a: yeah, I suspect we do. it's a lot more brazen and direct. - pierce
pierce: though you and i probably agree on the OFBI. ~a
pierce: we can now go back to the OFBI thing. ~a
pierce: yay! ~a
a: you make a good point which I think is a pretty serious hole in my reasoning. we have a precedent that laws that impact religion are permissible as long as their intent isn't religion-specific (like banning peyote use), so a deduction for non-profits in general would qualify. I withdraw my claim of a constitutional crisis. - pierce
a+dave: I understand, my claims aren't an indictment of taxation in general. sometimes people have to pay for things they don't support (like paul's military example yesterday). but because that money is actively spent by the government, instead of passively not-taken, we can object to the government funding things it's explicitly forbidden from funding. - pierce
pierce: and other people having to pick up slack for things they don't like is quite common. I hate social security but I still have to fund that. In my mind, that probably dwarfs most of the other monetary things we have to support -dave
pierce: in other words, it's kinda like the govt doing 10% matching funds for any money someone else gives. It saves them from having to give 100%, but also encourages the giving -dave
pierce: yes it's sort of true that because they are tax deductible, other people are probably picking up some of the "slack". However, it's also true that if the govt had to directly fund the endeavors that are picked up by charitable donations, everyone would be out a whole lot more money than they are now -dave
but they're not respecting the establishment of a religion either. they're only respecting the non-profit profit churches as nothing more than non-profits. ~a
a: I see your point, but there's no constitutional text specifically prohibiting the government from respecting an establishment of encyclopedias. - pierce
pierce: taxpayers who disagree with me donating to wikipedia also have to pick up the slack. if you don't like to pick up the slack, then donate more. 
~a
a: I understand that, and said as much in our earlier discussion. 
but even if they don't exclude any non-profit organization for any reason (I don't know one way or the other), the money that is donated to religious organizations funds them while taxpayers who disagree with that religion have to pick up the slack. - pierce
pierce: we talked about this earlier, but: you don't have to donate to a religious charity to get the donation deduction. in fact, most non-profit donations are tax deductible. your claim was that the government has the right to deny tax-deductibility of a donation. but in practice, does the government actually deny non-profits? ~a
if the government wants to encourage charitable donations, it should find ways to do so that are active, instead of passive. That way the effects are clear and we can prevent a direct or indirect establishment of religion by government policy. - pierce
so while I recognize that charitable deductions are currently legal, I think they're a constitutional minefield that should be avoided. - pierce
because the government's has a budget, and that budget doesn't decrease by $3,000 just because you donated $3,000 to your local church-sponsored homeless shelter. So other taxes have to be raised accordingly. The church gets paid, the government gets paid, the charitable religious person gets charged a little and the noncharitable atheist gets charged a lot. - pierce
my claim is that allowing a tax deduction for charitable donations leads to this stalemate, where including religious donations is a de facto penalty for being a non-donating atheist, and excluding religious donations becomes a de facto penalty for being religious. - pierce
(I said something more or less to that effect yesterday) - pierce
dave: so by no means do I intend to say that religious charities don't "count," or do good things, nor that people shouldn't donate to them. and I recognize and agree with your point that excluding them from the charity tax deduction would be penalizing people's religious beliefs, and itself be a violation of the first amendment. - pierce