Government must tread lightly

Navin1 wrote:
"Also remember, the mormons believe in large families. They get multiples of services (free schools, police, fire, national defense...) paid for by those of us with small families while they get tax breaks for all those kids and still claim they have family values - ah, family values subsidized by non-mormons."

Your comment is obtuse.

1) "[Mormons] get multiples [sic] of services... paid for by those of us with small families..." I don't know of any place where schools, police, fire or national defense are free for mormons or why you are suggesting that mormons get these services for free unless you are confusing the mormons with illegal aliens or suggesting that Mormons don't pay their taxes.
2) You imply in your comment that you have a family, by which I assume you mean children, albeit much fewer than those supposedly prolific mormons. If so, then you too are being subsidized by people who have no children and your self righteous attitude about how you are subsidizing the mormons seems rather hypocritical. If the mormons have more children I assume it is because they choose to and that you have fewer children for the same reason.
3) You imply that claiming tax breaks "for all those kids" is somehow inconsistent with family values. How so? Your logic escapes me. Your statement is a non sequitur.

Dear "haveaheart," getabrain.

You said, "this cannot be a truthful statement until the Mormon church stops accepting tax-exempt status. Tax exemption amounts to a huge infusion of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of every organized religion, and for Mr. Otterson to deny that is breathtakingly insincere.
Once you are no longer costing me money, Mr. Otterson, then you can claim to be free of the taint of government funding.
Posted by: haveaheart | March 12, 2010 1:46 PM"

So, being the fair minded person that you no doubt are, I presume you are against all the rest of the non-profits costing you money also, such as the Girl Scouts, American Heart Association, the NAACP, your local animal shelter? There are over 1.7 million non-profit tax exempt organizations in this country with total income exceeding 3 trillion dollars a year. Or is it just churches getting tax exempt status that you resent?

It is inept, wasteful, and corrupt government that costs you money, not churches and other non-profits. If every church disappeared over night, your tax bill would not only not go down, it would increase in order to cover the social services and humanitarian work formerly provided by those evil, money-grubbing churches, most of which churches deliver a far higher percentage every donated dollar to those in need need than does the government.

It's interesting how the posts went from government interference in religion to government exemption. I know the Mormon Church collects and "makes" money, but they spend a lot of money for good reasons. In fact, the LDS Church spends a lot of money for many of the same reasons governments spend money, welfare of the people. Where are the statisitics on how much the Mormon Church spent during Katrina or any of the other natural disasters wherever their membership lives; such as Haiti, Thailand? You won't get those numbers from Mormon leadership because bragging is not the Christian way. Charity is their goal, not credit. Complaining about how any religious organization spends their money, in my opinion, is to protest too much.

"Catholic hospital care is what medicine used to be about Doing all that is humanely possible to preserve life from the moment of conception till natural death.
No person is excluded from such care what is excluded are measures that are prodeath rather than prolife."

--Stop smoking crack, Mary.

Catholic hospital care is what medicine used to be about Doing all that is humanely possible to preserve life from the moment of conception till natural death.
No person is excluded from such care what is excluded are measures that are prodeath rather than prolife.

marymack77
you stated
"Do people realise if religious people are forced to do this they will be less able to help many of the people they now help?The whole reason the government began to give money in the first place was because it recognised the good that was being done for the wider community?"

Because the goverment is attempting to look out for the wider community. Not the selected members of the community that a religous group chooses to help. If religous groups are only helping selected members of a community based on their religious beliefs then they are doing harm and not good to the wider community.

"Feel free to practise your religion as you wish but the question is about exempting religious organisations from government rules when those organisations are accepting government money. If you don't want to accept those rules then (as your church does) you should not accept the governments money."
Do people realise if religious people are forced to do this they will be less able to help many of the people they now help?The whole reason the government began to give money in the first place was because it recognised the good that was being done for the wider community?

On the subject of religion George Washington actually said:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men & citizens. The mere Politican, equally with the pious man ought to respect & to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private & public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the Oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure--reason & experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Have a heart,

I read no hate in your words. Someone might be projecting their own hatred onto your words. Must be a touchy subject, - me thinks they protest too much.

