Dozens of conservative pastors are defying the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ban on ministers using their pulpits to endorse political candidates. Organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, the ministers are effectively daring the IRS to take away their tax-exempt status. The effort is an obvious set-up for litigation, though they may put conservatives like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito in a tough position. ADF advocates insist that the ADF’s “Pulpit Initiative” is to intended to show that the “proper role” of pastors is to try to direct the voting of the faithful.
ADF attorney Erik Stanley says that “For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church. . . . It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It’s not for the government to mandate the role of church in society.”
This is clearly the view of other nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan where clergy dominate politics and mete out their own sectarian forms of government. Now, the religious right wants to be exempted from taxes while using those tax exempt dollars to expand a church-based political movement.
The ADF was founded in 1994 by Christian conservatives including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and William R. Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. It is viewed as an alternative to the ACLU in pushing a conservative agenda.
It would be an interesting test for Roberts and Alito, who tend to be extremely pro-government except in religion cases and a couple of other areas. Alito particularly assembled a record of virtually blind support for governmental claims in criminal, environmental, and other areas. Now, he would be asked to extend the same extreme deference to the IRS.
For the full story, click here.
I guess this blog died out after the election, but reading it today it’s as relevant as ever, and brought many questions to my mind.
1) Does free speech apply to a myth?
It’s not a church that’s trying exercise free speech, although the claim has been made that that’s what politically activist churches are doing. But what they are really doing is perporting to be the free speech voice of a god who has no voice in reality, no corporeal substance, no proof of existance or a legal ID. Forget political activism, we give a tax exemption for this? And we bitch that illegal aliens might get some health care? Ha ha ha ha ha !
2) Does freedom of religion protect the religious rights of children? Not very well. Or does it protect the right of parents to choose for them? Pretty much it does. Does it give parents a right to teach creationism as the only true science? There is plenty of parents getting away with it.
Once you take your kid out of school you can indoctrinate them however you want, and the evangelical right is there to help with “science” books illustrating man’s co-existance with dinosaurs and a heavenly host of ignorant myths. All supported with great pictures co-opted from real science and used to inspire wonder and awe.If you’ve ever looked at these books, it’s at this moment of wonder that get hijacked and steered down a logically falacious road of insidous design. And I say this having one of my four kids home schooled and several friend families’ kids who’ve done very well in their higher educations. I’m not against home-schooling. But, give evangelicals control of our school systems for one generation and democracy will sink like a stone. But back to my question. We all love, cherish and will do anything to protect our kids, but they’re not our property per se. They can be removed from our custody. But to do so because religious indoctrination is crushing their hopes of ever really understanding freedom would be an exercise in futility and exacerbate the issue.
I never really understood the beauty of not taking the lord’s name in vain until I became an athiest.
Cro magnum man has way too much time on his hands. Go do something useful. You seem like a state paid agitator. There’s plenty of them on the internet so I don’t see why you couldn’t potentially be one. Since I could care less about interacting with you I guess I’ll never know. =)
You rule Jill.
Hey CroMM,
I did/do take it in a good spirit.
Jill
I will say this to you Jill, and I hope you recieve it in the spirit it is given.
Your complaints here about me “responding” to other peoples “attacks” is exactly why democracts keep losing the elections to the republicans.
Its because you can’t “enjoy a good fight”.
Not a fist fight. Not a gun or knife fight. But a “good fight”.
A debate.
A disagreement.
A discussion.
The republicans love a good fight, and they’ll call you out everytime. And when they do, the democrats, invariably begin to cry.
They cry about “playing nice”.
They cry about “mean spirited attacks”.
They cry about the republicans making a joke at their expense.
Only after the public rejects them do they even think of standing up to the fight, and then its always too overboard and too late.
They get mad, instead of getting even and then blow a simple thing, all out of whack.
And that same prinicple I see demonstrated in this blog, every day.
This is a blog. A blog hosted by an Attorney, and a Professor of Law.
ANYONE involved in the law, should by definition enjoy a good debate. A good “fight”.
But few in here do. I think Rafflaw does. I think you do, at times. And there are others.
But for the most part all I hear is people crying about someone engaging in a little clean fun. A little mental wrestling. A little verbal pugilism. A little debate, with some good fun jabs, quips and feints thrown in for good measure.
When people cry about this, and whine about the sheer torment of having to see someones words that you don’t agree with, it really does make them look pathetic. Particularly when certain members (not you) brag about their haughty superiorty due to education, breeding, profession, etc.
