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Heh. I recently moved to Germany, and aside from train stations, bars and restaurants, EVERYTHING is closed here on sundays.

Wait you moved to Germany? So you went from beer drinking bar fighters to beer drinker technorockers? Thats a change.

Hefewiezin and Krystalweizin....oohhhh the good days....and my wife might land a spot in Stuttgart...

“I’m very concerned about the spiritual side of this,” Garlow told FoxNews.com. “There’s a phenomenon occurring in America and that’s a loss of religious liberty.”

I am extremely tired of hearing this garbage.

The churches in question have already won a small victory: they made the debate about churches preaching politics.

That's actually fine. My pastor can preach that abortion and war are bad. Yours can preach that gay marriage is good (or bad!).

What you can't do as a church is campaign for, or against, an individual. Which is a much narrower prohibition. It is also similar to campaign finance laws, which might limit donations to an individual, but not to "issue ads."

As for constutionality... I wouldn't want to argue that the law is unconstitutional. Non-profit status is a creature of statute, and the acceptance of it allows the statute to dictate terms. It's not unlike how a physical church must still obey fire codes. There is a very strong line of cases which states that when government pays for speech (as in artistic grants or buying art) they can absolutely regulate that speech. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Awarding non-profit status, and choosing not to collect taxes, is not too different from giving somebody money, constitutionally speaking.

The really sinister aspect? Even if a church were found to not be a for profit institution, it would only be taxes on profits. Now, the bigger problem, no doubt, would be that they would have to file at all, but don't rule out the possiblity that there are churches out there that have finances they want to keep very quiet.