On the recent (behemoth) thread that began at being gay at BYU and wandered off in every conceiveable direction from there, it was put forth that perhaps our tithing dollars have been or are being used in various ways to fund political campaigns–most notably in oppostion of the legalization of gay marriage.

Some small discussion ensued on that thread, but it was (not surprisingly) crushed by the great wheel of that unwieldy conversation, and because I think it’s an important enough issue to warrent a thread of its own, I propose that we take up the matter more specifically here.

I’ll just lay it out there. The idea of my tithing money going to political purposes bothers me. A lot.

I am ashamed to admit that it’s a possibility that hadn’t really occurred to me before. Of course I’ve been aware that the Church has thrown its cap into the political arena (despite all the letters read over the pulpit each voting season claiming otherwise). That fact is troublesome enough on its own–not only because I don’t tend to agree much with the political stances the institution decides to take, but because I personally don’t think a church’s place is in politics at all.

But to think that the Church might be using my faithfully-given 10% to support causes to which I would never knowingly donate makes me feel a bit…well…icky.

Because I don’t have any knowledge on the subject, I put the following questions to all of you:

1) Is this true? (By which I suppose I mean is there any transparency on the subject of how tithing funds are allocated?)

2) If so, how is it possible for a nonprofit organization to do such a thing without having its 501(c)3 status revoked?

3) Also if so, is there anything we as individuals can do to ensure that our tithes go specifically and only toward things like the building of buildings and temples, ward budgets, etc–the sorts of things which I had always thought tithing funded?

4) And finally, does the apparent lack of transparency on this subject bother any of you as much as it does me? What’s to be done about it?

And please please PLEASE don’t let’s turn this into another discussion of why gay marriage should or should not be legal. Thank you.