Located in Greenville, South Carolina, Bob Jones University is a deeply conservative institution catering to fundamentalist Christians. The laundry list of rules students must abide by are laughably archaic. I'm sure it will floor you to learn that Bob Jones University once had a serious problem with racism.
As late as 1971, BJU did not accept blacks into their school. This policy would not change until the IRS threatened to pull their federal tax exemptions over their racially discriminatory admissions policies. At that point, they acquiesced and began enrolling black students with the bizarre caveat that they be married, a requirement not demanded of any other students.
With the Runyon v. McCrary case looming at the Supreme Court in 1975 over racial exclusion in private schools, the University Board of Trustees saw the handwriting on the wall. They authorized a change in policy to admit even unmarried black students prior to the Supreme Court decision. But that wouldn't be the end of their woes with the IRS.
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While Bob Jones University may have reluctantly started allowing blacks to walk their hallowed halls, they put strict limits on what they could and could not do. Interracial dating and, gasp, interracial marriage were strictly verboten. Given the 1968 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, Bob Jones University was on the wrong side of history as well as the law.
In 1976, given little other choice, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the university's tax exemption retroactively to December 1, 1970, over racial discrimination. The bigots were pissed. They took their case all the way to the Supreme Court and soundly lost in 1983. And still they could not let it go. Instead of admitting defeat and moving on, they chose to keep their interracial marriage and dating policy, pay the owed back taxes and learn to live without federal tax exemptions. It wouldn't be until George Bush created a media firestorm over his decision to pay a visit to BJU in 2000 that the school finally lifted the interracial dating and marriage rule.
When the Bob Jones University v. United States decision was handed down, the court made clear that the ruling applied "only with religious schools—not with churches or other purely religious institutions." Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council conveniently forgot this important point in an alarmist piece he wrote on Barbwire titled "Obama’s Chief Attorney Makes Chilling Admission During SCOTUS Marriage Arguments."
Looking ahead to a possible constitutional right to same-sex “marriage,” Justice Samuel Alito asked a key question: “In the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?” With chilling honesty, Verrilli admitted, “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is — it is going to be an issue.”
Translation: If churches, religious groups, schools, or nonprofits won’t surrender their beliefs on marriage, the government will make it hurt. A lot. Imagine what’s happening to Aaron and Melissa Klein (slapped with a $135,000 fine for their marriage views) occurring on a national scale through hijacked tax exemptions, Pell grants, loans, and other government contracts. If the Supreme Court finds invisible ink granting a “right” to same-sex “marriage” in the Constitution, it will be a declaration of war on principled objectors. Any nonprofit that holds to a natural definition of marriage — the same definition our own President held three years ago — would have a target on its back. (Or a bigger target, I should say.)
Is it really a stretch, given the IRS’s history of harassment and discrimination against conservatives, to think that it wouldn’t show a “smidgeon” of prejudice? This ruling would give the political operatives at one of the country’s most powerful agencies even more ammunition to punish opposition. Resistance — even principled, seemingly protected resistance — wouldn’t be tolerated. The IRS, which has been weaponized under this administration, will stop at nothing, including stripping tax exemptions, to force acceptance.
Tony Perkins is a notorious liar and will say any outlandish thing he can imagine in his crusade against gay civil rights. This is yet another example of his animus trumping the 9th Commandment handed down by his God. If marriage equality is granted by the Supreme Court, yes, religious educational institutions who fail to abide by federal law risk losing their tax exemptions, just as Bob Jones University did in 1976. That will happen by their choosing and deserves no pity.
To lump in churches, religious groups and nonprofits with educational institutions whose federal tax exemptions will be eliminated is ludicrous and he knows it. This is a prime example of how grifters like Tony Perkins are crying fire in a crowded church and it is having the desired effect. The flock has been whipped into such a panic that they truly believe they are a short hair away from being rounded up in boxcars and sent to reeducation camps. It is beyond shameful but it is all in a day's work for Tony Perkins.