You Are Paying a Religion Tax

The Following is from

Exposing and Examining the Hidden and Previously Ignored

Aspects of the Abortion Controversy

*[1] This book is actually an interview with an Angel of Light whose mission is to expose "The Dark Side" for what it is. He/She shines the God-Light of Love, Inclusion, and Oneness into the pit of illusion, separations, anger, and fear.

T.L.C. Are you implying that the anti-abortionists have other moneymaking scams going on?

Big D Of course! What do you think? That I’m some sort of fool?

T.L.C. No, I concede you are indeed very clever. So, what’s another money scam?

Big D There are several. I’ll just give you the one that relates directly to the abortion controversy. This one’s a real beauty! I’ll bet you didn’t know that the American taxpayers are paying a significant portion of the money that the anti-abortionists use to peddle their religious dogma.

T.L.C. What? That’s not true! We have a firewall between church and state.

Big D That’s another nice illusion. Just don’t look too closely, or that fantasy will disappear too. But we’re getting off track again.

T.L.C. Well, don’t leave me hanging. Just give me one fact to substantiate that outrageous statement.

Big D OK, if you insist. Using your anti-abortionist friends, I have a scam going that’s a variation of the scheme used for laundering drug money. Regarding the flow of money, the main difference is that, instead of hiding where the money is coming from, I’m hiding where it’s going.

T.L.C. Money laundering? What money are you talking about and how do you hide where it goes?

Big D Well, it works like this. When someone gives money to a church and then deducts that amount from his or her taxable income, the government receives less tax revenue. It recoups that loss by raising other taxes, so you and your fellow taxpayers pay more to the government than you would if the anti-abortion churches were not receiving those millions in tax deductible donations. Money-wise, it’s the same as if everyone were forced to pay them directly. I’ve just disguised that fact with an interim step so you pay your money to the church via the government. Voilà! The connection is neatly hidden right under your very noses!

T.L.C. Wait a minute. If those donations weren’t tax deductible, we’d not have many of the wonderful things we now have that are provided by nonprofit organizations.

Big D Come on, Stoney, get real. That’s not true at all, and you know it. First, you have to look back into history to see that charitable organizations have existed long before there was any such thing as a tax-deductible donation. And, by the way, they did a far better job at assisting those in need than the government programs are doing today.

Second, many of the contributors who give money to the charities are not giving gifts at all; they’re making business deals. A gift is something given without attachments, expectations or intended returns. If they were truly giving gifts, the donors would give them freely without expecting tax benefits, and, to the credit of a great many people, they actually do that.

The bottom line here is that whenever someone deducts a charitable donation from their taxable income, then tax money, your money, is really paying a very significant portion of what goes to that nonprofit organization. How many people give that any thought?

T.L.C. Practically nobody.

Big D Also, you need to distinguish between gifts to charities such as the Cancer Society and the Red Cross, which provide extremely valuable social services, and gifts to ultra-conservative, rightwing, extremist churches who peddle decisive religious and racial dogma. Your present tax system supports both as if there’s no difference. How many people are aware of that distinction?

And, most depressing of all, most people will not see any significance in this, even when it’s pointed out to them. They’ll simply continue to believe they have separation of church and state!

T.L.C. Are you saying that we shouldn't support churches and other social service organizations?

Big D Certainly not. I'm simply saying that the government aught to stay out of the religion business! Of course, supporting such organizations is a very worthwhile endeavor, but the government should not be involved.

Governments are extremely inefficient at such tasks and in the process they destroy personal liberty. Government charity work is an attempting to resolve a problem that governments, themselves, had a major hand in creating.

T.L.C. What do you mean?

