Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    I agree with you...in the sense that dogmatism can produce a negative
    effect on a governing body.
    
    I believe for the last thirty years, congress was run by a band of
    religious zealots...wielding their secular humanist dogma throughout
    the walls of the Capitol.  They may have felt their hearts were in the
    right place but in essence their dogma forced them to shoot themselves
    in the foot.  Now we have created a bunch of little government
    dependent countries within our own...little bosnias if you will.  
    
    What we need is a government that is going to encourage individuality, 
    entrepreneurship, and self reliance.  We are moving along very slowly.
    Incidently, I believe the current scope of government in our country is
    undoubtedly socialist...and I also believe they are treasonist! 
    Another fruit of secular humanism.
    
    Yes, the Christian Coalition is a large lobby for the republicans.  I
    am not a member and don't proscribe to all their platforms.  However, I
    do see a definite trend to entropy when a religion...like secular
    humanism...works its way into government.
    
    -Jack

    Other political groups have been doing this for years, why can't the
    religious right join in?  NOW, NAMBLA, and other liberal groups have
    been pushing their agenda(s) on politicians.  The Church needs to speak
    up and stop being so complacent.
    
    Mike

Also see topic 497, "Pat Robertson and the Religious Right"

Shalom,
Richard

    The so-called Christian Coalition does not speak for this Christian or
    this Christian's church.
    
    Shalom,
    Richard
    

                      <<< Note 1083.0 by APACHE::MYERS >>>

>    It is unprecedented, to the best of my
>    recollection, for a specific religious organization to have such a hold
>    on the ear, and actions, of our political leaders. 
    
    	So which "specific religious organization" might that be?  I think 
    	it is quite telling that the Christian Coalition is made up of
    	people from scores of major and minor religious denominations, and
    	is supported by hundreds of identifiable organizations.
    
>    There is
>    a line somewhere between the leadership of this country being guided by
>    the moral convictions of its citizens, and the leadership being
>    directed by theological dogma.
    
    	Before that line is ever crossed, I suppose our leadership would
    	first have to start being guided by the moral convictions of its
    	citizens.  Fear not!  We are far from even approaching that.

    
    re: 1083.2

    NAMBLA is not representative of a liberal group. At least no more so
    than the Nazi's and skin heads are representative of conservatives.
    Let's not pretend that loony nut-cases represent the mainstream; it's
    either wacko or dishonest to do so.

    "The Church," in my opinion, is not equal to the Christian Coalition.
    "The Church" is not equal to conservative Protestantism. "The Church"
    is the collective body of Christiandom. I have no problem with church
    leaders speaking up regarding issues of spirituality and morality. I do
    have difficulty with the pulpit being used as part of a partisan
    machine... Republican or Democrat. You don't really want "The Church"
    to have to play the same rules as political action committees, do you?

    Eric

    
    But the Christian Coalition is only a group of individuals.  You must
    understand this in order to provide the proper context for your fears.
    
    Just because "the church" may preach from the pulpit the same values
    and concerns as the Christian Coalition doesn't logically or legally
    make them one organization.
    
    Really, now, get a grip on yourself ;)
    
    jeff
    

      re: .0
    
      Jesus was not political so far as I can tell.  He just went 
      around changing hearts.
    
      I agree with you 100%.
    
    						Tony

.0 APACHE::MYERS

Eric,

Well said, I was planning on entering a similar note, but you've said it better
than I could have. In the next contract is language aimed as negating the first
amendment, specifically a constitutional amendment allowing a 'voluntary' moment
of silence (does this mean that I can talk through it if I don't volunteer),
religious displays on government property (can you guess which religion?) and
prayer at government sponsored events (can you guess whose prayer?). Frankly, I
find this terrifying.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.1 MKOTS3::JMARTIN "You-Had-Forty-Years!!!"

    I believe for the last thirty years, congress was run by a band of
    religious zealots...wielding their secular humanist dogma throughout
    the walls of the Capitol.

