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Mrs. Snoop is my witness. She knows that I have said for as least long as I have known her - and I promise you long before that - that Sunday is the most segregated day of the week.Faith is personal; faith is deeply engrained in the soul. And I’m not talking about Faith. I’m talking about how one goes about expressing ones faith. How one chooses to worship and publicly express that Faith.I have always believed that who you choose to worship with is a far more important aspect of your individual character than just about anything else. In most cases, Blacks and Whites (and just about every other race and creed)have specifically chosen to keep their specific worshiping practices separate.

As far as I’m concerned, churches are nothing more than clubs, fraternities or sororities; a religiously sanctioned excuse to congregate with “your own kind.” And everyone who regularly attends a church does it.

People of different races may work together, play together, eat together, etc., and have no problem. But, sharing the gospel under the same roof is totally unacceptable to the vast majority of individuals who practice their faith.

Because we are blinded to the possibilities of other realities and points of view is exactly why we have more religious denominations than people to populate them.

Far too many people live their daily lives bogged down by religious and spiritual dogma. They relegate themselves to what I would call spiritual and intellectual jail cells.

It could be something as silly as barring themselves from eating certain foods or engaging in what they might call “secular” no-nos because they have convinced themselves that God Almighty actually gives a shit whether or not you celebrate a birthday, or light a candle on a certain day or whether or not you are able to recite a church or a denominationally sanctioned prayer.

Individuals become spiritually and emotionally handicapped by human dogma emotionally hogtied to specific religious convictions that restrict God given emotional and spiritual growth. God must do a lot of laughing, or crying, at how human beings have screwed up everything, including and especially worshiping their creator!

I have attended a fair number of worship services from Mormon to Methodist from Seventh Day Adventist to Catholic. I have always been amazed at the number of creative ways each have decided to craft their ceremonies and rituals and even how each decides how to decorate their house or worship. Even the rules surrounding how individuals should conduct themselves outside the church walls varies from denomination to denomination.

I could be wrong on this, but I have always believed that all of these “rules” are specifically designed to present an air of individuality to that specific congregation. A lot of people badly want or need to feel “special.” The goal not to simply honor God or religious symbol of choice but to present a feeling of isolation or separation from those who are not members of that specific club. Being part of your specific congregation is somehow “special” or “superior” ‘to those heathens who attend that rival church down the block.

Rev Jeremiah Wright, who is now on his personal money making and legacy crusade, is using this self induced racial religious isolation to his own personal advantage. Using the “mystery” of the black church experience in order to charge that the reason white folks around the nation misinterpreted his remarks is because no white person could understand the distinct disadvantages faced by black Americans and the black church. Oh, and he is uniquely qualified in educating black folks (and now white America) to the realities of American injustice. He says that this is a constant message preached in black churches around the country. If you are White, or Black and not attending church regularly, how the hell would you know otherwise?

A small percentage of white people might want to venture to a black church to see first hand what actually goes on. But most are too occupied with healing their own spiritual wounds from the previous week to go out looking to be further abused. Most people don’t go looking for abuse while attending a church service.

This Wright controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line still divides the U.S. and its churches. Rev. Wright is simply taking advantage of that ignorance and taking it upon himself to be the misunderstood voice of the black church and black people.

I have read a number of Negro apologists say that this debate “obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church,” as one writer puts it.

Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, has said “that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright’s preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites,” (and in his mind) “most taken out of context.” However you don’t need to have a self-promotion tour to explain yourself when you are speaking the word of God to your congregation. Of course white people could never understand the context of Rev Wright’s words because supposedly black folks process the truth differently than white folks. We do? You mean the truth is not the truth universally?

All of this nonsense further promotes the racial divisions that had been slowly eroded over the years, not to mention the perceived acceptance of white Americans to Obama’s presidential bid.

Again although I’m not a regular church attendee I have no beef with those who use the church forum to speak out about the health of our democracy. Or to call their flock, or the world over, on the carpet for not leading better lives. Prophetic speech is characterized by an overwhelming sense of an encounter with God and a message of moral and political judgment that a prophet feels divinely compelled to proclaim. I don’t believe that biblical prophets, preachers, pastors, priests should mince words or shy away from controversy and I understand that many prophets and preachers are often misunderstood. Years ago many were persecuted, and sometimes even killed for their words.

