Did LBJ Solicit Johnson Amendment Violation Two Weeks After Passage?

 

We have been critical of the extraneous discrimination allegations in the National Religious Broadcasters and Three Churches complaint filed last week seeking to invalidate the Johnson Amendment.  It's really religious broadcasters, two churches and some other Bible thumpers but that would be an awkward case title.  Anyway, all that stuff about TE/GE enforcing the campaign intervention prohibition against conservative churches whilst turning a blind eye to progressive churches is just plain stupid. If anything, and if they know what's good for them, TE/GE whistles past both graveyards alike.  By the way, I said last week that the Broadcasters and Three Churches might just win if they can prove standing but only after the Court waded through all the grievance politics unnecessarily included in the complaint.  I have thought about it more.  I don't think even a forum-shopped Texas judge is dumb enough to find standing.  But then again, standing seems so much easier to prove to judges itching to get in on social debates these days.

Mike Farris, National Religious Broadcaster's General Counsel, was on TV last week and repeated those same ridiculous assertions about discrimination in favor of Democratic nonprofits and churches.  He never got to whether Taxation with Representation provides a viable alternative for religious organizations. I'm starting to wonder whether they really understand their own best argument.

Farris included an interesting but unlikely anecdote about LBJ's push through and then immediate violation of the campaign intervention prohibition.  You can listen to his seven minute interview on YouTube above.  Farris asserts that Johnson passed the act to shut down a Texas nonprofit advocating against LBJ's senatorial campaign. Most of us have heard that story.  But Farris also says that within two weeks after the amendment passed, LBJ strong harmed a Protestant pastor into leading his own and other Protestant churches to publicly urge people to vote against the Catholic candidate in the Democratic primary. LBJ eventually lost to  JFK, Jr. anyway. 

I never put too much stock in conspiracy theories, to tell you the truth.  And this tall tale is likely false.  The amendment passed in 1954; LBJ and JFK, Jr. opposed each other in the Democratic Primaries in 1960, not two weeks later.  LBJ is my second favorite president. He was a walking "man vs. man" conflict.   And that story sounds like some underhanded backroom stuff LBJ would do. 

Or it might just be that LBJ never thought the prohibition would or could restrict religious speech anyway.

 

darryll k. jones