Also remember, the mormons believe in large families. They get multiples of services (free schools, police, fire, national defense...) paid for by those of us with small families while they get tax breaks for all those kids and still claim they have family values - ah, family values subsidized by non-mormons.

hariaum

Joe Smith had his Moroni and Moroni continues to deliver laws to today's LDS prophet/"profit", Thomas Monson.

Joseph Smith Jr.
Born December 23, 1805, Prophet from April 6, 1830 to June 27, 1844 (14 years)

Brigham Young
Born June 1, 1801, Prophet from December 27, 1847 to August 29, 1877 (29 years - the church was led by Brigham Young as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for about 3 years prior to his sustaining as president)

John Taylor
Born November 1, 1808, Prophet from October 10, 1880 to July 25, 1887 (8 years - the church was led by John Taylor as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for about 3 years before his sustaining as president)

Wilford Woodruff
Born March 1, 1807, Prophet from April 7, 1889 to September 2, 1898 (9 years - the church was led by Wilford Woodruff as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for about 2 years before his sustaining as president)

Lorenzo Snow
Born April 3, 1814, Prophet from September 13, 1898 to October 10, 1901 (3 years)

Joseph F. Smith
Born November 13, 1838, Prophet from October 17, 1901 to November 19, 1918 (17 years)

Heber J. Grant
Born November 22, 1856, Prophet from November 23, 1918 to May 14, 1945 (27 years)

George Albert Smith
Born April 4, 1870, Prophet from May 21, 1945 to April 4, 1951 (6 years)

David O. McKay
Born September 8, 1873, Prophet from April 9, 1951 to January 18, 1970 (19 years)

Joseph Fielding Smith
Born July 19, 1876, Prophet from January 23, 1970 to July 2, 1972 (2 years)

Harold B. Lee
Born March 28, 1899, Prophet from July 7, 1972 to December 26, 1973 (1 year)

Spencer W. Kimball
Born March 28, 1895, Prophet from December 30, 1973 to November 5, 1985 (12 years)

Ezra Taft Benson
Born August 4, 1899, Prophet from November 10, 1985 to May 30, 1994 (8 years)

Howard W. Hunter
Born November 14, 1907, Prophet from June 5, 1994 to March 3, 1995 (9 months)

Gordon B. Hinckley
Born June 23, 1910, Prophet from March 12, 1995 to January 27, 2008 (13 years)

Thomas S. Monson
Born August 21, 1927, Prophet from February 4, 2008 to present.

YEAL9

that goes for you too.

mark
always seek the truth.

haveaheart

if you dont like the law, you are welcome to try to change it.

if all you want to do is spiew hate, then sit down before you hurt yourself.

mark
always seek the truth.

"My own Church doesn't ask for, or accept, government funding, so I'm deferring to other churches to defend that ground."

This cannot be a truthful statement until the Mormon church stops accepting tax-exempt status.

Tax exemption amounts to a huge infusion of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of every organized religion, and for Mr. Otterson to deny that is breathtakingly insincere.

Once you are no longer costing me money, Mr. Otterson, then you can claim to be free of the taint of government funding.

I don't see room for discussion. If you accept government money, you have to accept government rules. The government should tread lightly around religious institutions, but only when they have no ties to the state.

I am glad people are also bringing up the ongoing issue of tax-exempt status violations. When will religious institutions tread lightly around the government?

http://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United_States

Most of the "fathers" were christian. I don't see any evidence that any said they were atheists though I would be interested in such.

Some were deists and these were the leaders of the formation of the USA intellectually and "spiritually."

These very same christians and deists et al PURPOSEFULLY EXCLUDED the rule of christianity from the USA. It is a greater indicator that a member of a group says don't let my group rule over my children. But in their personal lives, I am not sure how secularist they were either. The French revolution, in contrast, was specifically secular / atheistic and against the right of the king and church to govern.

hariaum

Notwithstanding the ranting of the Falwells and the Robertsons and the Hagees, the majority of the men to whom we refer as “founding fathers” were not christers, but were humanists – SECULAR humanists – men of enlightenment who were fully aware of the dangers of mixing religion with state government. Because of their experiences with this unhealthy admixture, they wrote the Constitution, and its Amendments – ratified by the population – in such a way as to assure that the Constitution would ALWAYS trump religion. The first president of the US never even considered himself a christer, regardless of the fact that he accompanied his wife to some church services, always careful to leave before taking communion.

