Posted on 07/24/2004 6:24:55 AM PDT by take
Lynn, the enemy within.
The KGB did the same thing by monitoring the Orthodox Church. A democrat win could usher in all sorts of nastiness.
In that case, I expect IRS investigations of every single damn AME and black Baptist church that Kerry, Edwards, and their Democratic race pimp friends speak in this summer and fall. Every last one of them.
But we know that won't happen. It's only OK for black churches to be used for political benefit, and maybe some white liberal denominations if done quietly...never conservative denominations like the Southern Baptists.
Racist bastards.
Sorry. I haven't had enough caffeine yet to be posting here.
}:-)4
RATS openingly campaign in liberal (especially black) churches all the time. They even film it and have it on TV.
Kansas group monitors sermons
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) - A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage.
Kolm is one of about 100 volunteers for the Mainstream Coalition, a group monitoring the political activities of local pastors and churches.
The coalition, based in suburban Kansas City, Kan., says it wants to make sure clergy adhere to federal tax guidelines restricting political activity by nonprofit groups, and it's taking such efforts to a new level.
The 47-year-old Kolm, from Prairie Village, Kan., said keeping church and state separate is important to her. She doesn't want a few religious denominations defining marriage - or setting other social policy - for everyone.
"What it's all about to me is denying some people's rights," she said.
But some local clergy think the Mainstream Coalition is using scare tactics designed to unfairly keep them out of the political process.
"Somebody is trying to act like Big Brother when there's no need for Big Brother," said the Rev. James Conard, assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church of Shawnee. "It's obviously an intent to intimidate."
Kansas isn't the only place in this election year where church-state separation has become a hot issue, but the Mainstream Coalition's efforts are more intense than most.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint this month with the Internal Revenue Service against the Rev. Jerry Falwell over a column endorsing President Bush on his ministries' Web site. Falwell said the group was waging a "scare-the-churches campaign."
Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said local chapters have sent volunteers to church services the Sunday before an election, but he said the Mainstream Coalition's efforts are more sustained.
Some conservatives are upset.
"These people will stop at nothing to silence churches," said Andrea Lafferty, of the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition, which says it represents 43,000 churches.
The catalyst for the Mainstream Coalition's campaign in Kansas was the debate over gay marriage.
In May, the Kansas House rejected a proposed amendment to the Kansas Constitution to ban gay marriage. Dozens of pastors then joined a statewide effort to register 100,000 new voters and elect more sympathetic candidates - a move similar to one in Washington state, where an Assembly of God pastor is leading an effort to register 60,000 new voters and re-elect Bush.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar with the nonpartisan First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., said Mainstream's tactics only added to the tension in Kansas. "If we want to escalate a cultural war, this is a good way to do it," he said.
But Mainstream's executive director, Caroline McKnight, said her organization is only trying to make sure that churches follow federal law. The group has not yet filed any complaints, she said.
McKnight said Mainstream Coalition volunteers visit houses of worship of all types.
Said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, of Virginia Beach, Va.: "Who deputized this group and its members to be thought police in Kansas - or elsewhere?"
No, the enemy within is any judge who would not deep-six this motion because of insufficient grounds.
"She doesn't want a few religious denominations defining marriage - or setting other social policy - for everyone."
If there are a few who are out to define marriage, it is zealots like the ACLU, who don't like the definition accepted by American law since 1776 and which is found in Black's Law Dictionary.
bttt
May God strike these spies for Democratic Party dead as doornails.
- Zachary Coile, Chronicle Political Writer
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Voters interviewed Tuesday said they felt comfortable backing someone who grew up in the mill towns of the Carolinas. Edwards' family moved to North Carolina when he was a young boy.
"He's from this area, and I think he understands the South and the issues of the South," said Roy Chandler, a 71-year white Democrat who runs several retail businesses in Orangeburg.
Edwards built a formidable campaign organization that sent thousands of volunteers knocking on doors. He campaigned in South Carolina for more than a year, and his aides convinced more 100 ministers of black churches to endorse him from the pulpit on Sunday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/04/MNG984OIGK1.DTL&type=printable
Hypocrites at best. Where was the outrage when Clintoon and Bore campaigned in the AME and Buddist churches in Los Angeles? How about the "Reverand" Jesse and his campaigning in the various churches?
One of these days, the Republicans have to take off the gloves and hit back hard.
You sounded right on to me.
In a world where right were right and wrong wrong, the law that includes 501(c)(3) tax exemption status would be declared a violation of the 1st Amendment, because it prohibits the free exercise of religion.
In this world, however, this pastor's church could be padlocked if he won't supplicate himself to his national master.
Americans do not like "McCarthyism" and that is what this smells like.
I think the thought police have overreached. This will backfire.
Americans do not like the IRS, whom the Democrats just made their ally.
Americans really don't like spies and snitches.
Amen. There's no better way to guarentee 100% voting turnout from a church (note:That's a place where God is worshipped for all you 'Unitarians' out there) then to send some abortion-rights wacko type to 'moniter'. Just keep it up dumbasses.
I don't know why they just don't call it "the Separation of God And Man" because that what it boils down to.
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