The Freedom From Religion Foundation has positive billboard campaigns popping up across the country. The most recent batch went up in Columbus, OH and were followed by a bit of controversy. Dylan Galos’s billboard was removed from its original location, because said location was on church property and the church complained.
Whatever, Dylan’s billboard has a new home. End of story, right?
Apparently the FFRF tipped off the county auditor that the church hadn’t been paying taxes on the billboard they owned – and now they’ll have to. Wah wah.
I don’t believe in karma, but…
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Matthew 22:21
@Epistaxis:disqus : Damn, ya beat me to it :-)
Muhahahaha!!!
Wow, I didn’t realize they were prominently featuring locals in billboard ads! What a brave individual — I sincerely hope no self-appointed religious extremist foot soldier decides to seek vengeance.And speaking of churches and taxes, I wonder if we’ll ever reach a time when we wise up and realize that we don’t need to subsidize superstition by making religious collections tax exempt? Have highly secular European societies already had this discussion?
Schadensfreude – it does feel good, even though we shouldn’t be like that.
http://www.sadtrombone.com
I would like to add how much I like these billboards compared to say the American Atheist ones (“You know it’s a myth”). Not that I mind pissing off theists but I really like the humanizing aspect of a friendly and smiling face who doesn’t need the divine to be a decent human being.
If you have the time to spell it…enjoy it.
Ah the law of Unintended Consequences is sometimes a wonderful thing!
That friendly billboard makes me wish we had more billboards in the DC area highways (err, not really). You know who else can be good with god? All those nice religious folks, they manage it everyday.
I wish we had these in our area, and I’d like to echo PDX’s comments about church and taxes. We have a huge debt problem in this country, it’s time the religious paid their dues!
I’m wondering ,though: if churches paid taxes, then they could be even more in politics than they are now. And all above board. They have proven they do it well the sneaky way, wouldn’t being taxed just give them free rein? as much as I would like to see them pay their fair share, and have their accounting books available for transparent scrutiny.
Why would paying tax mean they could break the law?
Paying tax would mean they could endorse political candidates, if I am correct. Of course they do it now, but they have to be sneaky about it. Also, their accounting books are closed to scrutiny. When you pay tax, that information becomes much easier to collect. Hell, dude, they’re breaking laws left and right now, but being churches and all, there’s that pesky separation of church and state. Once they are taxed, that pretty much disappears. I would love to be wrong, and would love for someone to point it out to me, as it has been a confusing issue to me.
Yup. The point of them not paying taxes is to remove them from any sort of government interference and the reverse. This is why while in theory it would be nice for all religion be taxed but the reality of the world makes it not a good idea.It doesn’t matter what one believes, or does not, religion as long as it exists needs to stay out of politics.Kind of funny that they got dinged on that. I don’t begrudge them wanting that off their property though, their right to do so.
A quote from the article has me wondering:
(Malone is the minister)So who was renting out the land? It seems like the minister was, not the church (however the news article could have misquoted him). I wonder if he was reporting it as his own income or just reporting that he was donating it and taking an income tax deduction. Another article states
In other words churches can’t run commercial operations and not pay property taxes. It also seems the billboard land wasn’t the only land owned by the church being used for commercial purposes but not reported as such.
The law of unintended consequences is still in effect.
I don’t believe taxing religion and in return allowing open political campaigning would make much of a difference, other than considerably improving the budget.As far as I can see (from another country), churches and openly religious activist groups in the US are practically telling voters what to do already. Does anyone really think that saying “don’t vote Obama, he allows baby killing” makes any difference to saying “I don’t like the way this country is being led, so let’s start by talking about abortion, which is a modern holocaust and Washington doesn’t react”. We’ve seen the Prop8 campaign, we see NOM, we see The Response. How many hundreds of millions of dollars must flow until it counts as political activism?
Church pays taxes…film at eleven!
Some highly secular European societies have support for religions incorporated right into the government tax collection system, so that any person who has not taken the time to specificially renounce church membership has approx. 1% taken out of their paychecks and turned over to their ‘birth’ church, including Denmark, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. Sweden recently abandoned this system and instead will have a ‘support my church’ checkoff box on the tax form. In Italy, the taxpayer can choose to have their 1% go to their church or to a secular organization. This ‘unless you say no’ process quietly transfers billions of euros annually to churches.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T…
They should be paying property taxes because they are using municipal services anyway; and not being residences but hosting large numbers of people, they are probably using more than their share–more than a family would. They should be paying income taxes because they are profit-making organizations to the extent of supporting numerous employees in pleasant, safe jobs.
Hey, I know that guy! I didn’t realize Dylan got to be on a billboard, now I want a billboard, too. :-(