Jack,

Get a dictionary. Look up religion. Look up secular. Look up humanism. You will
find that they are opposites, and calling secular humanism a religion is
incorrect. This does not mean that there are not people trying to push secular
humanist beliefs, but by *definition* it is not a religion.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    
    -.1
    
    How, Bittrolff, is it "terrifying"?  Please enlighten me.
    
    jeff

    Eric, regardless of what group it is, there are several out there
    pushing their agendas.  The result of Christians being complacent is
    seeing our basic freedoms (including freedom of religion) fading away. 
    If you don't like what's going on in your country, you owe it to
    yourself and God to exercise your power to change by using the ballot
    booth.  Prior to the CC, Christians were getting their interests stomped 
    on.  The squeaky wheel is what gets the grease.
    
    The CC is separate from the Church.  If you don't like the CC, then
    maybe someone will start a group that more suits your needs.  Obviously
    the CC is doing something right to have so many different denominations
    represented.  And our voice is being *HEARD*!  Many politicians are
    actually have to live up to their campaign promises now because we're
    watching how they vote and distributed report cards.  No longer will
    they have zero accountability to Christians.  It's been too long where
    politicians would tell Christians one thing and do another.
    
    As you say, the CC and church are separate.  The CC is the voice, not
    the pulpit and churches need not worry about political action
    committees' rules.  The CC is merely a vessell that allows Christians
    to say, "We're not putting up with your nonsense anymore."
    
    Mike

    
    re: 1083.5 

>    So which "specific religious organization" might that be?  I think it
>    is quite telling that the Christian Coalition is made up of people from
>    scores of major and minor religious denominations, and is supported by
>    hundreds of identifiable organizations.

    The Christian Coalition is a specific religious organization. It is my
    understanding that there are no Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or
    Native American (non-converted variant). It was also my understanding
    that the vast majority (not all) of the membership is made up of
    conservative Protestants versus Roman Catholics, Methodists, Unitarians. 
    
    Eric

    Steve:
    
    Check the record bub!!!  The U.S Supreme court defined Secular Humanism
    as a religion during the Reagan Administration.  
    
    I am a 34 year old pup...and as a thirty four year old, I contrast the 
    governing bodies of today as opposed to the times of the Federalist
    Papers.  I see the United States as a SOCIALIST country...pure and
    simple.  The authors of the Constitution made it abundantly clear...the
    the Federal Government WAS NOT TO IMPEDE on the rights of the
    citizenry.  In the last 30 years I have seen our Federal government
    continually erode the precepts of our founding fathers.  I find this
    consideralbly more reprehensible and terrifying.  As for the moment of
    silence, I understand the problem.  So please, let's stop the nonsense
    and privatize the schools so I can pay for my own childs education and
    whether or not he has a moment of silence.  Please stop holding a gun
    to my head and telling me I have to pay for a failed decrepid school
    system.  
    
    -Jack

    
    
    You're wrong, Myers.  The Christian Coalition is a political
    organization.  It takes money from anyone who will give it.
    
    jeff

        
    I get the feeling that the Christian Coalition has latched on to that
    politically popular, and effective, tactic of professing victimization.
    This is where you paint yourself as being a repressed victim of the
    powers that be. And Americans loves an underdog fighting the good
    fight. Now the (victimized) Christian Coalition, just a rag-tag band of
    diverse, (but all Christian) religiously persecuted individuals, can
    deflect all countering opinions as an attempt to suppress free
    expression; as anti-religion, anti-family, and anti-American
    (treasonous, I think Jack said).

    Yup, it just might work. I guess I'm in the minority; I've not
    experienced any reduction in personal freedoms, religious or otherwise.
    I still practice my faith, such as it is, with no repression or
    harassment by the authorities. Why just the other day I was praying
    quietly by myself... IN A GOVERNMENT BUILDING! Shocking, I know. Thank
    goodness I wasn't found out. And the other day a was not prevented from
    walking into the church of my choice, on a weekday no less. :^)  I
    guess it's fair to say that I think the claim that our religious and
    personal freedoms have been fading away for the past 30 (40) years is a
    bit like the emperor's clothes. 
    
    Eric 

    
    > You're wrong, Myers.  The Christian Coalition is a political
    > organization.  It takes money from anyone who will give it.

    Thank you. My church will also take money form anyone who will give it.

