National Review Online
Friday, October 11, 2019
Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign is within the
margin of error of non-existence, but in his failure he has found a purpose:
expressing the Democratic id. His latest bid for left-wing love came at a CNN
forum on gay rights, where he said that churches that oppose same-sex marriage
should have to pay taxes.
Religious organizations, like secular non-profits, are
exempt from taxes because we do not want government to inhibit a thriving civil
society. Abolishing the exemption only for religious groups that do not toe the
progressive line would be an outrageous oppression of church by state.
Other candidates have not yet echoed O’Rourke. But the
crowd applauded. And his position has not come out of nowhere. President
Obama’s solicitor general suggested to the Supreme Court that the tax exemption
of religious colleges that oppose same-sex marriage might have to be revisited.
Six of the presidential candidates, including leading contender Elizabeth
Warren, have co-sponsored the “Equality Act,” which specifically states that
religious believers could not invoke the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to
ask to escape its new restrictions on private conduct. It would be the first
congressional limitation of the religious-freedom law since it was enacted,
nearly by acclamation, in 1993. Several of the candidates have also endorsed
another piece of legislation that is specifically directed at shrinking the
reach of that law.
If other Democrats are refraining from adopting
O’Rourke’s stance, then, it is for contingent reasons of prudence rather than
lasting ones of principle. The contemporary Democratic party is a threat to the
first freedom mentioned in the Constitution.
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