Category: Politics - Page 34

October 22, 2012

Pulpit Freedom Sunday Was A Failure Due To Bureaucracy

Alliance Defending Freedom, which sponsored Pulpit Freedom Sunday on October 7th, claimed over a 1,000 pastors would be taking part in violating the tax laws prohibiting a tax exempt group, such as churches, from electioneering at the pulpit. If the law breaking pastors had done some basic research they would have seen that having a protest now was a waste of time. The IRS suspended investigations of churches in 2009 due to a federal law suit. Basically Pulpit Freedom Sunday was a failure.

As I posted previously:

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October 15, 2012

Pro-Life Website Walks A Fine Line Between Church And State

image showing Wall between Church and State

A Google alert caught my eye on Sunday. It was to a post on a website called LifeNews.com and it was titled “Liberals Are Trying to Intimidate Your Church This Election”. So of course I had to read about this very important issue. The post basically was the standard conservative scare post. Naturally none of their information was correct. What I did find interesting was links to two voter guides. I didn’t know that a church was so concerned with obviously non-religious issues like energy, Voter ID, and Iran.

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October 12, 2012

Biden And Ryan Debate Offers Snapshot On Church And State

VP Joe Biden & Rep. Paul Ryan

Thursday nights Vice Presidential debate between current VP Joe Biden and GOP nominee Rep. Paul Ryan contained topics from domestic issues and foreign affairs. Toward the end of the night debate moderator Martha Raddatz asked, since both men are of the Catholic faith, about abortion. Each man’s answer drew a sharp contrast on the relationship between faith and public policy. I thought Vice President Biden had the correct view.

This is from a transcript hosted by the website Plunderbund but I did view the debate and vouch for the text in this transcript:

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October 10, 2012

Real Religious Persecution: Pakistani Girl, 14, Shot By Taliban Over Activism

Malala Yousufzai – Dissenter

Here in the US, we take for granted that the worse thing expected by speaking out against the religious right is name calling, verbal threats, and maybe some vandalism. It’s easy for us to imagine not risking our life just for speaking out because it rarely happens. Malala Yousufzai, a Pakistani girl who spoke out against the Taliban when they closed her school in 2009, was shot in the head by the Taliban in an attempt to assassinate her.

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October 5, 2012

Check This Out, I Did A Guest Post At Progress Planet

created image showing The wall between church and state

Back in August I did an interview with the website Progress Planet about me and this blog. I was also invited to write a guest post for them and it was posted today. The topic is the two recent federal court rulings that were related to church state separation. Please check it out.

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September 30, 2012

Happy International Blasphemy Rights Day

Protests by Malaysia Muslims over Innocence Of Muslims film September 2012

September 30th is designated as International Blasphemy Rights Day. This is when we bring awareness to efforts to censor dissent using the false cover of “protecting religious beliefs”. Although very rare in the US, jail time and even death comes to people deemed to have committed Blasphemy. In the US, public bullying sometimes results in “voluntary” self-censorship. Blasphemy laws are bad for freedom. A vibrant society needs and allows dissent in all forms so that the people are able to make informed choices in their lives. And how tolerant we are of dissent says a lot about how we view our country and our freedoms.

What is blasphemy? The dictionary says:

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