Disturbing Bill

This is about politics, so if politics aren't your thing, jump down to the previous post and enjoy the cloud picture again. :-)
A disturbing bill is working its way through the U.S. House and Senate. If you want to read about it, you can go to the American Center for Law and Justice's page about it here and read either the executive summary or the full analysis. Look especially at Section IV on page 25 of the full analysis. If it's too much legalese for you, try a brief overview article from Worldnet Daily as quoted by the ACLJ site.
If I understand the ACLJ's analysis correctly, the bill would appear to define churches as "grassroots lobbying organizations" (and thus subject to numerous burdensome reporting and registration restrictions) if the pastor or other staff were to encourage the congregation (which would include non-members) to contact their legislator about a certain issue, e.g. the Federal Marriage Amendment. In other words, organizations that urge people (unless the audience is entirely members) to become involved in the political process would be classified as lobbying organizations, even though they are not directly lobbying Congress.
Meanwhile, because of how the bill defines "grassroots lobbying organization," labor unions would be allowed to continue their activities basically without restriction. Hmmmm, I wonder who wrote this bill. Could it be the Democrats?
Anyway, this bill appears to be an unnecessary restriction of the public's right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Now, you may be asking, what's the big deal? I don't see anything horrendous or outrageous here. The big deal is that organizations that do nothing more than encourage participation in the political process are being targeted with unnecessary restriction. The result could easily be a less-informed electorate (a scary thought considering how uniformed many voters already are).
Above all, it concerns me that this is a gradual eroding of our freedoms. Without falling guilty to a slippery slope fallacy, I am concerned about where this might lead in the future. Could we see a day that it is very difficult to exert legitimate public pressure upon on our elected leaders? Could we wind up living in an oligarchy instead of a democratic republic? Only time will tell.