It is ultimately ironic that the hypocritical and superstitious roman catholic church should be so vocal in DC, in its resistance to the rights of and for gay persons, even as it is continuing to pay out vast sums of money (how much of that provided by the taxpayers of the United States, and the citizens of those European nations who are still taxed to support the papist church?) to quietly settle untold numbers of homosexual priests’ child abuse cases in the US, Europe, and now Ireland. It seems almost certain that the future will see many other such cases brought in and by other countries which have been polluted by roman catholicism. This disgusting, superstitious, gutter “religion” maintained silence during the Holocaust; maintains silence on the application of the death penalty in backwards states such as Texas; the current Bronze Age pope has forbidden the use of contraceptives in precisely those nations in which the rise of HIV among heterosexual people has far surpassed that of the homosexual community -- and thereby assuring the future sickness and death of a host of humans. The catholic church, with its withdrawal of charitable works for and among the needy of DC, proves that it has abandoned any standing it might have had to pronounce, or even comment, on anything that concerns human morals.

This vile man-made institution cannot be permitted to suspend the Constitution or Bill of Rights, nor to influence the making of laws in this secular nation, to suit the purposes of its papist leader.. If it cannot obey the laws and rules by which the people of this nation have determined to govern themselves, it has no right to US taxpayer dollars.

By virtue of its tax-exempt status, the Mormon church has a great monetary benefit from the government.

They violate that status by their anti-human-rights, anti-gay political activity, as in the California Prop 8 campaign.

And this from a church that did not allow black people to hold their priesthood until 1978, and practiced plural marriage until 1895.

But is Mormonism even a religion based on the following:

From: lds-mormon.com/time.shtml

"The first divergence between Mormon economics and that of other denominations is the tithe. Most churches take in the greater part of their income through donations.

Very few, however, impose a compulsory 10% income tax on their members. Tithes are collected locally, with much of the money passed on informally to local lay leaders at Sunday services. "By Monday," says Elbert Peck, editor of Sunstone, an independent Mormon magazine, the church authorities in Salt Lake City "know every cent that's been collected and have made sure the money is deposited in banks." There is a lot to deposit. Last year $5.2 billion in tithes flowed into Salt Lake City, $4.9 billion of which came from American Mormons."

"The Mormons are stewards of a different stripe. Their charitable spending and temple building are prodigious. But where other churches spend most of what they receive in a given year, the Latter-day Saints employ vast amounts of money in investments that TIME estimates to be at least $6 billion strong. Even more unusual, most of this money is not in bonds or stock in other peoples' companies but is invested directly in church-owned, for-profit concerns, the largest of which are in agribusiness, media, insurance, travel and real estate.

Deseret Management Corp., the company through which the church holds almost all its commercial assets, is one of the largest owners of farm and ranchland in the country, including 49 for-profit parcels in addition to the Deseret Ranch. Besides the Bonneville International chain and Beneficial Life, the church owns a 52% holding in ZCMI, Utah's largest department-store chain. (For a more complete list, see chart.) All told, TIME estimates that the Latter-day Saints farmland and financial investments total some $11 billion, and that the church's nontithe income from its investments exceeds $600 million. "

"Members of the church celebrate the Lord's Supper with water rather than wine or grape juice. They believe their President is a prophet who receives new revelations from God. These can supplant older revelations, as in the case of the church's historically most controversial doctrine: Smith himself received God's sanctioning of polygamy in 1831, but 49 years later, the church's President announced its recision. Similarly, an explicit policy barring black men from holding even the lowest church offices was overturned by a new revelation in 1978, opening the way to huge missionary activity in Africa and Brazil. "

Bottom line: Mormonism is a business cult using religion as a front and charitable donations and volunteer work to advertise said business.

Question: Are Mormon-run businesses subject to the same federal and state hiring, tax and safety regulations as other busineses?

In fact, the LDS Church, as a Political Action Committee, inversely accepts govermnent money by not paying taxes.

The gave money directly to anti-gay political campaigns in Alaska and Hawaii and formed a huge multiple-state PAC to support Propositon 8 in California in violation of their Federal tax-exempt status as a "chruch"

Feel free to practise your religion as you wish but the question is about exempting religious organisations from government rules when those organisations are accepting government money. If you don't want to accept those rules then (as your church does) you should not accept the governments money.