However, “religious” leaders who pretend to foretell the future in the name of God, who attack the humanity of others, or who set up manmade rules and pretend they are from God do not speak out against injustice while calling folks back to God’s word and his kingdom. They are people who want to merely make a buck (or millions), get attention, have power over others, or simply be big wheels in some fish pond.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself pronounced judgment against America for the sin of racism and the cancer of Jim Crow segregation. King called on America to become the “beloved community, ensuring that God’s demands for dignity and justice and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were afforded to all Americans.”

Remember King also described his issues with the war in Vietnam when he said

 “America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”

In his Beyond Vietnam speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 a year to the day before he was murdered King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

So yes, it is possible to speak up against the actions of your country and still be a person of Faith. Because of white guilt America likes to romanticize the Dr. King of Montgomery and Selma, but often ignores the “King of Memphis” that demanded a living wage, or the King of Riverside Church who declared silence around the Vietnam War as betrayal.

I’m certain that Rev Wright and other pretenders to the “black throne” see themselves as King disciples. However I don’t see sincerity in the rhetoric Wright spews.
Wright is not interested in healing America nor the reconciliation he spoke about this morning.

Negros like Wright are only interested in seizing the monetary gains that Anti-American rhetoric provides. Wright is not likely to be gunned down by some angry gunman. Rather, it is more likely that some very liberal (is there any other kind?) university will pay him a handsome salary to rant about the ills of America to a bunch of young white skulls of mush while sipping red wine in his soon to be finished $10 million home in an all white community. Dr. King I doubt saw a lucrative future in speaking out about American injustices. In fact, Dr. King gave away the money he won when given the Nobel Peace Prize, and insisted that his family live where they always had – with the common people. Rev. Wright is not likely to ever do that. 

I’ve been watching the news all day and the legions of political commentators appear on TV trying to explain Rev Wright when it is so clear to me that why he is on this speaking tour, the almighty EVIL American dollar.

While some pastors truly devote themselves to bringing people to God, Wright as I have said sees a cash cow. Why it is so hard for others in the media to see this is mind-boggling to me.

Meanwhile, if you personally want to end racism, how about crossing the most important race barrier still in existence. The church line is alive and well, and living it up in America!

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#20.Ketzel the Cat Menorah
MORE HERE

Oh shit, now this will piss Muslim folks off big time!

An American evangelist has jumped into the fray over the fate of a British teacher facing calls for death over a teddy bear named “Muhammad.”Bill Keller, host of LivePrayer, has posted a video on YouTube featuring a pink, toy pig named Muhammad after the Muslim prophet.

“Indeed Muhammad was a man of murder,” the pig, voiced by Keller himself, states in the video. “He was a pedophile, having a wife at the age of six. And I came to find out that the Quran really is nothing more than a book of fairy tales.”

Keller, a vocal critic of Islam, made the video in response to the case of Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in a Sudan jail after being convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her student to call a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

Gibbons was moved to a secure location in Khartoum last week after street demonstrators called for her death.

Read the rest here

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From the blog Jeremayakovka via Conservative Grapevine

In the early 1980s homosexual savages inspired by 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn bar made death threats against this influential opponent of gay civil rights, as suggested in over 100 pages of recently released FBI files, according to the Washington Post’s “Investigations” blog:

[Jerry] Falwell’s FBI file contains a 1983 letter sent to his television ministry that concluded with the words, “Hoping you will die soon.” It was accompanied by a small plastic box containing a live scorpion. One threat involved calls to Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg in 1983, warning that a $10,000 reward had been offered for Falwell’s “assassination” and that it was to be carried out by “gays in Cincinnati.” One caller advised, “I know this is true, because my brother is one of them.” Said another, “I intend to be the one to collect that money.”

