The Empowering Spirits Foundation said its challenge was filed at an Internal Revenue Service office in Dallas. The San Diego-based group said the diocese is engaging in political activity by collecting signatures for the referendum, violating IRS rules applying to nonprofits.

The ballot question would overturn Maine’s gay marriage law. Gay marriage foes need the signatures of at least 55,087 registered voters to get the question on the ballot. The petitioners have until three months after the Legislature adjourns, which is expected to happen in mid-June, to collect the signatures.

IRS policy allows the diocese to participate in the campaign and help collect signatures, said Marc Mutty, public affairs director for the diocese. He rejected the IRS challenge as a “bogus attempt to sidetrack the campaign.”

Leonard Cole, a Portland attorney who specializes in tax and nonprofit issues, suggested that the church’s involvement could put it at odds with IRS rules that restrict lobbying by tax-exempt nonprofits.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how you seek someone’s signature on a petition without it arguably at least being an attempt to influence their vote once the measure was on the ballot,” Cole said.

Meanwhile, about a dozen gay-marriage supporters gathered in a park across the street from Maine’s Capitol to thank the Legislature for enacting the bill and Gov. John Baldacci for signing it earlier this month. The gathering also marked the start of the supporters’ campaign to defeat the referendum.

One of the participants, Carla Hopkins of Mount Vernon, said she was not discouraged that a same-sex marriage bill in New Hampshire has been set back by a House vote. Efforts are under way to negotiate a compromise acceptable to Gov. John Lynch.

“We’re riding high on what’s happening here in Maine,” said Hopkins, adding that she hopes to see similar laws passed throughout New England.

Four other states, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont, allow gay marriage.

©365Gay.com 2009

The goal of “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” was to trigger a legal fight and ultimately overturn regulations that prevent places of worship from supporting or opposing candidates for office. But a conservative legal group that organized the effort says the IRS has yet to notify the churches of any investigation.

Legal experts suggest a number of possibilities: The IRS has nothing to gain from a costly and mainly symbolic battle; it has limited resources; or it could still be deciding how to respond.

On Sept. 28, participating pastors urged worshippers to vote according to conservative views on abortion and gay marriage. Several endorsed Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Under the IRS code, places of worship can distribute voter guides, run nonpartisan voter-registration drives and hold forums on issues, among other things. But they cannot endorse a candidate, nor can their political activity be biased for or against a candidate.

Churches that violate the rule can lose their tax-exempt status.

The protest was organized by the Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund and involved pastors in 22 states.

“The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly,” said Erik Stanley, the group’s senior legal counsel. “We’re prepared if they do come after these churches, and we’re also prepared if they do not.”

IRS spokesman Christopher Miller declined to comment, and the agency would not confirm or deny whether it is conducting an investigation. At the time of the protest, the IRS said it would “monitor the situation and take action as appropriate.”

ADF officials view the regulation as a violation of the pastors’ right to free speech. Some legal scholars counter that the government has every right to treat political and nonpolitical speech differently.

A number of the pastors said they hoped the IRS would respond immediately so the legal challenge could get under way.

Luke Emrich, pastor at New Life Church in West Bend, Wis., had urged about 100 congregants to support an anti-abortion platform by voting for McCain. He said he was disappointed the IRS had not responded.

“It would have been nice to have a direct conversation with the IRS,” he said. “I thought they would at least contact us, talk to us about the issues.”

Historically, the IRS has been shy to investigate political activity in churches. It has stepped up oversight in recent years after receiving a flurry of complaints from the 2004 campaign. The IRS reported issuing written advisories against 42 churches for improper politically activity that year.

It’s possible the IRS ignored the recent protest because it does not have an incentive to pursue the issue, said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University.

“It would be expensive for them to fight, and it would give people all sorts of reasons to say the IRS is evil and irreligious,” Tuttle said. “It’s not like they’re going to recoup a lot of money. Their attitude is probably ‘why bother?’”

Or, it could be too early to say. When similar violations occurred during previous presidential elections, the IRS took two or three years to introduce litigation to strip a church of its tax-exempt status, said John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

“Even so, if the IRS wanted to pounce on this, I think it would have by now,” Witte said. Perhaps it did not consider an investigation a wise use of resources, he speculated, or maybe the agency is occupied with more pressing cases.

