Alabama Plan More Than Violates Church-State Split

[drakonyx]

An Alabama court is giving first-time, nonviolent offenders a choice: They can do jail time or they can attend church for a year. The ACLU is crying foul, claiming the program crosses the line separating church and state. But it doesn't just cross the line. It violates freedom of thought.

Now that's what the police chief and his pastor buddies in the great state of Alabama are seeking to do. Get more people in the pews. Threaten them with hellfire and brimstone. Badger them into paying their tithes. And all will be right with the world.

Their world. The world of the tea party faithful and Dominionists who want to see a return to what never was: the United States as a Christian nation. And make no mistake about it, this is exactly where people like Rick Perry, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann want to take us. They want to blur the lines between church and state - between free thought and dogma - as much as people like Rowland do. There's little doubt that they're two tentacles of the same monstrous squid.

http://www.theprovocation.net/2011/09/alabama-plan-more-than-violates-church.html

[midnight]

1. K&R

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

2. These people all scare me

I've asked this q before, but I feel I have to ask it again and again simply because we as a nation are heading down the wrong path...

I want to know what these Repub/TeaPeers think of those of us that are Wiccan, Pagan, Hindu, and so forth.
As a Norse Heathen (raised Catholic and my dad is a Catholic Deacon) I already feel that I would be given second class citizen status in their world, but what does that mean for me?
Would I be burned at the stake?
Forced to convert or die?
Have to wear an ankle monitor so that they can monitor my movements or just a large badge indicating my religion?

I never thought I would have to ever ask such questions about our country and while I know some of what I said is over the top, I feel that those questions have to asked just so that everyone understands what and how they think.

Sorry for the short rant.

[BR_Parkway]

3. Over the top? Not in the least - Is there anything you suggested that

some of the larger names within the religious groups haven't already advocated for those of us who are queer?

All while proclaiming their love for us as people of course.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

8. Luckily they are still only in the suggesting stage for most of their crap

I just feel it in my bones that the next few years could dictate whether we start seeing these ideas being employed in small areas if nothing else.

I was reading in another thread about a school principle that took it upon himself to have a Christian Promotional assembly at his school to make sure that they kids learned that they need to be saved. He did this knowing it was wrong.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x304783

And another where they want to give people with misdemeanor charges a choice between Church or Jail! Of course the churches involved are all Christian. I seriously doubt that they would consider a Wiccan group an acceptable 'church' for the program.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1992598

My graduate adviser, knowing that I was pagan, kept telling me (and everyone else around us) that every student should be made to attend chapel services at least once a week. Granted I know that he did it more around me just to be annoying, but everyone knew he meant it. Just so you know, this was at UT Austin and not some smaller college.

I'm lucky in that my dad is a Catholic Deacon and that gives me some cover from being on peoples' list of those needing conversion.

[intaglio]

5. One pastor has already suggested

Atheists should registered and the list opened to public scrutiny

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

9. I saw that the other day

It reminded me of my college days. One day on the shuttle ride home there was a very loud mouth NeoCon that kept moving from seat to seat telling each person about how awesome the Conservatives are and how liberals are awful and their ideas being crap. He even went on about how he stopped going to the College Repub meetings because they weren't Conservative enough.

I was already having a bad migraine and was sitting on the far back seat. This idiot finally got to me at which I blocked him from sitting and hissed/growled as I bared my teeth at him. It spooked him so much that he fled to the front of the bus. The girl in the seat in front of me thanked me for doing that.

Ever after that, I would see him around campus but mainly working the college conservative table trying to spread their vile essence across the world. When he would see me, he ducked behind others (and trees). A friend asked what was happening and after hearing the story he helped play with the guy's mind. I would pass by and then run around or through a building so I could pass by again going in the same direction. We caught sight of him marking something every time I went by and finally saw that he was keeping a log of when and where he saw me.

I guess that means I'm already on one of their lists.

[pangaia]

4. Good comparison..

In that they are comparing jail time with going to church. :bounce:

[David Sky]

6. Good point! Six of one, a year of Sundays of the other. nt

[Uncle Joe]

7. If this doesn't violate the First Amendment, nothing does.

Thanks for the thread, drakonyx.

[Stuckinthebush]

10. Tell them you are going to a UU church

and watch the judge blow a vein.