No less disturbing than the assassination threats (and attempt, if you count the scorpion) is that WaPo phrases the item and frames the issue by couching in reckless banality both the temptation and the threat to commit murder. The blog entry, called simply, “Exclusive: Jerry Falwell’s FBI File,” begins:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell , founder of the Moral Majority, stirred up passions with his attacks on abortion and homosexuality. Now, the FBI’s confidential file on Falwell, who died in May at age 73, reveals that he also stirred up death threats….[emphases added]

Fortunately such phrasing hints at a way out of its own epistemological impasse. For despite the authority implied by the active form of the verb “to stir up,” only something pre-existing can be set in motion. Which is to say that neither Falwell nor the Devil made those ostensibly “passionate” homosexuals do it. (Granted, the Reverend might have disagreed with my take on the Devil’s role in the matter.) While it’s true that people prone to passion will be found on both sides of any debate, making death threats catapults one into a category beyond the pale of what is acceptable (indeed, of what is possible) as civil discourse. Death threats destroy civil discourse. Like that bullying which taunts and torments another who is perceived to be “different,” death threats against a public personality convey an aggressive contempt for the targeted individual. They also convey a most cowardly disdain because they attempt — always in futility, I might add — to coerce through terror what one shrinks from achieving through debate.

READ THE REST HERE

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GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.”I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party to not cede values and faith to any one party,” Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

“I think that what you’re seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away,” he said.

Read the full story , Hot Air has: Obama: Let’s create a Kingdom right here on earth! I only wanted to post this story because of the hysterical black lady in the background.
It just brings back memories of the fake hysterics I use to witness in church as a young child. Even back then I wondered just who are these people trying to impress or who are they performing for God? The Pastor? The Congregation?

I later learned that much of what I witnessed was staged church theatrics.
I remember having an eye opening conversation with a very prominent pastor back in the day and he said that there was a formula of combining good music, a strategically placed message and find tuning the emotion in the church at a given time that would “heighten” the experience of the church participants, therefore maintaining the audience, which in turn keeps the collections high.

What does this have to do with Hussein? Well… “there is God’s spirit in all of us” Obama states, I bet this is what was being uttered when this lady jumps up saying “thank you Jesus!” How much do you think she was paid to “show the spirit?”

Do I sound cynical, sure I do, as folks pander to God with hands in the air, uttering “thank you Jesus” they leave moments later back to the same sinning, back stabbing, gossiping the weekly appearance in church in suppose to wipe out.
Oh Lord I have sinned, but I am here today seeking forgiveness. Plez.

However with Obama’s statement he is clearly not pandering to God, but the voters of South Carolina, an important state for him politically.
Why to politicians pander to God only in church?
Do the people who routinely make the weekly pilgrimage to a church actually buy the political pandering to God? Who knows, but as my new friend Chris chastises the faux political world we live in, admonishing the fakes and frauds on both sides of the political arena, I can’t help but to be increasingly more cynical of those Christians who increasingly force “their” will not “God” will down the collective throats of Americans which makes this political pandering to God…er uh the voters so insulting.
Just where is God’s voting precinct anyway?

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Found this on Daily Kos, by Kos, funny, someone on the left as loony as Ron Paul.

Richardson is really becoming the buffoon of this campaign.

“Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary.”

“Reasons related to the Lord”? What, are the Iowa caucuses in scripture? What the hell does that even mean? What, did God personally come down and wax poetic on Iowa with Bill?

And I’d really like to see where in the Constitution Iowa is guaranteed “first in the nation” status.

What a stupid thing to say. What an epic pander — easily the biggest pander this cycle.

Meanwhile, his chief consultant/advisor, Steve Murphy, is going on Fox News to yuk it up with Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter — and actually spent time defending Coulter.

I can’t believe I ever flirted with voting for the guy. He’s now down in Kucinich/Gravel territory on my list.

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Found on Sister Toldjah

Via Fox News:

A proposal by a Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands that people of all faiths refer to God as “Allah” is not sitting well with the Catholic community.

Tiny Muskens, an outgoing bishop who is retiring in a few weeks from the southern diocese of Breda, said God doesn’t care what he is called.

“Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? … What does God care what we call him? It is our problem,” Muskens told Dutch television.

“I’m sure his intentions are good but his theology needs a little fine-tuning,” said Father Jonathan Morris, a Roman Catholic priest based in Rome. Morris, a news analyst for FOX News Channel, also called the idea impractical.

“Words and names mean things,” Morris said. “Referring to God as Allah means something.”

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Islamic civil liberties and advocacy group, backs the idea as a way to help interfaith understanding.

