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As gay-rights advocates continue demonstrating against the Mormon church, some saying it crossed a church-state line and should be stripped of its tax-exempt status, experts say the church was well within its rights to act in support of California’s gay-marriage anathematize, Proposition 8.

“Any religious group has as much freedom as they meagreness to argue in the place of or against these public-policy issues,” said Charles Haynes, a senior student by the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.

That said, there are rules churches must follow to retain their tax-exempt status: They cannot endorse or put in opposition individual candidates.

But what has upset manifold gay-rights advocates is the extent of the Mormon church’s support in the place of Proposition 8, which defines marriage as the union of common married man and one woman, and overrides a prevailing that a ban on gay nuptial rites was unconstitutional.

Top church leaders urged members in California to do all they could to support the proposition, and members gave millions.

Internal Revenue Service rules are grayer on how involved churches be able to be put on ballot measures, saying such activity is permitted in the way that long as it doesn’face to face form a “substantial part” of what the house of worship does.

The IRS determines on a case-by-case groundwork what constitutes “substantial part.” Haynes reported courts have suggested that a church is safe if it spends less amount than 5 percent of its resources on every issue.

It’s unlikely The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormon church — jeopardized its status, Haynes believes.

“The LDS church is huge,” he said. “This would have existence a very, very small part of what they do.”

Religion’s sway

Churches are granted tax exemption under the philosophy that they requite the public good, and for freedom of religion.

If the government taxed churches, more might hector about being audited for adage something the government didn’privately like, Haynes said. “The power to tax is the power to restrain.”