Slashdot Mirror
'We the People' Petition To Revoke Scientology's Tax Exempt Status
An anonymous reader writes: There has been a lot of interest in the activities of the Church of Scientology recently, especially since the release of Alex Gibney's documentary Going Clear. A petition against tax-exempt status for Scientology has been started on the U.S. White House petition website. If it receives more than 100,000 signatures, it will qualify for an official White House response. Even Slashdot has had its own run-ins with Scientology in the past — one of many internet sites to face legal threats from the Church. Has the time come for Scientology go "clear?"
Okay, they got the Nazi thing wrong. But they definitely got the Scientology thing RIGHT.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
How is scientology any less of a religion than christianity or islam or mormons or any other belief system? If its ok for christians, it should be ok for scientologists, or it should be not ok for anyone to have tax exempt status.
Not just Scientologism. Shouldn't we be reexamining all tax exempt organizations that promote a religious belief as their sole claim to tax exempt? Run a soup kitchen, great, soup kitchen is tax exempt. Run an empire with a soup kitchen, the empire should not be tax exempt- true for scientologists and Christians.
First off, whether or not anyone thinks they are whacky or not, they are in fact a Religion, by all the criteria that count.
Second, elminating their tax exempt status will set loose unbridled lobbying efforts. Look at the history of what happened when the NRA was denied tax exempt status. An otherwise annoying bunch of gun nuts suddenly became a major political player.
Don't play with fire.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I have a lot of experience with the We the People petitions. Specifically, how they don't work like people think they do.
How people think it works: You gather enough signatures and then somehow, you introduce bills to congress with your stated goal
How it actually works: A white house rep sends you a generically worded statement about how in this case, the IRS is the agency in control of determining tax exempt status of the church.
There have been dozens of petitions for Westburough baptist church and Scientology and they always get the same response. "I have no control over this".
I'm a Christian, and I would prefer that there is no such thing as a 'religious' exemption from taxation. To me, that's contrary to the constitutional separation of church and state and is an example of the state's recognition of religion (if not the establishment of an official religion, of course).
No, simply churches should have to file as non-profits, and hew to the rules (including auditing, etc) therefor. If they do, great. If they don't, too bad.
-Styopa
I have many problems with the Scientologists and how they have conducted themselves, but there are many religious organizations from the Catholic church to televangalists to numerous unaffiliated organizations which have done horrible things to their communities and congregations at various times. Scientologists aren't even the only ones who have or currently put a price tag on better spiritual outcomes (e.g. tithing).
Scientology's religious status should not be in question. Just because it is new and it is based on a set of beliefs which you think are goofy doesn't make their spiritual or philisophical claims any less legally legitimate.
If the leadership of Scientology are involved in things which we generally find morally reprehensible we should certainly question why this state of affairs has been allowed to continue and seek reforms to address it. If they are in violation of our definitions of being a religious non-profit organization, that should also be pursued. To simply ask that an unpopular religious movement be stripped of legal recognition due to the misconduct of some of its leadership, however, is a political discrimination which we should be wary of. Americans' right to organize based on their shared belief regardless of what other people think of that belief is a protection we have traditionally valued and to erode it by selectively favouring some beliefs over others without clear, fair reasons is a dangerous precedent to adopt.
This just goes to show the dangers of relying on your own perception when it comes to issues like this. You can download a list of entities which lost their tax exempt status from the IRS themselves, which I am doing now, and (for those who automatically lose their status) it's a 20MB ZIP file containing text, so you can imagine how many records it contains. If their servers weren't so slow from over here I'd give you a precise number.
Don't trust that you know everything - double check you've not fooled yourself or been fooled by someone else. That has two benefits: You learn, and you decrease the chances of looking foolish.
It would be nice to see a petition that instead makes a cogent, fact-based, reasoned argument against the COS's legal eligibility for tax-exempt status, rather than a rant consisting of a bunch of unproven allegations, unspecified accusations of government corruption that sound like they come from conspiracy nuts, some borderline libel, with a couple facts thrown in. It wouldn't be that difficult to do, and it might actually make it awkward for the White House to dismiss, rather than making it easy by inviting them to defend their tax status as an example of how the U.S. defends "oppressed" religions.
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