“It reinforces the fact that Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same God,” Hooper told FOXNews.com. “I don’t think the name is as important as the belief in God and following God’s moral principles. I think that’s true for all faiths.”

Much more here

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by Patrick Hynes - Ankle Biting Pundits

Pope Benedict XVI sure is giving religion reporters a lot of copy these days. He has a new book out titled Jesus of Nazareth, which makes the “controversial” assertion that Jesus is the Son of God and the only path to salvation, not just a charismatic and free spirited Jewish lad who talked about loving your neighbor a couple thousand years ago. And his Muto Propio revivifying the Latin Mass, “Summorum Pontificum,” has offended those interested only in, as my friend Deal Hudson calls it, “guitars and stupid music, with a liturgy that is not only devoid of mystery but also of the fundamentals of taste.”

Well, now he’s really gone and done it: The head of the Catholic Church has declared the Catholic Church the only true church of Jesus Christ. Specifically, Benedict states in a new document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Orthodox Christian churches are “wounded” and that Protestant “ecclesial communities” are even more wounded still. Lutherans and Anglicans are reportedly “sad” and “offended,” respectively. The Secularites are predictably outraged.

Read the rest here

This is another reason why Hitchens makes more and more sense to me all the time.

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Go to my RepubBlackCon profile on You Tube to see parts 2-4

Pretty interesting discussion on religion, politics, God, no God.
No big fireworks but worth the watch if you missed.

I have this in 3 parts. Will post the others on my You Tube profile RepubBlackCon later.

My internet is real slow this evening.
FYI - Hitchens wrote a book entitled, “God Is Not Great”

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By David Limbaugh - Newsmax 

You’ve got to hand it to Democrats.

They are bountiful in chutzpah and relentless in trying to expand their tent. With the second-class treatment they routinely mete out to Christian political activists you’d think they’d be more discreet about proselytizing Christians on the virtues of liberalism.

Think again.

Never mind that Democratic leaders become apoplectic every time Republicans so much as whisper about Christianity in the public square; their presidential candidates came right out in the open Monday night and attended Sojourners’ Forum on Faith.

Mainstream media reporters couldn’t hide their incredulity as they detailed the religious statements of candidates from Hillary Clinton to John Edwards, who just couldn’t brag enough about the importance of prayer and faith in their lives. A Washington Post article covering the forum was titled “The Democrats’ Leap of Faith.”

You’ve got to admire the Democrats’ tenacity. No matter how consummately the Republican Party is destroying itself, Democrats refuse to concede any voter bloc.

Of course, this is nothing new.

Jim Wallis, founder and organizer of Sojourners, has been trumpeting the compatibility of evangelical Christianity with political liberalism for a number of years, most prominently in his book “God’s Politics,” and exhorting Democrats to pursue evangelicals with an evangelical fervor.

Wallis isn’t the only one on the left with such ideas. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne has written passionately about the family-values friendliness of liberal domestic programs, particularly concerning Sen. Ted Kennedy’s family leave advocacy.

Dionne wrote, “If you are for family values, how can you oppose Kennedy’s call to give all employees at least seven days of paid sick leave a year so they don’t face ‘a cruel choice between losing their job, or neglecting their sick child or sick spouse at home.’”

No matter which leftist is making the point, the theme is generally the same: Republicans don’t have a monopoly on family values or even Christian values. In fact, Democratic liberal values, they say, more closely reflect the true Christian spirit.

DNC chairman Howard Dean once asked indignantly, “How can Republicans get to talk about moral values when they don’t have any? I don’t want to hear any lectures about Christian values from the Republican Party. They are the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”

Former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell said, “You have to look awfully hard” to find anything about abortion or gay marriage in the Bible. But in every chapter of the Bible, and the Quran, and the Torah, he said, are references to the Golden Rule, which squares more with political liberalism than conservatism.

Jim Wallis expressed similar sentiments, saying that abortion and same-sex marriage are not the only Christian issues. “Faith informs policy in other areas as well,” wrote Wallis. “What about the biblical imperatives for social justice, the God who lifts up the poor, the Jesus who said, ‘blessed are the peacemakers’?”

Yes, but Christian conservatives don’t cherry pick the Bible for partisan political benefit. Christian conservatives don’t espouse radical secular values, and they aren’t at war with Christian principles.

