He’s going to the chapel and he’s going to sign some right-wing legislation…

June 3, 2005

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has never been known as a champion of civil liberties, and with a tough re-election campaign coming up, including a likely primary challenge, I realize he’s a little desperate. This, however, is ridiculous.

…Perry is wasting no time getting the message to conservative Republican voters that he has delivered. The governor has scheduled an event next weekend at Calvary Cathedral in Fort Worth, where he plans to sign legislation requiring minor girls to have written parental consent before they can get an abortion. He’ll also sign a constitutional amendment — it’s just a formality, because only the voters can make it law — designed to place an existing ban on gay marriage in the state constitution.

Voters will decide on the prohibition in November.

According to a letter sent by Perry’s campaign, and forwarded by e-mail to supporters, Perry officials “want to completely fill this location with pro-family Christian friends who can celebrate with us” and might film the event for TV advertising later.

Pat Carlson, chairwoman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, said that if Hutchison runs against Perry, “it’s very possible” that footage from the event would be used.

Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, but I guess there’s nothing in the Bible about chucking opportunistic, grandstanding politicians who are anxious to exploit the temple for partisan political gain.

It’s not just the Perry campaign with a problem. For the church that’s hosting this bill-signing event, there are serious tax-law implications to consider.

In a letter to Perry sent today, Americans United warned that the proposed event is a blatant example of exploiting a house of worship for partisan political purposes and could jeopardize the congregation’s tax-exempt status. […]

“This is one of the most outrageous misuses of a house of worship for political gain that I’ve ever seen,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It’s of highly dubious legality and could put the church’s tax-exemption in jeopardy.”

In addition to the church’s poor judgment in allowing itself to be misused this way, Perry’s crass manipulation of a house of worship demands some explanation.

Perry’s political director Luis Saenz insisted Thursday that the Perry re-election campaign has no intention to hire a television crew to film the event. This proved to be bogus when the local Republican Party noted email discussions with Perry staffers about using footage from the bill signing.

Perry’s campaign also suggested politics had nothing to do with using the church. This, too, proved to be untrue when Tarrant County Republican Chairwoman Pat Carlson acknowledged that she was thinking about politics when she suggested the venue to the governor’s staff last week.

Seems to me there’s some kind of Commandment against this kind of thing, Gov. Perry.

Looking at the big picture, this fiasco is a reminder that it isn’t the “secular left” that’s undermining religion, it’s Republicans like Perry who are intent on chipping away at spirituality. For believers, churches are sacred institutions. For far-right politicians, they’re props to be exploited.

It’s crap like this that makes me believe — and my tinfoil hat is OFF right now — that we will have to refight the Civil War against the same red states that we did in the 1860s. Not a war of words, but of blood, guts, death, and carnage in the streets.

This shit will not go away at the ballot box, and these fools will tinker with and/or nuclear bomb the judiciary when judges use the U.S. Constitution to overrule such state constitutional changes. Remember Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who refused to get rid of the 5,000 pound Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state Supreme Court House? Word is that he is on the short list for either the U.S. Supreme Court or for a U.S. Court of Appeals slot; or he will be elected as Governor of Alabama in the next election.

The media is too cowed or craven to call this insanity for what it is. Worse, the government has bought them off, so there is no help from that quarter.

So, you heard it here first. Just as World War I was, before Hitler and Tojo, called the “Great War” or the “war to end all wars,” the U.S. Civil War, or the War Between the States, will someday be referred to as the “First Civil War,” or the “Civil War, Part I.”

P.S. This assumes that Bush hasn’t declared first Martial Law, all of our guns have been confiscated, and that fascism reigns supreme. [Okay, I admit that for this P.S. that I did put my tinfoil hat back on]

  • Yeah, it is political grandstanding. But when it comes to using churches as political props, Democrats have long been the champs of that tactic- good Lord how many photo ops of Clinton and Gore having hug-ins at Black churches did we witness all thoughout the 90’s without a bit of criticism from the left. But honestly folks, regardless of with side is doing it, it’s not like anyone of them is kicking down the door to force themselves upon a congregation. Church folk have both the freedom of religion and freedom of speech, which definately encompasses having anybody they darn well please up on the podium. Personnally, I think the federal laws prohibiting elected officials from going to churches to speak is blatantly unconstitutional anyhow, and absolutely noone enforces it anyhow. A law not enforced is not a law. Regardless, politicians have first amendment rights too you know.

  • Democrats have long been the champs of that tactic

    Candidates from both parties will frequently use churches during campaigns to rally supporters, but in all the years I’ve studied the issue, I can’t think of any time any politician used a church for a bill-signing and filmed it for a campaign commercial.

    [I]t’s not like anyone of them is kicking down the door to force themselves upon a congregation.

    True, but irrelevant. If a politician is exploiting a church for partisan gain, and violating federal tax law in the process, it doesn’t matter if the church doesn’t mind.