    By the way, I'm usually referred to as Myers only by my close personal
    friends, my wife, and people who are pissed at me. I am pleased to have
    you a friend, Jeff. :^)

    Eric

    
    I think you've got your head in the sand or you are woefully ignorant
    of current events.
    
    jeff

    re: 1083.17

    Or I could be as paranoid of the Christian Coalition as you are of
    government. 
    
    Dumb ol' sand spitin' Myers

    
    I'm not paranoid of government.  Whatever gave you that idea?
    
    jeff

    Eric:
    
    I must respectfully disagree with you on the issue of personal
    freedoms.  Consider the following...the art of taxation is to be used
    for nothing...I REPEAT...Nothing more than to fund that which
    Constitutionally sound.  You my friend...(You Myers :-)) are currently
    funding massive pork projects and countless other entitlements that are
    very much unconstitutional.  My tax dollars had no place in bailing out
    Chrysler, offering subsidies to foreign business interests, continually
    racking up the credit card to drop currency into a bottomless
    pit...Don't you see Eric, YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT....Reagan or whomever,
    the Federal Government has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to impede your right to
    self reliance, where you send your kids to school, how and where you
    spend your money...and yes, the handgun you may think of purchasing.  
    
    -Jack

    Eric:
    
    The Christian Coalition is a lobbying group...like many others.  The
    House and the Senate are made up of people from all backgrounds.  They
    aren't going to always bend to the will of the CC....just as some
    congresscritters don't always bend to the will of herr Clinton.  It
    simply doesn't work that way.
    
    Now the 1992 budget deal was a complete sham...and many politicos
    deservedly paid with their political lives.  I think congress has
    hopefully learned what a hot potato is and what isn't!
    
    -Jack

    Usually military equipment against civilians is also against Federal
    law, nevermind being unconstitutional.
    
    Or course, the validity of the constitution was suspended under FDR and
    we've been operating out from under it since.  Maybe that's
    government's excuse.

re .0

here in europe, one side effect of the OKC bombing has been the extensive
press coverage of the far right christian movements in the US.

according to the reports, christian political groupings have systematically
spread their influence in recent years and now control a sizeable faction 
within the republican party (about a third as i recall, though i'm not sure
about the figure).

in the following, i'll assume that what you call the christian coalition 
is equivalent to the conservative christian groupings which i have read about.

i welcome the christian coalition as a political grouping for the following 
reasons:

- as a movement it represents an american reality and needs to be integrated 
into the political discourse. a movement which is explicitly left out of the
political establishment becomes a danger to the establishment as it need not
abide by the rules of the establishment.

- as CC is acknowledged as a movement and integrated into the political 
discourse, CC will be able to gain more profile. this in turn will carry the 
work of the organisation into the open and will make it easier to track and 
to oppose rather than fending off undercover operations which it carries
out under the hood of established parties.

- as CC gains own profile, the likelihood of a schism with the non-christian
wing of the established party/parties is increased. this will create a third 
force and one more competitor in the political arena - a situation which can 
only be of benefit to the voters, as the parties will have to make a greater 
effort for winning and keeping majorities.



bottom line, they will lose their teeth once they become part of the political
process. as every one else does :-)


andreas. 

    
    Ok Jack, *you* can call me Myers. :^) You and I don't agree that much,
    but I guess we're both pretty much harmless.

    I realize you don't like paying taxes, but saying it's unconstitutional
    doesn't just -- *poof* -- make it so. What is the Constitutional
    argument against entitlements, local projects (commonly referred to as
    pork), foreign aid. I don't like the debt any more than you, but is
    seems to me that if were already unconstitutional, as you suggest, then
    there wouldn't be a call for a constitutional amendment for a balanced
    budget. I'm no lawyer, but I don't think there are any constitutional
    restriction on what congress appropriates money. You don't like AFDC,
    and I don't like the CIA. You don't like BATF and I don't like... ok I
    don't like BATF, but you get the idea. Inevitably, the congress will
    appropriate money for some things that some people will not like. That
    doesn't make it unconstitutional.

    We should probably find another topic if we're going to continue this
    rat hole.