It is undeniable that liberals claim to champion the poor and that Jesus talked tirelessly about the poor. But the myth is that conservatives have less compassion for the poor; they just don’t believe the best way to eradicate poverty is through government-coerced redistributions of wealth. Capitalism is squarely in line with biblical principles. By contrast, one would be hard-pressed to make a biblical case for societal sanction of same-sex marriage or abortion.

Democratic evangelicals also fail to explain liberals’ high comfort level with secular values and their unmistakable hostility toward Christians, mainstream Christian values and, sometimes, the very concept of absolute truth. You might recall Democratic Senator (and presidential candidate) Joe Biden confessing, “We have too many elites in our party who look down their nose on people of faith.”

Biden is right.

The examples of liberal Democrats denigrating Christians are too voluminous to detail (without writing a book about it), from columnist Maureen Dowd and others likening Christian fundamentalists (read: Bible-respecting Christians) to the Taliban, to liberal commentators saying Christian conservatives are “reality challenged,” to Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich arguing that “terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face” and implying that the real threat is from “those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma.”

Liberals likewise reveal their true colors when they lobby for strict “separation of church and state” when it comes to the remotest presence of Christianity in the public square, but promote outright government endorsement of radical secular values that are unambiguously inimical to biblical truth.

Professing evangelical liberals might achieve marginal success in expanding their base this way, but I would hope the overwhelming majority of Christian voters would follow substance over form.

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People I wished I cared about the death of Fallwell. I do hope he rests in peace.
I just never gave a damm about any televangelists and what they said or did because I never understood why folks followed these types like sheep and lived on every word they said.

I do agree with him however that our society is fucked, yes Snoop chooses the more colorful language, but it tis true.

People need to find God or something like him or her. People today are so screwed up it is frankly scary.

You crazy atheists out there who bitch and moan about “religion” never acknowledge the calming effect it has on some moronic souls. God does give some folks something to do and even look forward too.

Look at what happens when folks stop praying. One bastard beats an old man for a piece of shit car, to the dude at Virginia Tech who would kill students just because he forgot to take his Lexapro, to the dude in the Bahamas who decides that a bus stop is the appropriate place to whack off the head and hand of a woman just….well…. he forgot to take his Lexapro.

Back to the egos, these self-appointed messengers of God almost always let their ego get in the way of a good message, which brings me to the post below.

Frankly the best thing Fallwell did was help Reagan get elected, however he will always be remembered rightly or wrongly for his quip about a furry “gay” children’s character.

If dude would have stuck to his primary message, GOD and stayed away from attacking Teletubbies all of these liberals would not be dancing on his grave right now.

The ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts Tuesday night couldn’t resist ridiculing the late Jerry Falwell for pointing out how a children’s character on a PBS show appeared gay — though gay rights advocates had earlier made the same observation — and CBS brought aboard liberal presidential historian Douglas Brinkley who called Falwell “comedy fodder for people,” found it relevant that “feminists never liked him,” and dismissed him as “a backlash figure” whose “returning to family values was returning to women being in the kitchen.”

On ABC’s World News, which unlike CBS and NBC did not lead with Falwell’s death, Dan Harris asserted: “In the final years of his life Falwell alienated some in his own movement with a series of controversial statements. For example, he said the children’s TV character ‘Tinky Winky’ was a gay role model.” CBS’s Richard Schlesinger recalled that in later years “Falwell started making embarrassing missteps, denouncing a popular cartoon character as a gay role model.” Over on the NBC Nightly News, Bob Faw, who concluded his piece by asserting that “the Reverend Jerry Falwell — crusader and polarizer — was 73,” raised the PBS show: “In 1999, Falwell was ridiculed when he complained one of the PBS Teletubbies was gay.”

But a 1999 Cox News story archived on a gay news Web site, began: “In the flap over whether Tinky Winky the Teletubby is gay, the real news is that the Rev. Jerry Falwell is late to the party.” Phil Kloer pointed out that in 1998, the year before Falwell spoke out, “the gay magazine The Advocate presciently wrote that ‘PBS is clearly terrified that the same fundamentalists who boycott Disney are going to flip once they get wind of the latest lavender love puppet.’” For gfn.com story: cobrand.gfn.com

More of this article CBS angle

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By Halimah Abdullah - Link

The rocky marriage of religion and politics was tested again last weekend when Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. criticized the GOP’s approach to faith.
During a stop Saturday in Paris, Tenn., Ford said one of the hallmarks of the Democratic Party is that members don’t “use the Bible to judge people.”

