The Legal Word: Churches Can Safely Promote Marriage Amendment

by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
July 13, 2004

(AgapePress) - The president of a faith-based legal group emphasizes that churches in America can support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) without running the risk of losing their tax-exempt status. That advice comes in reaction to recent claims to the contrary by some liberal groups.

Churches nationwide have received letters from groups such as People For the American Way (PFAW) stating that if they promote passage of the FMA, their tax-exempt status will be in jeopardy. PFAW refers to the FMA as a "discriminatory, anti-family" measure and the effort behind it as a "right-wing rush" to amend the Constitution. But Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver says such threats and rhetoric are nothing more than scare tactics from liberal groups.

Mat Staver

"Liberal organizations that want to undermine traditional family values want to silence churches and people of faith -- so they are sending out erroneous information, engaging in scare tactics to try to make churches be silent," Staver says, cautioning churches not to succumb to that. "The last thing that we should do, during this most important cultural war of our lifetime, is remain silent. Now is the time to speak up."

According to the Liberty Council spokesman, churches have a wide range of freedom to encourage passage of not only the FMA, but other issues critical to the family and society.

"Pastors are free to endorse this amendment; churches are free to actually promote the passage of this Federal Marriage Amendment -- and that will not in any way jeopardize their tax-exempt status," he explains.

Staver points out that since 1934, when the IRS code was amended to include limitations on the lobbying activities of 510(c)3 organizations, no church has ever lost its tax-exempt status for endorsing a particular piece of legislation.

Remember in November
The head of a national pro-family group is banking on churches and Christians across the nation listening to Staver and not to PFAW. Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, says it is vital that traditional marriage be valued and protected in society -- and imperative that concerned Christians call their senators, encouraging them to vote for the FMA.

"We need to put the United States senators on record -- and they need to go on record -- [indicating either] up or down on a Federal Marriage Amendment," Wildmon says. The AFA head acknowledges it is unlikely the measure will garner the two-thirds majority necessary to pass out of the Senate. So why force the issue now?

Tim Wildmon

"[W]e will still need these senators to go on record," he continues. "We need to know where they stand, and we need to know where their parties stand going into the fall elections."

And according to Wildmon, the FMA is needed to protect children. He says as the U.S. senators are debating the amendment, they need to put the interests of children ahead of homosexual lobbying groups.

"We've got enough moral problems in our country [without having] to explain to our children why Bill and Ed are getting married," the AFA spokesman laments. "Marriage is for procreation; it's for developing families; it's for keeping the society, the culture, and the human family going." A Federal Marriage Amendment, he says, would legally define marriage "in stone, here and forevermore" and protect the institution in the U.S.

Like the American Family Association, the Catholic League for Religions and Civil Rights is urging support for the FMA. William Donohue, president of the League, believes the question for most Americans is not if same-sex marriage should be sanctioned -- "they haven't lost their senses" -- but whether a constitutional amendment is the proper remedy. He believes it is.

"We need the amendment because those who support homosexual marriage have already proven to be ruthless in the pursuit of their goal," Donohue says in reference to activist judges who have come down on the side of same-sex unions.

"More than a few judges have shown nothing but contempt for the democratic process by sanctioning gay marriages," he says. "Because these judges have arrogated to themselves powers nowhere found in law, they must be stopped." And because there seems to be no lack of what Donohue describes as "despotic judges," he says nothing less than a constitutional amendment will work.

The vote on the amendment could come on Wednesday.