    Eric

    P.S. No Federal dollars were spent to bail out Chrysler. The Fed's
         co-signed a loan which Chrysler paid off with its own revenue. The
         government did not give money to Chrysler to pay off debt.

    I don't like the AFDC bercause the AFDC has proven to undermine the
    traditions of those of African American Heritage.  That's what repulses
    me about the AFDC.
    
    Clinton is now in the process of gutting the organizations that are
    supposed to keep the OKC bombing incidence from happening!
    
    And I never said paying taxes was unconstitutional.  I said that
    taxation should be for nothing more than supporting the precepts of the
    Constitution.
    
    -Jack 

    
    anderas,
    
    You make a wrong assumption.  The Christian Coalition is a bonafide
    political lobbying organization whose members are extraordinarily
    mainstream.  The Christian political groups who are influencing the
    Republican party cannot be classified as "far right".
    
    Those groups considered "far right" in the U.S. are Nazi-type groups,
    skinheads, white supremists and other sundry strongly anti-Federalist
    organizations.  Some of these organizations throw a lethal mix of
    religion in for fun or out of ignorance.
    
    jeff

    I agree with Andreas!
    
    The more publicity the Christian coalition gets, the more rational
    folks will understand their agenda and be cautious.
    
                                 Patricia

>    I agree with Andreas!
    
>    The more publicity the Christian coalition gets, the more rational
>    folks will understand their agenda and be cautious.
    
>                                 Patricia
    
    Actually, the more publicity the Christian Coalition gets, the more
    rational folks will understand their agenda and be supportive.
    
    jeff

yes patricia, jeff. that was just my point. give them more publicity
and let people decide rationally! :-)



andreas.

    > Usually military equipment against civilians is also against Federal
    > law, nevermind being unconstitutional.

    I think more correctly there is a constitutional provision against
    using the *army* against civilians. And that is only without the
    request or consent of the state governor. I not think military
    equipment, like guns and tanks, are prohibited from use by federal law
    enforcement.

    I'm not trying to justify a militaristic government, however. I just
    don't think the constitution prohibits as much as you stated.

    > Or course, the validity of the constitution was suspended under FDR and
    > we've been operating out from under it since.

    Huh? 

    Eric

    Jeff,

    > And I never said paying taxes was unconstitutional.

    You're right. Sorry for indicating otherwise. I knew this, but was
    sloppy in my reply.

    Do you think the expenditures are unconstitutional?

    Eric

    >    > Or course, the validity of the constitution was suspended under FDR and
>    > we've been operating out from under it since.
>
>    Huh? 

    Eric, write to the U.S. Printing Office and ask for Senate Document 
    93-549.  This document was put together in 1973 after a lengthy 
    investigation.  This document found that since March 9, 1933 we have 
    been in a declared state of national emergency, and our U.S. Constitution 
    has been suspended.  We were even declared "Enemies of the State" by an 
    amendment to the War Powers Act of 1917 that FDR declared into law on 
    March 9, 1933 through executive orders 2039 and 2040.  

    In the U.S. Senate report they were basically at a loss on how to get 
    the U.S. Government back to its constitutional form since with the War 
    Powers Act they only gave the ability to the Executive Office to terminate 
    the state of national emergency.  They also found that 70-80% of the 
    Federal Government to be unconstitutional.  

    Mike

    Re: Right vs. Left
    
    I think it's a mistake to view political stances on a line.  It's more
    of a circle.  If you go far enough along the circle, you get radical 
    extremists in both arcs.  
    
    Mike

"les extremes ses touchent" - rousseau


[the extremes touch one-another]

    
    Thanks for the pointer, Greg. I'll have to get that document.

    I'm a bit confused though. If the constitution is suspended, what good
    would a balanced budget amendment or term limits amendment do? And
    wouldn't that make the Supreme Court moot? How about Brown v. Board of
    Education, is that null and void? Is the voting right act
    unconstitutional? I'm trying to understand what it means affect, if
    any, this has had on how congress has legislated.

    > In the U.S. Senate report they were basically at a loss on how to get
    > the U.S. Government back to its constitutional form since with the War
    > Powers Act they only gave the ability to the Executive Office to
    > terminate the state of national emergency.

