters.

      • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        31·
        2 days ago

        it being illegal gave it plausible deniability to the people doing it and made people doubt that it was happening at all.

        now that the plausible deniability is being unmasked, there’s no way for anyone to doubt that it’s happening.

        • Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          2 days ago

          Doubt that it’s happening? Nobody was doing that. Everyone knew it was happening and why. Churches are corrupt, and willing to corrupt a government to get their way at any cost. It’s been that way since FOREVER.

          Legalizing it isn’t ‘pulling a cover’ off anything. It’s not a good thing in any way. It’s allowing corrupt religious assholes have their way for cash. They bought the corrupt government officials, lobbyists, everything. They’ve been doing the same things for thousands of years. It’s not a secret. It never was. This is what they do, and they never stop.

          Religious people are fucking morons. They’re trained to be. They’ll believe whatever their priest handlers tell them to believe. That’s how that works. “Look the church is corrupt, here’s 1,000,000,000,000,000 ways in detail and with hard proof!” - “nuh uh, it’s not”.