The leader of an atheist group sued because she didn't believe she qualified for tax exemptions afforded to clergy. When the government says she does qualify - as a minister - she got even angrier.
"We are not ministers," Annie Laurie Gaylor, chief of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, told The Tennessean newspaper. "We are having to tell the government the obvious -- we are not a church."
The lawsuit is over the personage exemption for clergy, which allows ministers to claim part of their salary as a tax-free housing allowance.
Gaylor's Madison, Wisc.-based group is organized, united by faith that there is no deity, and essentially builds fellowship around those beliefs. Thus, the Department of Justice filed a brief stating that Gaylor, as the group's leader, is eligible for the exemption since atheist groups can essentially function as a religion.
That complicates the foundation's federal lawsuit, first filed in 2009, after the foundation board voted to give Gaylor and her husband Dan Barker a housing allowance of $15,000 per year. The couple then claimed they didn't qualify for the same tax exemption as clergy so the foundation sued the federal government. In August 2012, a federal judge ruled the case can move forward.
Watch this video wherein Atheist Minister Dan Barker (named above) gives his explanation for why rape would be a moral activity in his worldview.
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