He then quoted from the Bible about “the spirit of fear,” and living in the spirit of love, and he paraphrased U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn.
“My friend Lincoln Davis, who chairs this campaign, says there is one big difference between us and … Republicans when it comes to our faith,” Ford said. “He said ‘Republicans fear the Lord. Democrats fear and love the Lord.’”

After Saturday night’s debate in Nashville, Ford told reporters that the comment wasn’t directed at Corker.

“I just made the point … people who go around and try to judge other people are to be real careful,” Ford said.

However, Republican opponent Bob Corker’s campaign and supporters said the comments crossed the line.

“If Harold Ford believes what he said about our relationship with God is true, then it’s incredibly disturbing,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a prepared statement. “It’s outrageous for Harold Ford to say that someone’s love for the Lord depends on their political views — and it is offensive to all Tennesseans who want their next senator to bring people together, not divide them.”

Religious rehetoric has “been used fairly effectively by Ford to insulate himself against personal attacks,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University. “Clearly the turning point of this was the ad in the church.”

Ford’s ad, filmed inside Mt. Moriah East Baptist Church in Orange Mound, was widely hailed by pundits as successful and criticized by some civil liberty and interfaith groups as questionable.

“The recent rush of candidates-political parties — and their often aggressive tactics — to reach out to ‘people of faith’ lures religious organizations and religious leaders into dangerous legal territory,” C. Welton Gaddy, president of the 185,000-member Interfaith Alliance, wrote in a letter last month to the national chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties.

“We didn’t mix religion and politics,” Ford told an interfaith gathering at a prayer breakfast in Chattanooga earlier this month after quoting from Ephesians. “I am who I am. I can’t step out of who I am when I go to work.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a commercial that borrowed heavily from Ford’s church ad and questioned his God-focused image in light of his attendance at a Playboy-sponsored party last year.

Behind the back-and-forth is a battle over religious voters, a demographic that in previous election years has helped turn out the Republican vote. This month, a Gallup poll found white religious voters “equally as likely to say they will vote Democratic as Republican,” a dramatic shift from their strong Republican leanings expressed in surveys conducted earlier in the year.

“One of the things the Republicans have done very well over the last 20 years or so is make religion one of their cornerstones,” said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University. “The Democrats don’t want to give that ground up. Religion isn’t Democratic or Republican.”

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By Sarah Larkins
CNSNews.com Correspondent

(CNSNews.com) - Activists trying to protect the Mount Soledad veterans’ memorial in San Diego, Calif., say the Fourth of July weekend would be the perfect time for President Bush to appeal to his conservative base by taking federal possession of the monument under eminent domain.
The American Civil Liberties Union argues that allowing the 29-foot-tall cross to remain in a public park is an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.
“If you’ve got 76 percent of the voters voting to save the cross, and you’ve got this groundswell of support from a lot of faith-based organizations … it would make sense [to take action],” Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center told Cybercast News Service.
“Obviously the Fourth of July would be a great time to do it,” added Thompson, whose firm represents the group “San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial.”
The Mount Soledad cross was built in 1954 as a memorial to Korean War casualties and veterans. Since that time, the monument has expanded to add six granite walls featuring plaques of names and photos of veterans of the Korean and other wars.
The battle over the cross began in 1991 when Federal District Court Judge George Thompson ruled in favor of atheist Philip Paulson and ordered the city to remove the cross, citing the “no preference” clause of the California Constitution, which guarantees free exercise of religion without discrimination or preference.
In response, the city sold the land to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, but that sale was later ruled unconstitutional. The legal battle continued for more than a decade as further sales and other efforts to protect the monument were ruled unconstitutional, including a proposal to transfer the memorial to the federal government, which was supported by a 76 percent margin of voters in July 2005.
In May 2006, Judge Thompson told the city to comply with his 1991 order by removing the cross before Aug. 1 or face a $5,000-a-day fine.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Paulson in his efforts to have the monument removed, argued that allowing the cross, and another like it on Mount Helix, to remain amounts to a governmental endorsement of religion.
“They are prominent features atop hillsides in publicly-owned parks,” Linda Hills, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, told the San Diego Union Tribune in 1998.