If the democrats want to win, then the democrats need to learn to step up to a fight.
I don’t mean a fist fight. I mean a verbal fight. Because thats what politics are at the end of the day.
Crying about “playing nice” and saying things like “just because jimmy calls you names doesn’t mean you have to call him names back” just makes the democrats and liberals in here, and everywhere, look weak. Weak and hollow.
Which is why we keep losing elections.
In 2000 the republicans didn’t beat anyone up in Florida. They just shouted and yelled until the democrats caved, mealy mouthingly saying “its too much” and giving up the count and slinking away to their safe zones.
If they had hung tough, or better yet, shouted back, then we might have not been blessed with the last 8 years of hell and disaster under Trelane, our own little Squire of Gothos who has run America into the ground.
In 2004, if they’d stood up to the republican nonsense about Kerry and his war record, they’d have won then too. But instead they whined about it for a month or so until finally doing something about it, and then of course it was too little too late, and as always, over the top with the bloviating fake indignation.
And now, here we are again, 4 years later, losing again. The war in Iraq was proven to be based on false premises and is as we speak, a disaster, Afghanistan is out of control, gasoline costs 4 bucks a gallon, companies are going under left and right, the Airlines are bankrupt, the Mortgage industry is bankrupt, the banks themselves are now failing daily, and we’re hated by nearly 2/3rds of the world. In fact, the Stock Market effectively CRASHED today, as we speak, dropping 500 points.
And on this same day, we’re notified by the press that John McCain has moved into the lead.
😐
And yet, you guys still want to whine about “playing nice”.
Well, keep on “playing nice”, and come this November, when you’re all sitting here scratching your collective arses and talking about how “we’ll get em in 2012”, then you might begin to get it.
We don’t lose because we’re wrong.
We lose because we’re weak.
Because we’re more worried about “playing nicely” so afraid of a little open debate where people take a few pot shots at each other, that we waste our time whining instead of winning.
I’m from New York. In New York, we don’t like whiners. We like winners. And most people I know, are quite the “characters”. In fact, as I used to say about my old neighborhood, “theres a Don [as in Rickles] on every block“.
A little bantar never hurt anyone, and yet in here, “some” people act like its killing them.
Here you are in a thread thats over a week old, and you’re worried about me mocking my opponent a little in a debate you should be on my side on, by calling him “Cornwallace”.
😐
Ohhhhhh, I called him Cornwallace. OMG, the horror.
You get it Jill? It doesn’t mean anything. Its a joke. And a little one at that, meant to portray my opponent as an opponent to our early democracy, which he is, if he seeks the mingling of church and state.
Not a horrible thing to say about an outsider. Not a terrible accusation. Just a little fun, to put things in perspective.
Yet you write me twice, interupting the debate, to ask me to try and “play nice”.
Well Jill, if you guys (Democrats and Liberals) want to play nice, then I suggest getting out of politics. Because what I did, WAS nice, compared to what the republicans say about the democrats every day, and your Mrs Sally, Romper Room mentality of everyone “getting along” is what has cost the democrats the race for the last 8 years.
And don’t give me 06. We didn’t win sh$t in 06.
Not enough to make any difference, whatsover.
They just let us get slightly numerically ahead, so they could blame stuff on us too.
We’re probably going to lose this November, which means for the next 4 years, a senile old man and a Pentacostal soccer mom from wormwood Alaska is going to be running the country for the next 4 years.
And the reason its going to happen, is because the democrats are too busy crying about playing nice, and then, when they see the voters don’t like crybabies, they start throwing tantrums, over the top indignatious hubris to try and counter a fight that they’ve already lost.
When the liberals and democrats can learn to stop taking everything so personal and learn to stand up to the republicans verbal fights, then the democrats will win one.
Unfortunately for us all, it might not happen this year.
Jill
1, September 15, 2008 at 8:44 am
CroMM,
I’m not trying to be mean or attack you here so please don’t take it that way
I know Jill. Its all good.
And I didn’t call him an inbred. I asked if he was one, since he seemed offended by my making fun of President Bush’s speech patterns.
Lets keep the facts straight Jill.
I never “attacked him” and I never called him names.
After being attacked, lied about, implying I was a Racist, etc, I modifed his handle in good fun, and I jokingly referred to him as “Cornwallace”.
😐
Big whoopdy doo.
