The Gray Lady's editorial board nails right-wing preachers

[thatcrazycajun]

This editorial in yesterday's New York Times calls it exactly right. Tomorrow morning, a bunch of conservative ministers and priests across the US plan to defy a 54-year-old federal law that says churches endorsing or opposing particular political candidates, parties, ballot propositions or legislation cannot do so and demand exemption from taxes at the same time. Claiming their First Amendment rights are being infringed, they're staging a mass action and calling it "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." (Give you three guesses which Presidential candidate they'll support, and the first two don't count.)

Even leaving aside my well-known bias against organized religion, the rule makes perfect sense to me. If you want a say in public policy and how government monies are spent, you put some skin in the game. If you're not willing to help pay the cost of government, you can't be held accountable to anyone for the influence you have over who gets elected and what laws get passed.

And it's not as if the clergy aren't already free to express opinions on political matters. They just can't do so in their official capacity as leaders of a congregation, synagogue, mosque or parish, from the pulpit, and still get off not paying taxes. Besides, the Religious Right Wrong already has had far too much access to churches as a political organizing tool as it is, thanks to the late, unlamented (by some of us, anyway) Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and its successor groups like Focus on the Family. They've been passing out voter guides in church parking lots and using mailing lists provided by sympathizers inside for at least two decades now. "Wall of separation"? Who dat?

They're hoping to get their day in court—the Supreme Court, where they evidently think the current conservative-larded bench will side with them and throw out the law. If there is a God, may She grant my prayer that these cassocked yahoos and their right-wing backers are wrong.

Comments

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

I am fully in favor of religions being legally allowed to to what they're frelling doing anyway.

Because then they will have to pay taxes and show where all that money they're taking in is going.

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

As if that'll happen (and I really hope it will)

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Has anyone but me noticed that all religions (with possible eexceptions being Unitarians and Bahais) agree most vehemently on one thing, and one thing only: that all the others are wrong. If only they could apply this same principle looking inward, what a great day it would be! Then they would know the truth, and the truth would set them free.

In the mail yesterday I received a 13 volume set of the complete works of Robert Ingersoll. Now, to open the package.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Yaknow, it's kinda funny; it was a Methodist minister who taught me that perhaps there is more than one approach to the Divine; he had a habit of teaching comparative religion classes... ostensibly in order to promote better understanding of one's fellow human beings, and thus peace, but he also had an underlying thread in his message, which was do what *you* *uniquely* have to do in response to what you perceive as that which is bigger than you. He wasn't atall upset when I turned out to be something *entirely* different....

Of course, he was regarded as something of a heretic by his fellows, but he's not the only one... the dean of the Episcopal cathedral over here is one of those "radical inclusivity" types; he and his crew really don't care why you would cross his doorstep, they're happy to see you. (I go occasionally, often on $WINTERHOLIDAY, just to see what the man is thinking.)

They are rare, though, I'll give you that... but they're also growing, so it seems. And I totally agree with you that it would be nice if there were more such.

I wonder if we-here could organize a protest on short notice; we've got a really egregious offender over here in Microsoft-ville (NOT Bill or any of the Softies, whose rank and file are STRONGLY against the kinds of civil rights violations the McSame crowd are for; the extremely-vile-epithet-here's name is Ken Hutcherson.)

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

You can find "only We have the Word" and "we all have some of the Word" types in many religions, probably all the big ones. In my Reconstructionist Jewish congregation there are agnostics and atheists as well as firm believers, but I think we all agree that Gentile ≠ wrong.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

What I believe is a simple truth: everyone, including me, is completely wrong about everything, including this.

And that is the One Universal Truth as revealed to me by Flipper.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Yes, but are you sure about that?

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Actually, Judaism don't think that any other faith is wrong.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I respectfully disagree. What about Exodus 22:17, and the first commandment?

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything wrong with:

"Thou shalt not allow a sorceress to live"

or

"I am the L-rd thy G-D. Thou shalt have no other G-D before Me."

The second was geared towards the Jews. And what's wrong with the first?

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I'm not so comfortable engaging in a lengthy argument on religion under someone else's posting, but I'd be happy to discuss it offline. I'm at blindlemmingchiffon@earthlink.net.