The Right State

The 9^th Circuit Court is out of control.  Over and over again they have shown themselves to be out of the mainstream, out of touch with the American people, and have illustrated a stunning disregard for the United States Constitution.

Government libraries can block religious groups from worshipping in public meeting rooms, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision came from a case involving the Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries, a Christian group which won a court order allowing them to hold a “prayer, praise and worship” service in meeting rooms open to other groups at a Contra Costa County library branch. A federal judge said it had a First Amendment right of religion to use the public’s facilities.

But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in a 2-1 decision.

“Prohibiting Faith Center’s religious worship services from the Antioch meeting room is a permissible exclusion of a category of speech,” Judge Richard Paez ruled.

The Alliance Defense Fund, which is defending the church group, called the decision “astounding.” The group, he said, would consider appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court or asking the appeals court to reconsider. (emphasis added by TRS)

Not a permissible exclusion of a category of speech?  It’s not like someone is yelling fire in a theater.  The Contra Costa County Attorney, who brought this suit, is going way too far.  The rights of individuals and their freedom to assemble, their freedom of speech and to worship freely are being infringed upon.  I wish I knew why this suit was brought in the first place.  If the church services were hindering those who wanted to use other library services, then something should have been worked out.  But to force the end of the church meetings goes completely against what the writers of the Constitution had intended.

Not everyone in the 9^th Circuit Court has totally lost their minds.  One, Judge Richard Tallman says the county went too far.

“Rather than adopting a policy of neutrality and placing reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on every group that uses the library meeting rooms, the county has gone to great lengths to exclude a non-disruptive community group based on the views it wishes to express,” Tallman wrote.

Absolutely!  If this continues, it will not be long before churches will even have their tax exemptions tested before the courts.  If this has shown anything, it is that Christianity is under attack.  With help from the ACLU and liberal courts like the 9^th Circuit, even worshiping in public may be a thing of the past.

Stop the ACLU has more.

Tags: Religion, Judges by Chuck
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There are times when I have attempted to talk to someone about a subject which has its own language: ie, computers. If you were going to discuss computers with someone who had no experience with them, the conversation would clearly be one sided. The other person would most likely have no idea what you were talking about. At the same time if this unknowledgeable person attempts to speak about computers, it sounds like complete gibberish. With this reference in mind, I came across this post in The Week magazine in which the Editor-in-chief William Falk discusses a subject with which he has no understanding at all. That to me is enough to keep me quiet, but not Mr. Falk.

Like it or not, preparations for The End are underway. Pastors of America’s evangelical megachurches, the Los Angeles Times reports this week, have launched a “Billion Souls Initiative” to reach every heathen on Earth. “Our whole purpose is to hasten the End Times,” says Bill McCartney, co-founder of the evangelical group Promise Keepers. He’s doing his part by trying to convert mass numbers of Jews to Christianity as quickly as possible. Those who fail to heed Christ’s message, McCartney warns, are “toast.” Iran’s alarming president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is just as eager to see infidels turned to toast. Within two years, he says, the Mahdi, the last of the Prophet Mohammed’s heirs, will return to Tehran, ushering in a bloody, cataclysmic confrontation with the non-Muslim world.

There are times when you should just shut up when you have no idea what you are talking about. As most Christians know the bible says the end times will come about when all have heard about Christ. Not acknowledge Christ, but have heard about him. What Bill McCartney is saying is he is trying to reach as many people as he can so the end times will come.

Assorted crackpots have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years now, to their eternal disappointment. So it’s tempting to wave off this latest crop of doomsayers with a bit of eye-rolling. But times have changed since the 15th century, even if some folks’ religious ideology has not. Even without the Almighty’s help, it really now is possible for some true believer like Ahmadinejad to make radioactive toast of large portions of the human race. Even in our own, enlightened nation, 40 percent of the population believes the End Times are nigh, according to several polls, and they have substantial political influence. If a bloody cataclysm in Israel is all part of a vengeful God’s grand plan, why bother trying to negotiate a peace? Why not welcome a global religious war between Christianity and Islam? Strange questions for a species that’s come so far over the past two millennia, and yet has not.

The quote about ‘toast’ is confusing to Falk who is ignorant enough about religion to compare Christianity with radical Islam. I would imagine the subject of Christianity is confusing to Falk. Christians do not look forward to death, they look forward to spending eternity with their Lord. To athiets like Falk, the end times denotes uncertainty. For him, this is as good as it gets.

So let me explain it to you Mr. FalK. McCartney was talking about hell where non-believers will go if they do not accept Christ. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to kill everyone who does not believe in Allah, meaning, they are toast. There is a tremendous difference between the two competing religions. In Christianity, the non-believer goes to hell, in Islam the non-believer is killed.

Mr. Falk is not an isolated case. Others like him, mostly found in the more liberal blogs like Kos, rant about a subject in which they have neither the understanding nor the inclination to understand what drives Christianity. Take Bill writing in Kos.

Conservatives like to say that we on the left “hate America,” which of course is nonsense. But their side readily admits—right out in the open—that they look forward to our nation’s literal destruction. Next time you see a bumper sticker that says “Vote Republican And Die,” remember: it ain’t a joke. It’s a campaign promise.

Note to liberals: when you find yourself out of your knowledge area, shut up before you make complete idiots of yourself. Ooops, too late.

Tags: Religion, Culture by Chuck
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