    Are you suggesting that in the past 62 years, 11 presidents and
    countless congressmen, no one ever asked the president to issue an
    executive order rescinding the state of national emergency? This is wild
    stuff! Have you asked your senator and representative to contact the
    executive branch and get this thing resolved? What was their response?

    Eric 

  ZZ      Do you think the expenditures are unconstitutional?
    
    Most definitely.  I find alot of the subsidies the government provides
    even domestically are unconstitutional.  Foreign subsidies, farm
    subsidies, etc.  I find Social Security to be absolutely abhorrant and 
    interferes very much with the individuals private affairs.  I find this
    very distasteful.  Incidently, our government is robbing the Social
    Security trust fund...and they aren't paying it back.  They aren't even
    doing the socialism bit right!!
    
    -Jack

    Eric, I haven't contacted anyone yet because I just found out about it
    recently.  For all I know, it may be business as usual because they're
    all in this together.
    
    Mike

| <<< Note 1083.28 by USAT05::BENSON "Eternal Weltanschauung" >>>


| Actually, the more publicity the Christian Coalition gets, the more
| rational folks will understand their agenda and be supportive.

	Depends on how they market themselves Jeff. The CFV did a great job out
in Colorado. Much of everything they said were not true, blown out of
proportion, and some lies. But they did market themselves very well. I guess
fear can do that, even if it isn't true. 


Glen

    
    > I find alot of the subsidies the government provides even
    > domestically are unconstitutional.

    Based on which articles?

    I find the death penalty, and covert CIA operations to be
    unconstitutional, but I'm not the final arbiter on what is and is not
    constitutional. The Supreme Court is. While I don't hold congress and
    the executive branch up as examples of selfless servants of the
    people, I also don't think they run willy-nilly with blatant disregard
    for the constitution. Obviously there can be honest differences of
    opinion regarding constitutional law. Just because you or I *think*
    something is unconstitutional doesn't make it so. An open debate or
    mock trial would be interesting, but this isn't the forum.

    Peace,

    	Eric
     

    Ohh...so Glen, you do agree then that people fear that which they do
    not understand???
    
    I'd be interested in knowing because when I brought up Greg Griffis in
    Soapbox, you and I had an exchange regarding his methods...you saying
    he was obnoxious and I saying he presented something that made people
    uncomfortable.  
    
    -Jack

| <<< Note 1083.40 by MKOTS3::JMARTIN "You-Had-Forty-Years!!!" >>>

| Ohh...so Glen, you do agree then that people fear that which they do not 
| understand???

	Jack, by fear, I was talking about the fears that the CFV put out in
their literature, not that they wrote what they did based on fears. 

| I'd be interested in knowing because when I brought up Greg Griffis in 
| Soapbox, you and I had an exchange regarding his methods...you saying he was 
| obnoxious and I saying he presented something that made people uncomfortable.

	Jack, who do you have these conversations with??? :-)  I don't remember
ever calling Greg obnoxious. Could you provide me a pointer? 



Glen

Note 1083.8

>      Jesus was not political so far as I can tell.  He just went 
>      around changing hearts.

If you mean Jesus never ran for dogcatcher, you're right.  But neither did
Moses, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dan and Phil Berrigan.

Shalom,
Richard

    .32
    
    If it's the same thing I'm thinking of, it was slipped into FEMA under
    Reagan, that proud defender of American democracy.
    
    Richard
    

.10 USAT05::BENSON "Eternal Weltanschauung"

Benson, you got something against first names? :^)

It is terrifying because I believe that the ultimate goal of the CC is to
establish the U.S. as a Christian Theocracy, complete with all that accompanies
it. And their first target appears to be the Constitution. Constitutional
amendments should be taken very, very seriously, but the republicans, of late,
have been slinging amendments around as if they were ordinary bills.

And the really sad thing is that freedom of religion will be the first victim if
the CC gets their way. Perhaps I am being paranoid, I hope so, but history shows
otherwise.  

Steve
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.13 MKOTS3::JMARTIN "You-Had-Forty-Years!!!"

    Check the record bub!!!  The U.S Supreme court defined Secular Humanism
    as a religion during the Reagan Administration.  

