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Beto O’Rourke Says Churches, Mosques, Charities Should Be Taxed If They Refuse To Support Gay Marriage

Beto O’Rourke Says Churches, Mosques, Charities Should Be Taxed If They Refuse To Support Gay Marriage

Beto O’Rourke LGBTQ
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said religious institutions that oppose gay marriage should be taxed. FILE – In this Oct. 10, 2019, file photo Democratic presidential candidate former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke speaks during the Power of our Pride Town Hall in Los Angeles. O’Rourke’s assertion last week that religious institutions should face the loss of their tax exemption for opposing same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

If Beto O’Rourke is elected president, he plans to strip churches, mosques, temples and other religious institutions who oppose gay marriage of their tax-exempt status. The former Texas congressman said so when asked by CNN anchor Don Lemon during a LGBTQ town hall, reported NBC.

When Lemon asked O’Rourke if he thought religious institutions like colleges, churches and charities that opposed same sex marriage should lose their status, he replied “yes.”

“There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone, or any institution, any organization in America, that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. And so as president, we are going to make that a priority, and we are going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.”

The backlash to his statement was almost instantaneous. Republican Nebraska senator Bob Sasse called O’Rourke’s comments “bigoted nonsense” and “un-American” in a statement.

“Last night, Beto O’Rourke said that churches, hospitals, and charities — folks who are serving their communities and loving their neighbors — should lose their tax-exempt status if their religious convictions don’t fall in line with his progressive politics. This extreme intolerance is un-American. The whole point of the First Amendment is that, no matter who you love and where you worship, everyone is created with dignity and we don’t use government power to decide which religious beliefs are legitimate and which aren’t. This bigoted nonsense would target a lot of sincere Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Leaders from both political parties have a duty to flatly condemn this attack on very basic American freedoms.”

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Even those within O’Rourke’s own party and his opponents within the Democratic primary Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, disagreed with him.

“Religious institutions in America have long been free to determine their own beliefs and practices, and she does not think we should require them to conduct same-sex marriages in order to maintain their tax-exempt status,” Warren campaign spokeswoman Saloni Sharma told The Associated Press in an email.

Buttigieg denounced the idea saying “going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers, or other religious facilities in this country” would “deepen the divisions that we’re already experiencing,” reported the Washington Examiner.

Though O’Rourke did not walk back his comments after the court of public opinion weighed in, his campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dixon clarified the presidential candidate’s position in a tweet.

She said O’Rourke would only challenge the tax-exempt status of religious institutions that refused to provide “public services” to LGBTQ individuals, not those who won’t perform same-sex marriages.