 “Their Christian import is clear and has been acknowledged by the courts. Their maintenance by the City and County, respectively, is tantamount to a governmental endorsement of Christianity.

“Their presence places a burden on the enjoyment of the parks by non-Christians,” Hills added.

THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT, GOOD OLE ANTI-GOD LEFT!

But Thompson disagreed, saying that the cross has a meaning that transcends religion.
“It would be a devastating tragedy that we would not recognize the sacrifice of these veterans and their families by honoring that with a cross, which is a universal symbol of sacrifice,” he said.
The Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals denied a request to stay Judge Thompson’s decision, limiting the options for those working to protect the Mount Soledad cross. The law center filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to stay Judge Thompson’s decision. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy will review that motion.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) also introduced the “Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial Protection Act,” Monday evening. The bill would transfer possession of the memorial to the federal government. The U.S. Military already manages similar memorials, such as Arlington National Cemetery, which is maintained by the Department of the Army, Thompson said.
“Removing this long recognized and respected landmark is an insult to the men and women memorialized on its walls and the service and sacrifice of those who have worn a uniform in defense of our nation,” Rep. Hunter said in a statement. “It is important that we exhaust every possible option for preserving this revered Memorial and ensuring its continued presence atop Mt. Soledad.”
Thompson said the problem efforts to save the memorial are facing now is lack of time.
“The most effective way to save the cross before August 1 would be for the President to act,” he said. “That is the most promising as far as keeping the cross there before the deadline.”
Rep. Hunter and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders are also asking President Bush to intervene.
“Please use [your authority]…to begin immediate condemnation proceedings and bring this National Veterans’ Memorial into the Federal Park System,” Rep. Hunter wrote President Bush in May. “It would be a national travesty to have this veterans’ memorial dismantled against the overwhelming majority of San Diego residents and federal legislative intent.”
Thompson warned, however, that intervention by the executive branch does not guarantee that the battle will end.
“Even if the federal government takes over, that doesn’t necessarily end the case, it just makes the previous litigation moot,” he said. “If Paulson wants to start a new lawsuit challenging some aspect of the federal government taking over, he can certainly do that.”
But Thompson added that, if Paulson and the ACLU of San Diego, which did not return calls seeking comment for this article, want to continue their attack on the monument, his group stands ready to defend it.
“We have made a pledge to fight this battle to the end,” Thompson concluded, “and we are doing that.”

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 REMEMBER MY FAVORITE LIBERAL ROB SAYS THAT I MAKE UP CRAP ABOUT LIBERAL AND THAT THESE “FICTITIOUS” LIBERALS I RANT ABOUT ARE ALL IN MY HEAD AND THAT THEY DON’T REALLY EXIST.  

By Tom Barrett
Conservative Truth.org

ANOTHER ARTICLE - HOLLYWOOD VS. AMERICA
Does ‘PG’ rating mean ‘pro-God’?
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has gone too far – way too far! Their rating system is supposed to help parents protect their children from nudity, foul language and violence – not from Christianity. Yet, in violation of their own published guidelines, the Association has put a “warning label” on a film that contains NO nudity, NO filthy language, and NO violence. The movie’s “objectionable content” is its Christian message. In effect, the MPAA has made a decision to censor religion by its action.

The hypocrisy is that the MPAA had given “G” ratings in the past to many movies that actually contain objectionable content. They explain this away by claiming that the objectionable material was only seen on screen “fleetingly,” or was very “mild.” The more serious hypocrisy is that they liberally pass out “G” ratings to movies that contain strong religious content of other religions, including Islam, Secular Humanism and Wicca (witchcraft).

The movie in question, which received a “PG” rating, is the soon-to-be-released sports film “Facing the Giants” (see LINK to the movie’s website below). The scene which apparently caused the MPAA to fear that “some viewers might be offended” included a discussion between a football coach and a wealthy spoiled brat.

When the coach advised the kid to stop bad-mouthing his father and get right with God, the boy said, “You really believe in all that honoring God and following Jesus stuff?… Well, I ain’t trying to be disrespectful, but not everybody believes in that.”