    Personnally, I think the federal laws prohibiting elected officials from going to churches to speak is blatantly unconstitutional anyhow, and absolutely noone enforces it anyhow.

    First, it does get enforced and churches have lost their tax-exempt status over stunts like this. Second, tax law isn’t unconstitutional. A ministry agrees to certain conditions (avoiding partisan politics) in exchange for a government benefit (a tax exemption). It’s voluntary — and if a ministry wants to be a political organization and work to help like-minded candidates, it’s more than welcome to give up its tax-exempt status and re-form as a political action committee.

    A church/temple/synagogue/mosque can be a house or worship or a political operation, but it can’t be both.

  • 1. Yeah, as to a bill signing, I believe you’re right as to that being a first. But filming a politician speaking in a church (on both sides, and in any location for that matter)and using it in campaign material is so commonplace as to be unremarkable.

    2. As to enforcement, carpetbagger, I’m going to have to raise my BS flag on your assertion that it is enforced in any consistant and meaningful way. That is complete nonesense. Were it so, there wouldn’t be an AME Church in South Carolina that would be tax exempt, as every single one of them has at one time or another, had Rep. Jim Clyburn [(D), SC] been host to an old fashion stumping session. Hell, every Baptist Church in SC would be off the list too. The law is a pharse. Second, tax law can be unconstitutional- I’ve read quite a few cases on this just this past semester in law school. When tax law goes up against the Bill of Rights, it loses, amigo.

    3. Now’s here a curveball from a conservative. I actually do think churches should be taxed in some form or another. Problem is that we can’t really hammer down in legal terms what is a religion these days, and what is not. But after all, Christ said “render unto Caessar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Christians, at least

  • What I don’t understand is why MAINLINE churches remain so thoroughly castrated and mute on topics like this.

    Jesus is reported to have been openly hostile toward two groups: the money-changers and the religiously boastful (pharisees, those who made a show of praying in public, ‘whitened sepulchers’) — i.e., the primary wings of today’s GOP.

    About “tax relief”, Jesus said “render unto Caesar”. He included a tax collector, Matthew, among his disciples. About the rest of the GOP’s hooey (abortion, homosexuality, pronography, etc., all of which were very well known in His day) He said … nothing.

    Churches were at the forefront of the 19th century anti-slavery movement and the 20th century civil rights movement. Many were outspokenly opposed to the Vietnam disaster. Fewer cared about women’s rights, labor laws, international peace, care for the poor – but there were enough to notice. Where are they now?

  • Ed- If you’re thinking or alluding that because Jesus didn’t say anything about abortion, homosexuality, and pornography, he therefore didn’t think it to be wrong or important, you are asserting flawed logic. He never explicitly said you shouldn’t commit murder either- by that standard you’d be saying it wasn’t wrong. Also, your comments about a lack of caring for the poor and aid to the helpless by churches, your so far wrong its obvious you having read your history. The international Red Cross and the Salvation Army, probably two of the largest, longest lived, and well funded hunanitarian international organizations in the world, were founded, funded and run by churches and church members. I could list many more. The number of Christian missionaries who went abroad with vaccines, medicine, water purification, food and more is massive, and goes back in this country long before any significant governmental or sectetarian organization. Of course, they also had faults of their own, but their good work far outweighed this.

  • C.,

    First, I didn’t infer anything from the fact that Jesus said nothing about those topics. I merely observed that He didn’t.

    More importantly, you misread my remarks (or my intent anyway) about churches. I suggested a number of “good works” on the part of churches. Not all their goods works, just some examples. You offered some more. I could add fostering music, painting, scultpure and architecture; establishing nearly all of the great European universities, arranging for translations of the Greek, Hebrew and Arabic books of the ancient world into the then-universal language of Latin, restoration of “the Light of Pure Reason” as a basis of moral action; providing oprhanages, alms houses, hospitals, homes for lepers, hospices for plague victims.

    What annoys me is that, through their current SILENCE — silence on issues (Iraq, coddling the wealthy by burdening future generations, creating work worlds which all but destroy family life, e.g.) and silence on the more obscene representations of the so-called faith-based community — they are allowing ALL churches, mainline and whacko, to be painted with the same brush.

    The principle is: Qui tacet consentiret, Silence gives consent.

  • Cut the Civil War talk out, you sound like a Freeper.

    Let ’em do the grandstanding bill signing, let ’em get carried away with this kind of shit, let ’em think that the conservative Christians are more important than they think. Look, this stinks from the outside, people are smart, they’ll figure out that this shit stinks.

