faust

I just found out about this organization and put up this entry on my personal blog (read it please hehe). This is some scary shit.

Ok, I knew louisiana was god-soaked, but this is about as unbelievable as a 2000 yr old dead guy walking across a pond to hook up his homies with some Boone's Farm.

Pray4govt.org "Establishing a network of informed intercessors who are called by God to pray for government so that His purposes will be accomplished in Louisiana."

What? they're not insane? let me quote some of their crap from their newsletters. Keep in mind, these people get together to pray for...

04-09-03 PRAY Isaiah 11:2, ?for the spirit of the Lord, ... and the fear of the Lord,? to be with the people of Louisiana and our Legislators and that they will see that the Bible is the only standard of truth and evaluate all other opinions in the light of its teachings.

04-22-03 Even though it is an election year, the homosexual lobby is back at the Capitol in full force. Unshaken by defeats in recent years to secure special employment protection for homosexuals and attempts to repeal the state's sodomy law, eight pieces of legislation which track a nationwide homosexual agenda have been introduced this year. later in the pray section Pray: For godly wisdom, discernment and the fear of God to be upon our Legislators as they view and act on these bills. That any hidden agenda by the enemy would be revealed, meanings of terms used that could open the door to further activity of the enemy.

05-31-03 Moreover, by keeping acts of sodomy illegal, a firewall of protection is raised against a radical homosexual agenda, which seeks to normalize and mandate acceptance of all homosexual behavior.

03-04-03 -or- How the Pledge Got God Some of the things
ACLU supports:
Legalized child pornography, legalized drugs, tax exemptions for Satanists, legalized prostitution, abortion on demand, mandatory sex education, busing, ideological tests for court appointees, automatic entitledprobation, public demonstrations by Nazis and Communists, legalized polygamy. Odd how they list tax exemption twice in this fake bullshit lie.
ACLU opposes:
Legalized optional school prayer, sobriety check points, tax exemptions for churches, religious displays in public, medical safety reporting, parental consent laws, school vouchers and home schooling, government ethics committees, prison terms for criminal offenses, public demonstrations for direct action by pro-lifers, teaching "monogamous heterosexual intercourse
within marriage" in public schools.


Christians fucking terrify me. Remember these people do their praying [b]inside the state capital building during session!!!

Toto

I've tried to access your personal blog, and I get a redirect notice and then a security warning alert from Microsoft. What goes?

These intercessory prayer warriors are all over. I don't know what Louisiana did to deserve its own contingent.

Grumpy

ACLU opposes:
Legalized optional school prayer [mandatory school prayer]
sobriety check points [unwarranted searches]
tax exemptions for churches [tax-subsidized political networks]
religious displays in public [government endorsement of Christianity]
medical safety reporting, parental consent laws [making abortions harder]
school vouchers and home schooling [government money to religious schools]
government ethics committees [huh?]
prison terms for criminal offenses [double huh?]
public demonstrations for direct action by pro-lifers [intimidation at clinics]
teaching "monogamous heterosexual intercourse
within marriage" in public schools [half-assed sex-ed]

SLD

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but I think it important to point out that there is no one, including the ACLU, who is opposing "religious displays in public." At least not in those broad terms. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits a private person from displaying their religiosity in public - as long as they have a right to be in the place where they are displaying their religiosity. The ACLU does not oppose "public displays" of religion. What the ACLU and others oppose is the government funding of religious displays. It's when the government gets involved that you have church-state issues. It is a canard of the religious right that the ACLU and others oppose all "public displays" of religion. They are trying to make it look like we advocate a position that religion can only be practiced in private places, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

The same can be said about these intercessor prayer groups. As long as they have a right to be at the Capitol building they can pray to their little hearts content (as long as they are not disruptive). I don't care that some people want to do something as useless as that. I would argue that they would have better luck lobbying the legislators to vote the right way rather than pray that they will, but hey to each his own.

SLD

beejay

Grumpy may be too grumpy to answer right now...but I think what he is doing is listing the erroneous charges against the ACLU (since they don't oppose public religious displays) and putting in parentheses what the ACLU has actually done (opposed government [nearly always Christian] religious displays).

Grumpy

Read "displays" literally, i.e. dioramas, billboards, nativity scenes, etc. Given the ACLU's well-known involvement in dozens of lawsuits involving Christmas creches, Ten Commandments plaques, and the like, I think that's what our friends at Pray4Govt.org are talking about.

SLD

You're still not explaining what you mean. There are no legal challenges to public displays of religion as long as the government isn't involved. There are indeed numerous billboards, nativity scenes (during the Xmas season, i.e.) around here and there are no lawsuits, and no plans by the ACLU to sue about them. They are perfectly constitutional - indeed constitutionally protected, as long as the government isn't funding them and they aren't a government display.

Perhaps I'm confused, you don't really believe that the ACLU and other like minded groups have actually sued a private entity such as a church for putting up a billboard do you?

I checked out the pray4govt.org web site. Indeed they continue to put out the religious right canard about opposing public displays of religion. Again, there is nothing wrong with people publicly displaying their religious faith - and the ACLU does not oppose such a thing. Saying otherwise is a damn lie - which of course is what all good right wing religious nuts do well.

SLD

Grumpy

...just to be clear.

According to the original post by faust, Pray4govt asserts that the ACLU opposes, among other things, "religious displays in public."

Why do they believe this? Because the ACLU has been involved in several high-profile lawsuits. In Alabama, they sued Roy Moore for his courthouse Commandments, wooden and stone. ACLU v. Schundler challenged a Christmas/Hannukah display in Jersey City. The Indiana chapter sued over a Ten Commandments display at the capitol, though the SCOTUS declined to take the case.

And so on. To groups like Pray4govt, this amounts to a coordinated attempt to stifle religious displays in public. That it is, in essence, government endorsement of Christianity (as I described it) is unimportant to them.

Pray4govt says ACLU opposes religious displays, I say ACLU opposes government endorsement of religion. That's all there is to it.

I just wish I knew what they mean by "government ethics committees." This is a euphemism for what?

faust

Grumpy:
"government ethics committes" read McCarthy-ism. Did anyone see Anne coulter on fox the other night?
"prison terms for criminal offenses [double huh?] " = enforcing sodomy laws, and ridiculous state "moral" laws like blue laws perhaps.
who knows. it's f'd up.

did no one notice the ACLU is said to support child pornography? these people strawmen like a drunken kent hovind.