Jill…
I am very sympathetic about being personally attacked, but what the hell, people do stupid stuff. For the sake of your fellow posters, how about just ignoring it, or if that’s not possible, one attack back and just leave it at that
I didn’t “attack” him Jill. I cracked a few jokes in response to a guy who was LYING about my positions, and calling me a racist.
Theres a big difference.
Any grade school kid in America is aware of the founding principle of seperation of church and state.
It was expressed into our Bill of Rights under the very 1st Amendment to our Constitution, and that Amendment did not signal the onset of the concept, but the ratification of it as a nation.
The idea itself was a strong committment in the original colonies and was well documented in speeches, trials, acts, laws, etc.
mnoble spent the night arguing as if it didn’t exist and in doing so mocked us, calling us afraid of free speech, implying I was a RACIST, accused me of name calling although I called him none, and in turn, I poked a little fun back at him in response.
If he doesn’t like it, then he shouldn’t climb onto his smug-wagon, and start tossing lies, insults and other stuff to sell his Anti-American ideas.
CroMM,
You have been attacked on this site and it has been in a very ugly way. I have hated those attacks. I can only tell you what it’s like to read back and forth personal attack posts that seem to last a very long time (sometimes days).
It’s really hard to post on a site with all these personal attacks. It keeps real issues from being addressed and it takes away a lot of the wonderful, fanciful humor displayed by many of the people (including you) who post here.
I just want to read what others have to say that is either funny or thoughtful. The rest is stuff that everyone has to skip or scroll through.
I am very sympathetic about being personally attacked, but what the hell, people do stupid stuff. For the sake of your fellow posters, how about just ignoring it, or if that’s not possible, one attack back and just leave it at that? I’m writing this to you because you seem like someone who would consider how your actions effect others. I won’t bring it up again.
mnoble
1, September 15, 2008 at 9:48 am
Cro Magnum Man –
“furriners”
“Cornwallace”
“freaking”
“ignoble”
“inbred”
Not the level of discourse I had hoped for on this site. But appearently all that you are capable of
Just targeting my opponents intellectual level.
And by the way Junior, better add RACIST to your list, as well as the other insults, lies and strawmen you created trying to sell your halfwit idea that religion should be mingled with the affairs of government.
Yomama-sama
1, September 15, 2008 at 7:02 am
Cro,
I bet you’re from the south.
Why?
To paraphrase, “Don’t be foolish! Know what you’re talking about before you say something stupid again. What’s that? Did that bad ol’ joke HURT you? Are you inbred, honey? Well bless your heart!”.
If not southern, it’s a good imitation
No, I’m from New York.
And as for knowing what I am talking about, I’m not the one suggesting there is no seperation of church and state in our democracy. He was.
So perhaps you should try thinking next time before taking another mouthcrap without any facts to back it up.
How’s that sound, slick?
Jill
Then you do make personal attacks. I understand that other people on this site have made personal attacks against you but why respond to them?
Well I probably shouldn’t respond.
But why is it folks always get upset for me responding to them rather than acknowleging the personal attacks I’m responding to in the first place?
mnoble took pleasure all night in fabricating positions (LYING) for me and then had the nerve to imply I was a RACIST.
Perhaps one of the ugliest insults you could imagine, calling someone racist when they clearly are not, hardly compares to a little fun being poked back at them.
I didn’t call him any names, I modified his handle, in fun, and made a couple jokes.
If he can’t take it, then he probably shouldn’t lie about me, or launch personal attacks by calling people racists.
Cro Magnum Man –
“furriners”
“Cornwallace”
“freaking”
“ignoble”
“inbred”
Not the level of discourse I had hoped for on this site. But appearently all that you are capable of.
CroMM,
I have to admit I get perplexed by your responses. You often make great arguments and funny statements. Then you do make personal attacks. I understand that other people on this site have made personal attacks against you but why respond to them? How you respond is about you, their attacks are about them.
As to mnoble, I confess I do not understand why he is unsatisfied with the responses of many to what he is saying. I also agree that he is not originally from the US, but so what? I am with you on your responses to the actual points mnoble makes, but I’m not with you on personally attacking him. At a certain point all you can do is make your argument and if it doesn’t get understood, it just doesn’t get understood.
I’m not trying to be mean or attack you here so please don’t take it that way.
Cro,
I bet you’re from the south.
Why?
To paraphrase, “Don’t be foolish! Know what you’re talking about before you say something stupid again. What’s that? Did that bad ol’ joke HURT you? Are you inbred, honey? Well bless your heart!”.
If not southern, it’s a good imitation.