Gideons have been handing out Bibles in school or adjacent to schools for longer than I have been alive.  Does the fact that they now stand on public sidewalks really mitigate the legality of what they are doing? Technically, yes.  But there remain some pretty big issues, in my opinion.  

[Israel Palestine] As Hagee's man, candidate McCain pandered to militants and fundamentalists during his trip to Jerusalem, giving firm "support for Israel's military response"...Ziad Abu Ein, a senior Fatah operative and Deputy Minister for Prisoners' Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, was offering the world a vision to begin the world again with a nonviolent plan to defeat the culture of terrorism, racism and denial of the other.

There are two bills before the Florida Legislature that need to be stopped.

Florida House bill 707 and Florida Senate bill 630 both provide for Florida's Department of Transportation to solicit $1 contributions from people renewing their registrations for "Family First"- a "Non-Profit organization" based in Florida.

Thanks to my good friend dogemperor, we've been able to connect the dots- Florida First is a d.b.a. for the Florida chapter of Focus on the Family (Florida Family Council).

The state has NO business collecting funds for a religious organization- especially one along the lines of Focus on the Family.   This is an outrageous violation of the separation of church and state!!!

The content of the two bills can be found on the Florida House/Senate web pages (follow the bills link).  The links to each are below.

House: http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/SEctions/Bills/bills.aspx

Senate: http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/index.cfm?Mode=Bills&SubMenu= 1&Tab=Session&Start=600&End=698&Year=2008&Cha mber=Senate

The Florida Family Council Inc. form 990 can be found at: http://www.eri-nonprofit-salaries.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=NPO.Fo rm990&EIN=593043408&Year=2006&Cobrandid=0

Note the web address.

As one of my continuing "side series" (along with the Gothard research), I've been writing up on the virulently anti-LGBT "Joel's Army" group "Watchmen At The Walls"--a group linked with no less than one death and multiple assaults as well as an attempted progrom against a Pride parade in Riga, Latvia, and which is now officially listed as a hate group by Southern Poverty Law Center.

One thing I've focused on is the rather disturbing official support by Assemblies of God regional head Joseph Fuiten--and those of you who've read my previous articles know Fuiten is far from the only virulently anti-LGBT leader in the Assemblies.

Now comes disturbing news that the Assemblies of God may be embracing hate as a whole--it turns out the Latvian head of "Watchmen" was front and center at a major conference of Assemblies preachers in Atlanta recently.  (Apologies to readers--we do have a lot to cover here, so pardon the length.)

A news article today in the Lakeland Ledger reports that Jeb Bush and Colin Powell are going to attend a "National Leadership Seminar" being held at the local Assemblies of God "University".    The article reports that they will be appearing along such "notables" as Kay Warren (wife of Rick Warren), Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager), Erwin McManus (of Mosiac in California), and Wayne Cordeiro (of "New Hope Christian Fellowship" in Honolulu).

The article is located at:  http://www.theledger.com/article/20080305/NEWS/803050468/1338/new s00

This really bothers me.  First that this ersatz university keeps getting considered the equivalent of REAL universities, when it's accreditation is from an organization set up JUST to "accredit" AoG bible schools. (UPDATE) I found out that a couple of their programs have been accredited by a real agency. I don't know how they achieved that (and I find it scary), but counseling, business, and early education ARE accredited- I just shudder to think what they do with it!

The more scary thing to me is that is the same Assemblies bible school I hung out at when I was a member of that "Bible-based coercive religious group".

The students I sometimes hung out with were part of the teams being taught to steeplejack churches.  They pointed out to me the "professors" who taught them the tricks and oversaw their efforts.

At the time, sadly, I approved of their activities.  I knew which pairs of students who were assigned to which churches.  They even stated that they were being taught to specifically target specific denominations.

So, steeplejacking has been in the works since 1980-1982, and you've seen how it's developed since then.

Incidentally- the church I left a couple of years ago had AoG students regularly holding "positions" in that church.

Reported by Reuters last week, McCain said at a news conference:

"I'm very honored by Pastor John Hagee's endorsement today. He has been the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement in many areas, but especially, most especially, his close ties and advocacy for the freedom and independence of the state of Israel."
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959110.html

Promoted from the diaries (with minor edits) -- ed

This is a follow-up on my diary on Daily Kos describing how the ADL was satisfied with Obama's statement on his minister's comments on Farrakahn in January 2008, but was not satisfied with McCain's own statement making the false and divisive claim that the Constitution established the U.S. as a Christian Nation back in October 2007.

<The self-righteous segment of the population that see's fit to demonize all things liberal needs to re-examine their claims. They probably won't, but they have no leg to stand on. Assuming that they believe that the Bible is the inerrent word of God, and that it is the book that informs their lives, then they need to look at what the Bible say's about liberals. There's no way to spin this. It is what it is. The Religious Right, and all those that have insisted that Liberals are the spawn of Satan have avoided this like the plague. Either they knew about this passage and deliberately avoided it, making them the very worst of hypocrits. Or they were waving the Book in peoples faces without ever having seen it, and were simply ignorant fools in the eyes of the very God they professed their belief in. They invested their entire being in the word of God. And the word of God condemns them for their hypocracy.>

[promoted from the diaries - ed]

In a single sentence in one story on religion in the United States, CBS Evening News on Monday managed to insult the vast majority of the American people. Describing a major new study on Americans' religious faith from the Pew Forum, CBS' Wyatt Andrews suggested that atheism in particular and Americans' widely shared belief in a secular society in general is immoral:

"The unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America. To the surprise of many experts, Americans are still deeply religious, with 84 percent of adults claiming a religious affiliation"

[Melbourne, Fl. February 25, 2008] Nearly every one of the 2,000 seats at The King Center in Brevard County was filled with fannies attached to American fundamentalists [a fundamentalist is anyone who has quit thinking] who paid $18.00 for a seat and upwards of $1,000.OO to attend the pre-show meet and greet with the 'three stooges' of fundamentalism at the "WAKE UP AMERICA! Confessions of 3 X-Terrorists" show.

I have not yet read Amy Sullivan's new book, The Party Faithful. In the past, she has seemed to be part of that wing of the Democratic Party that  also seemed to be calling for pandering to conservative evangelicals in ways that betray core values. In  this interview in Salon.com, however, she does not sound that way and all and makes good sense.