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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 1st, 2011
Taxed.
David Roberts at Ex-Gay Watch reports that on May 10, 2010, the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The reason given is failure to file tax returns for three consecutive years. It was a good run while it lasted. According to his 2009 tax form (the only one available since 2006), Peter LaBarbera received $110,000 in donations, and out of that he paid himself $75,000. The footer on LaBarbera’s “About” page” still claims that donations are still tax-deductible.
LaBarbera is one of a tiny handful of extremists who has been certified an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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CPT_Doom
August 1st, 2011
Well just give me a moment to shed a tear for Peter. Okay it might take more than a moment – check back with me in a decade.
Now we can all breathlessly wait for Peter to explain how the evil homosexuals prevented him from following the law.
BlackDog
August 1st, 2011
Seems more than a little suspicious as well that out of $110K he paid himself $75K of that.
I wonder what the rest went for? Does anyone work for him? Doesn’t he have other expenses besides his own paycheck?
It sounds like his “nonprofit” org was all about his own personal profit, but hey that’s just what I think.
Bernie
August 1st, 2011
@CPT_Doom, I was laughing with my friend this weekend, saying that I’m not surprised that the wackos haven’t come out of their dark corners and blamed all the Gays for the Debt-Ceiling Crisis.
So, I’m sure that Petie will blame us for this.
TampaZeke
August 1st, 2011
It’s just a damned shame it took so long!
Doesn’t it make a body feel good all over that 99% of the anti-gay hate groups in America, including all the churches and the ones NOT listed by the SPLC, are beating us up and harassing us with their hundreds of millions of dollars TAX FREE?
Just makes you proud to be an American.
William
August 1st, 2011
It has been a rather grey, overcast day here in the north of England, but this news has brightened it up no end.
Soren456
August 1st, 2011
I assume Pete needs only to file the proper forms to get his status back. But in the meantime, it’s gonna be fun when his donors try to claim a tax deduction and it doesn’t work. Tsk.
Theo
August 2nd, 2011
There’s a lot of material to mine in this story. Like how odd it is that AFTAH could be in such extreme dereliction of its filing obligations when it has on its Board of Directors the esteemed Matt Barber, an Associate Dean of the Liberty University School of Law and an attorney at the Liberty Counsel. Did Barber and the other members of the Board carry out their fiduciary duty of care to inform themselves about the affairs of their organization and to ascertain that it was complying with the applicable tax laws? Heck, did they do anything in that capacity other than lend their names to the group?
Another interesting question: who funds this group, which accomplishes nothing. Some generous soul made a $10,000 matching grant at the end of 2010. Although it is unclear whether or to what extent the grant spurred other donations, it is a safe bet that someone tendered over 10 grand regardless.
I suspected it might be the LC or perhaps Peter’s former employer at IFI and an expenditure by those groups to another non-profit would show up on their 990s. So I go to the LC’s website to check its 990s. Nothing there. So I go to Guidestar to look at the filings. Well, what do you know? The last 990 that Guidestar has was filed in 2007, for the FY ending 6/30/07. In other words, the Liberty Counsel appears to have failed to meet its filing obligations in the same manner as AFTAH. Which raises the further question of why AFTAH is stripped of its tax exempt status but not the LC.
It is possible that the LC made the filings and that Guidestar somehow missed them for 3 years. I highly doubt that this is the case, but even if is true, the LC still would have an independent obligation to make these filings freely available to the public. That means making them available on the group’s website, through orgs like Guidestar, or at the very least by informing the public that the filings are available upon request.
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