Big D It's government laws, policies and practices that have set up our system so that there are the super wealthy, the super poor, and only a few in the middle. And it's getting worse every day. The social service system as presently constructed is not accomplishing the task it was set up to do, it's based on false assumptions, and it's not sustainable, but that is another discussion for another day.*2

*2 Readers are referred to the book: The New Revelations, A Conversation with God, by Neal Donald Walsh, (Atria Books, New York, NY, 2002)

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George Bush Jr. and his Faith Based Initiative:

Who Put Bush in the White House?
Without Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and the ultra-conservative Christian army of mindless sheep that do exactly as they are told to do by their Christian leaders, George Bush would never have taken over the White House. As part of their intention to create a Christian America, Robertson, Falwell, and company provided Mr. Bush and other conservative Republican candidates with millions of dollars in campaign funding, with millions of votes and with million of grass-roots political campaign workers.

It's Payback Time:
Now in pay back, Mr. Bush is defying congress which refused to pass his faith based inattentive, and by executive order is funneling billions of your tax dollars into Christian church coffers. He is doing so under the disguise that the Christian organizations will provide social services to the public and not use the money to promote their particular brand of theology.

But Don't Expect Them to Share the Money:
The initiative doesn't say the organizations must be Christian to receive the money, but when you examine the list of where your tax money is headed, they are almost all Christian. Here are some examples of their attitude.

When Jerry Falwell was asked why he opposed federal funding for the arts, he replied that the public should not be required to support programs that promote views and values that they don't believe in.*3

See Devil Interview page 79

Against Scientology getting funded

Against Moslems getting funded

An Example:
The Roman Catholic Church, one of the wealthiest organizations in the word, has applied to receive four million dollars of your tax money in order to restore one of it's churches in Baltimore. Their publicly stated reason for seeking your money is that the building is considered by many to be an historic landmark. Technically, the Bush people are correct, your tax money won't be used to promote their religious agenda such as their anti-gay and anti-abortion political activities, but what do you suppose they are going to do with the four million dollars that they have received from other sources that which won't have to spend on repairing that building?

The Church leaders are in essence, saying: "Let's see now, we have an extra $4,000,000. What shall we do with that money?" It doesn't take Einstein or Sherlock Homes to answer that question.

Who and what do you suppose the Christian leaders are promoting in their churches? What are they telling their followers to do? For what besides, religious activities are they using tax-exempt, church property? It doesn't take Einstein or Sherlock Homes to figure that out, either.

The Money Trail:
As the saying goes, "If you really want to know what's really going on, just follow the money trail."

Check It Out For Yourself:
Readers are invited to type the words, "Faith Based Initiative" into the Google search engine (leave the quotation marks around the words "Faith Based Initiative") and read numerous reviews of this controversy.

Here are some links to those opposing Mr. Bush's "Faith Based Initiative."

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/faith3.htm

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/faith55.htm

http://www.au.org/press/pr22001.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-07-19-nceditf.htm

http://www.nowpacs.org/100803recall.html

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article2645.html

For the most objective view of the controversy we have yet seen, readers are directed to the PBS program, "NOW" hosted by Bill Moyers. Aired on KCET, Los Angeles, Friday, October 10, 2003. Here's KCET's description of the program:

"Despite opposition from Congress, President Bush has pushed ahead with his faith-based initiative. He wants to fund religious groups to play a much larger role in running government social services. Already, taxpayer-funded faith offices have sprouted up in some of the most powerful federal agencies - including Health and Human Services, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development. These offices will help funnel billions of tax dollars to religious and other groups. But critics worry, are these religious groups doing what the law expressly forbids: trying to convert the people they are helping? NOW continues its report on the changing relationship between church and state. With the potential of billions of tax dollars headed to faith-based groups, the broadcast examines the debate between critics who claim that there is a political agenda that threatens democracy behind the faith-based initiative, and supporters who say religious groups only want to help people in need."

*3 The exact quote is not presently available. It was spoken on a TV talk show in mid 2003 (probably Bill O'Reilly's No Spin Zone') We have contacted both Mr. O'Reilly and Rev. Falwell seeking the wording and date of the exact quote. We have not yet received a reply. If you can assist us in locating this information, please Contact Us.

A Brief Overview of the Entire Project