I don't know the details of this legislation, but there is a big difference between a minister of a particular parish endorsing a candidate, and an organized church endorsing a candidate. The former is a personal opinion, and it is possible for fifty Lutheran ministers to have fifty different opinions. The latter falls under the same category as any other non-profit organization, religious or not. Non-profits have, under current law, "traded" the right to be free of taxes for the restrictions placed on them against certain types of political activism. Granted, many non-profits play kind of fast and loose with these rules, but they are there nonetheless.

Making a restriction against a minister giving his opinion, provided said opinion was not passed down to him by his church organization, would probably be unconstitutional. Ministries like Jerry Falwell's, where the organization and minister are almost inseparable, might be a special case and a job for the legal boys.

This article doesn't call into question some of the left-wing ministers involved in politics though. The reverends Jesse Jackson & Al Sharpton comes to mind.

Yeah, you noticed that, didn't you? A cynic might think this whole thing was cooked up just to shut up a large segment of conservative opinion.

The organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State is, of course, a liberal organization, and much of their efforts are a massive, multipronged attack on conservatives, school vouchers, and other targets of liberal causes. To their credit, a search of their site does reveal that they have complained about Jesse Jackson at least twice in their history (one example), which may not be much compared to the thousands of references on right-wing preachers, but at least it's there.

This is from an October, 2000 AUSCSpress release:

Q. The AFA has claimed that Americans United has given "no mention" to churches working on behalf of Democratic candidates and the Christian Coalition recently claimed that AU is a "front organization" for the Democratic Party. Is this true?



A. These accusations are absolutely false. Unfortunately, AU's critics chose to make these accusations without researching the facts. The truth is this: Americans United's work is strictly non-partisan. Our organization does not merely claim this to be true, we prove it with our work.

As a non-partisan organization, we believe that consistency is vital to making the process fair and even handed. Accordingly, while we have actively opposed churches working on behalf of Republican candidates, we have also opposed church work on behalf of Democratic and even Independent candidates. In fact, our first involvement with this subject came a decade ago with a complaint against Jesse Jackson's attempted use of churches for fundraising during his 1988 presidential campaign. We were also one of a few groups to file a complaint with the IRS against the Buddhist temple that held a fundraiser for Vice President Al Gore in 1996.

More recently, we have filed formal complaints with the IRS against several churches for engaging in partisan activities on behalf of Democratic candidates. Just this year, AU filed complaints against the Third New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, Mich., for opposing George W. Bush's candidacy and the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in New York for endorsing Vice President Gore. Last year we reported the Asia Baptist Church in New Orleans for supporting a Democratic candidate for governor.

Just this month, when The New York Times reported that Gore had asked a number of African-American pastors to support his campaign from their pulpits, Americans United wrote to Gore the next day, complaining that his request was "highly inappropriate," and warning that his requested endorsements "could put the tax-exempt status of those churches at risk."

Accordingly, the suggestion that we are acting under some kind of double standard is inaccurate and unfair. Our efforts have been non-partisan and without bias, and our record clearly proves this fact.