  • Ed- well versed points as to the role of the church over the last two millennia, but I simply can’t agree that the churches (and whoah is that a broad brush of my own) are silent on the issues. They’re just probably not saying what you’d like them to say. The public prayers and speeches for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to face one of the most wicked foes of the twentieth century- Islamo-facsist terrorism definately tells the country what position they take. They also speak out with the tremendous giving they provide to help rebuild Iraqi and Afghan schools, hospitals, and other relief aid. Not even to mention the speach of action in what was done for tsunami vitims. The reason the Churches don’t openly side with Democrats in the social issues is largely because of the hostility that Democrats have for Christians, and the repugnancy they feel for Democratic moral relativism. Let’s face it, they hate us. No sense in lending weight to the arguments of those who would run you out of the country given the chance.

  • C.

    Democrats hate Christians? That’s about as broad as a brush can get, isn’t it?

    From the campaign of JFKennedy through that of JFKerry, the Democratic Party has insisted that it will hold to the traditional Separation of Church and State. This while the GOP has shamelessly exploited its holier-than-thou claims on morality, from Nixon’s hypocrtical finger-pointing at Truman’s foul language through Bush’s blatant pandering to his “faith-based” base.

    Fervently religious people may regard our commitment to Constitutional separation as “moral relativism”, but that doesn’t make it so … any more than Catholics or Muslims describe objective fact when they call each other “Infidels”.

    I have heard nominally religious people (Jesuit priests) argue the mutual obligations of labor and management so finely that even Einstein would regard the result as hopelessly relativistic. I have known not-particularly-religious labor organizers and union busters who were as morally relativistic as a beer truck running into a brick wall.

    The Democratic Party (now that it has freed itself Confederacy anyway) is tolerant. It opposes intolerance. Many Christians would be more true to the memory of their Founder, I think, if they were more inclined openly to imitate those admirable qualities, rather than allowing the name “Christian” to be connected in any way with the hate-mongering GOP.

  • Excuse me, Alex, but the South has never stopped fighting the Civil War. They still battle over waving the Confederate flag over public buildings, and refuse to remove slavery clauses from their state constitutions. If you look at the electoral college votes from 2000 and 2004, the red states are almost entirely in the South. The resentment lives on, just like the Hatfields and McCoys, and its been 140 fucking years.

    In addition, I simply engaged in logical extension, or what Justice William O. Douglas described as the “honorable” practice of the “parade of the imaginary horribles” (but you’re probably way too young to even know Justice Douglas’ name let alone have studied and learned his lessons for democracy. Too many things have come to pass so far under Bush that prediciting another Civil War in this country is NOT troll material, and is no crazier than saying we are sliding into another Great Depression or witnessing the onset of full-blown fascism as in pre-war Germany under Hitler or global destruction due to global warming. Call me a troll — which I resent, but that is certainly your right because it is easier to kill the messenger than deal with the consequences of the message — but that doesn’t change the progression of events that is occurring, and people like you and the media smugly congratulate yourselves with the myopic conceit that it could never happen here. Right.

    It is worrisome when almost all the red states get back more than 100 cents for each dollar they pay to the feds in taxes, yet believe they are the victims. It is worrisome that Bush is a god to these nuts and will do as he asks regardless of separation of powers or any other democratic construct, but we all know that Bush is fully disconnected from reality. It is worrisome that religion is more powerful as a voting factor than economics to these people, even when they live in abject poverty. It is worrisome that the Rethugs control ALL of the levers of power, but they cry they are the victims because we don’t forfeit our souls and agree with them (echoes of Abe Lincoln, no?).

    Time will tell, Alex, but I’ll bet you’re only in your early 20s, and haven’t lived as long as I have; haven’t grown up with parents that came of age during the Depression and fought in WWII; that was an attorney and couselor to hundreds of clients who lived in Eastern and Western Europe during those times; and haven’t had the benefit of learning first-hand accounts of the nightmares and the devastation that became the norm for these people thoughout that 17 year period (for your benefit, I mean 1929-1945).

    There were lots of people in those times that saw it coming, but either could not or did not act to prevent it. If one looks at the facts, I’m not the one that acts like a Bushie; how about you? I’m sure you won’t be one of those that is wise or mature enough to see it coming until you get herded away, along with the rest of the smug sheeple bleating “it can’t be happening, it can’t be happening.”

    I hope you’re right and I pray that I’m wrong. One last quere for you, Alex: is it better to put one’s head in the sand and be wrong, or to be a Cassandra and be wrong? There question to any rational person answers itself. As David Clayton Thomas sang, “I swear there ain’t no heaven, but I pray there ain’t no hell.” [Go look it up under “Blood, Sweat & Tears” and then go away]

  • “Let’s face it, they hate us. No sense in lending weight to the arguments of those who would run you out of the country given the chance.”

    That’s a pretty broad brush you’re painting with Majure. Who are “they”? It helps to wrap yourself up in that cloak of martyrdom in order to promote that vision of besieged, misunderstood Christianity you want to project.

    I don’t hate you. Your Christian views are really irrelevant to me. But your desire to turn America into a Christian theocracy is most unappealing to me. I can accept an America with C. Majure in it. But can your gut wrenching need to proselytize and convert live with someone who has no desire to live life by your biblical doctrine’s?

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