To which the coach replied: “Matt, nobody’s forcing anything on you. Following Jesus Christ is the decision that you’re going to have to make for yourself. You may not want to accept it, because it’ll change your life. You’ll never be the same.”

Alex Kendrick, who plays the coach in the film, said, “Look, I have those kinds of conversations about faith all the time and I’ve seen young people make decisions that change their lives. The reason we’re making movies in the first place is that we hope they inspire people to think twice about their relationships with God.”

Anyone who sees this film will agree that it should be rated “G”. This is a direct quote from the MPAA’s own website (see LINK below), which describes which films should be rated “G” (for General audiences):

“This is a film which contains nothing in theme, language, nudity and sex, violence, etc. that would, in the view of the Rating Board, be offensive to parents whose younger children view the film. The G rating is not a certificate of approval nor does it signify a children’s film.

”Some snippets of language may go beyond polite conversation but they are common everyday expressions. No stronger words are present in G-rated films. The violence is at a minimum. Nudity and sex scenes are not present, nor is there any drug use content.”

So the MPAA’s own guidlelines allow SOME bad language, and SOME violence. But, as I mentioned above, “Facing the Giants” contains NO nudity, NO bad language, and NO violence. It should definitely be rated “G.” The only reason it has not is that the MPAA has set itself up as some kind of censor of religion. The Association has stated that, “The religious content could be ‘disturbing’ to some viewers.” So only religious expressions of which they approve will be allowed in “G” rated movies.

“It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about,” film spokesman Kris Fuhr told the Scripps Howard News Service.

I don’t know about you, but I’d sure rather have my daughter see a coach counseling a kid to do right, than to have her hear “snippets of language may go beyond polite conversation,” or have her see “…violence” which “…is at a minimum.” I think “G” rated movies should not include ANY violence or bad language. The content of “Facing the Giants” is actually the ideal of a “G” rated movie.

Now let’s look at how the MPAA decides which movies deserve to be rated “PG (Parental Guidance suggested):

“This is a film which clearly needs to be examined by parents before they let their children attend. The label PG plainly states parents may consider some material unsuitable for their children, but leaves the parent to make the decision. Parents are warned against sending their children, unseen and without inquiry, to PG-rated movies. The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance. There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. However, these elements are not considered so intense as to require that parents be strongly cautioned beyond the suggestion of parental guidance. There is no drug use content in a PG-rated film. The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children. Obviously such a line is difficult to draw. In our pluralistic society it is not easy to make judgments without incurring some disagreement. As long as parents know they must exercise parental responsibility, the rating serves as a meaningful guide and as a warning.”

Fascinating! The MPAA believes that the portrayal of drug use is so bad that it is can never be allowed in “PG” movies, where “Parental Guidance” is suggested. But parents need to be “warned” about movies that have religious themes. Using that logic, a coach talking to a child about getting his life straightened out is more damaging to kids than allowing them to see drug use portrayed in a positive manner. What planet do these people come from?

On web blogs where discussion of the movie appeared, I came across several interesting comments. One said, “Does anybody appreciate the history of our country? We cry out loud that we are Americans…but what do we have to be proud of if we have to ‘warn’ people about the values upon which our country was founded? I respect other religions, but we, the People, come from Christian backgrounds. Our forefathers are turning in their graves!…I think that the rating should be changed to a “G.” We have religious freedom here, besides a strong Christian background as a nation.”

Another commented, “What this film is going for is authenticity. It wants to show what really goes on in the hearts, minds, and lives of people who make following Christ a way of life. There are such people in (nearly) every type of occupation across the globe. When looked at that way, is this film any different than a film that goes inside a mafia ring and presents a realistic (yet fictional) picture of what happens there? It will offend some people, but savvy movie-goers have done their research and know what they are getting themselves into…If this film is too religious for you, then your problem is with the people that follow this way of life, not the film itself. Can you really blame the film for striving for authenticity?”

I think that says it all.

INTERNET RESOURCES:

“Facing the Giants” official website
Does ‘PG’ rating mean ‘pro-God’?
Narrow focus draws ‘PG’ rating for Baptist-backed film
Motion Picture Association of America

 

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