SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s lone Democrat in Congress has criticized fellow party member and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke over the Texan’s stance that religious groups should lose their tax exemption if they oppose same-sex marriage.
In an op-ed published Friday on the Deseret News website, Rep. Ben McAdams said O’Rourke’s idea would “take us down a treacherous path” that could eliminate the charitable and educational contributions religious groups make in their communities and nationwide.
The freshman congressman applauded Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee in condemning O’Rourke’s tax exemption remark made during a presidential town hall in Los Angeles on Oct. 10 that focused on LGBTQ rights.
Asked if colleges, churches and charities should lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage, the former Texas congressman replied, “Yes.”
“There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for any institution or organization in America that denies the full human rights and full civil rights of every single one of us,” he said.
McAdams, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote that while he supports “marriage equality” he also “strongly” backs the constitutional protections against the state infringing on “sincerely held beliefs.”
McAdams was in-flight to Utah on Friday and unavailable for comment on why he penned the op-ed.
O’Rourke’s presidential campaign had no comment.
On Sunday, O’Rourke explained on MSNBC that faith groups can practice their beliefs within their places of worship, but that religious institutions that provide services, such as a school or a charity, should “not be allowed to discriminate against people in this country.”
McAdams suggested such a policy would eliminate the service infrastructure that religious organizations have built, thanks to the charitable tax exemption, that supports the poor and assists disaster-stricken areas around the world.
But the first-term congressman and former Salt Lake County mayor doubts O’Rourke’s position could withstand a court challenge.
“It’s hard to see an interpretation of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause that would let Congress grant tax exemptions to some churches and deny them to others because of particular beliefs,” he wrote.
McAdams isn’t the first Democrat to disagree with O’Rourke’s stance on religious tax exemptions.
Presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, an Episcopalian who is married to a man, said on Sunday CNN’s “State of the Union” that removing the tax exemption for religious groups would mean “going to war not only with churches, but I would think, with mosques and a lot of organizations that may not have the same view of various religious principles that I do.”
And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, considered a front-runner in the race for Democratic nomination, told Religion News Service that religious institutions shouldn’t be required “to conduct same-sex marriages in order to maintain their tax exempt status.”
Not surprisingly, O’Rourke’s statements also alarmed religious groups because removing their tax exempt status would have devastating consequences on their ability to exist, said Tim Schultz, president of the 1st Amendment Partnership, which advocates for religious freedom.
“It would be a such a disruptive intervention to their way of doing business that many of them could no longer exist,” he said.
But Schultz explained there are other courses of action that Congress is pursuing that would have similar devastating effects on religiously affiliated schools, hospitals and other organizations.
For example, in May the House passed the Equality Act, which Schultz said would eliminate a faith-based school’s access to federal funding, such as student financial aid, if the school did not recognize same-sex marriages. The Equality Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the groups protected under the Civil Rights Act.
McAdams was the lone Utah House member who voted for the Equality Act.
“Lots of things in the Equality Act are just as concerning as the revocation of tax exempt status, and I think people, including Rep. McAdams, need to be intellectually honest about that,” Schultz said.
McAdams said following his vote for the Equality Act that the bill is a step in the right direction of combatting discrimination. But he has said he hopes to have a role in addressing flaws in the proposed law, which has stalled in the Senate, that harm faith-based groups.
“I don’t think it’s perfect. I think it still needs work,” he told the Deseret News last month. “And I think I’m uniquely situated to continue to be part of that work.”
McAdams said while working with the Salt Lake City and as a state senator, he championed the fairness for all approach to balancing LGBTQ and religious freedom rights that was a cornerstone to the state’s nondiscrimination law that passed the Utah Legislature in 2015.
The law, dubbed the Utah Compromise, had the support of both religious and LGBTQ communities and has been held up as a model of successful compromise between the two groups.