Stanley, the ADF’s attorney, said the organization will continue its protests as long as necessary, holding annual Pulpit Freedom Sundays every year ahead of federal, state or local elections. If the IRS does not take action against future protests, he said, pastors will learn the regulation can be safely ignored.

Polls suggest the campaign does not have wide support. An August survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that two-thirds of adults oppose political endorsements from churches and other places of worship. Another 52 percent wanted religious institutions out of politics altogether.

But those statistics did not dissuade Pastor Paul Blair, who took part in the initiative at Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla. He said the main point of the protest was to make a stand to protect religious freedom.

“I don’t let the federal government dictate to me what I can and cannot preach,” he said. “I answer to a higher power than the federal government.”

Stagg Elliott found out she would be taxed on the portion of Shoffner’s coverage paid for by the employer. She estimated that the coverage represents about $100 worth of monthly income, meaning she has to declare about $1,200 more in income each year than a straight married colleague with an equivalent insurance package.

“It’s still cheaper than COBRA or an individual policy for my wife, but the bottom line is that it’s unequal pay for the same amount of work,” Stagg Elliott said.

For gay and lesbian couples, aggregate costs of living together without government-recognized marriages often becomes all too apparent at tax time.

There are well over 1,000 benefits afforded to Americans on the basis of marital status. Many of these benefits determine your bill at tax time. In the eyes of the federal government, gay and lesbians are entitled to none.

Last week, Mary Ritchie, a Massachusetts State Police trooper, was among more than a dozen plaintiffs suing the federal government on the grounds that the Defense of Marriage Act denies them Federal Benefits that other couples receive. Ritchie told the Associated Press that, while they’ve been a couple, she and her spouse paid over $15,000 more in taxes than they would have had to had they been able to file jointly.

Mt. Prospect, Ill.-based tax practitioner Michael Simon said that gay couples absolutely have to hire a competent tax professional to work around the difficulties inherent in the tax code. A good tax planner, he added, should be able to save couples money in ways that offset these annual penalties.

When Simon prepares returns for same-sex couples wherein the partners have extremely disparate incomes, for example, he suggests the partner with the higher income file as a head of household and claim the other partner as a dependent. According to the IRS, a person can do that if someone in their household makes less than the standard deduction, among several other qualifications they must meet.

“We usually check the box as ‘friend’ or ‘other,’” Simon said. He added that the best advice for anyone, gay or straight, at tax time is to use a professional preparer. “A good tax professional will save you more than the fee they charge.” According to Simon, the inequities gays and lesbians face at tax time, while significant, pale next to other financial challenges they face, such as those associated with buying property together or working around inheritance taxes.

“The people that I’ve worked with are not that disadvantaged by these (income tax) inequalities,” Simon said. “The IRS has definitely narrowed the advantages of filing as (an opposite-sex) married couple.”

Chicago attorney Roger McCaffrey-Boss, who advises gay couples on tax and financial matters, agreed. He said gay and lesbian couples are more significantly affected by taxable events that, in most relationships, happen just a few times.

“If ‘John’ owns a house and wants to add his partner’s name to the title, the government is going to look at that as a gift,” McCaffrey said. “The same goes if he wants to add his name to a bank account.”

Indeed, the largest cost for gay and lesbian couples might just be finding the time needed to explore their best tax options.

Couples wherein one partner is helping raise the other’s children are especially at a disadvantage. Someone cannot qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, based on their raising a non-biological, non-adopted child. Similarly, they cannot increase their standard deduction if they are filing as a head of household on that basis.

Even in situations where both partners can technically claim the children, there will have to be negotiation. “Some couples ask, ‘who will take the kids? I’ll take them this year, you can take them the next year,’” McCaffrey said.

Couples in states that have or recognize gay marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships unfortunately have additional paperwork to grapple with. They can file a joint return for their state, but they’ll also have to prepare an ersatz joint federal return that calculates their income and deductions filing as a couple.  In the end, though, they still have to file two single-payer returns for the feds.

McCaffrey said it was absolutely necessary for both partners in a relationship to communicate about sharing their assets and consider the long-term implications.

“The biggest mistake I see is couples who have a ‘yours vs. mine’ mentality,” he said. “Partner A makes more money, so he has everything in his name. Partner B quits his job and stays home. They break up and Partner B has nothing.”

“You have to speak up, negotiate and say ‘I’m entitled,’” he added.