Here is a follow up of sorts to a recent diary and an interesting news item and on Liberty University’s decertifying the campus Democratic Club last month. Americans United for Separation of Church and State took notice and took action requesting that the IRS examine the University’s tax exempt status. Liberty Union has now done the same to Americans United claiming they are an “arm” of the Democratic Party.
Questioning Liberty University’s Tax-Exempt Status
…..Americans United Spokesman Joe Conn explained that a private university “can do almost anything it wants” in terms of favoring one viewpoint over another, “but it can’t be partisan” in the political sense of favoring one party or candidate over another. The group often sends similar letters to the IRS during presidential elections when churches take political stands or endorse candidates.
The university is firing back by questioning Americans United’s own tax status. “AU has essentially become an arm of the Democratic Party,”wrote Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of the university’s law school. Staver told the IRS that Americans United is itself partisan because it objects mainly when churches support Republican candidates.
Spokesman Joe Conn said his organization is “not quaking in our boots” about losing tax-exempt status. “We are very rigorously non-partisan,” he added, noting in that in recent months the organization has criticized the Obama Administration for its faith-based initiative.
Conn said Liberty University chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. is following in the footsteps of his father, the famed preacher Jerry Falwell. In 1993, the late Falwell paid fines to the IRS for partisan activity in his “Old Time Gospel Hour” program.