Jack,

Get a dictionary. Look up secular. Look up humanism. Look up religion. Or, if
you are going to begin taking the supreme court as the highest authority, stop
protesting abortions. BTW, how did the Supreme Court decide that it met the
definition of worshiping a deity?

As for the rest of your note, I assume that you were addressing someone else, or
the general audience, as I don't really disagree with you. 

>Benson, you got something against first names? :^)

Sorry.  No, but I do usually reserve the use of first names with people that
I know.  I mean no offense by using the last name only.

>It is terrifying because I believe that the ultimate goal of the CC is to
>establish the U.S. as a Christian Theocracy, complete with all that accompanies
>it. And their first target appears to be the Constitution. Constitutional
>amendments should be taken very, very seriously, but the republicans, of late,
>have been slinging amendments around as if they were ordinary bills.

The ultimate goal is not the establishment of a Christian theocracy.  The CC
(and other Christians) probably hold our Constitution in higher regard than
even the average American and certainly higher than most humanistic groups.

How are they targeting the Constitution?  

>And the really sad thing is that freedom of religion will be the first victim if
>the CC gets their way. Perhaps I am being paranoid, I hope so, but history shows
>otherwise.  

What history of the CC or any other Christian organization supports your
paranoia?

jeff

      Hi Richard,
    
        I'm not sure I catch the drift of your reply, but it resembles
        (to me) your rather frequent and odd blend of slight antagonism 
        with 'Shalom' as exiting remark.
    
        I still happen to believe Jesus was not political while though
        Martin Luther King was never dog catcher, he was political.
    
    						Tony

.44> It is terrifying because I believe that the ultimate goal of the CC is ...


i'd be terrified aswell if i hadn't seen for myself that the range of opinions 
amongst christians is almost as wide as in the electorate.

this conference has done alot for me in this respect.




andreas.

Note 1083.46

Tony,

>        I'm not sure I catch the drift of your reply, but it resembles
>        (to me) your rather frequent and odd blend of slight antagonism 
>        with 'Shalom' as exiting remark.

I don't find it odd at all.  Shalom to me is not a superficial or imposed (as
in military) peace.

>        I still happen to believe Jesus was not political while though
>        Martin Luther King was never dog catcher, he was political.

As was Jesus.  As you are.  As I am.  Even those who are silent are political
by virtue of giving ascent to the political status quo, deny it as you will.

I bid you God's peace,
Richard

Note 1083.47

>this conference has done alot for me in this respect.

Well thank God for that.

Richard

> Well thank God for that.

not to worry. 
much of it was YOUR doing! ;-)

shalom,
andreas.

.45 USAT05::BENSON "Eternal Weltanschauung"
 Title:  For Steve

  The ultimate goal is not the establishment of a Christian theocracy.  The CC
  (and other Christians) probably hold our Constitution in higher regard than
  even the average American and certainly higher than most humanistic groups.

I believe that for the average member this is true. But I do see them putting
religion (not morals, but religious doctrine) into politics. This is a dangerous
trend.

  How are they targeting the Constitution?  

The upcoming contract with the American family includes as it's base the
introduction of a constitutional amendment allowing a 'moment of silence' in the
schools, the erection of religious symbols on government property, and prayers
at government sponsored events. I know that your take is proabably different,
but this looks like a direct attack on the wall of separation between church and
state to me. The safest course, actually the only course, for a government that
wants to ensure religious freedom for all of its citizens, is to remain strictly
neutral. 

I also believe that when they say 'religious' what they actually mean is
'christian', and they would fight against it if it turned out to be
predominately non-christian.

  What history of the CC or any other Christian organization supports your
  paranoia?

Oh, come on Jeff. First of all, I am not limiting it to Christian religions, and
all you need do is look at any of the fundamental Islamic regimes. Going back
into our own history, take a look at some of the early colonies that were based
on theology, and the rather drastic penalties they imposed on those that did not
agree with them, which is a part of the reason the founding fathers were so
careful about the separation. Look at the inquisition and/or crusades as a
couple of examples of what happens when a religion doubles as the goverment.
Religions don't have a monopoly on this sort of behaviour, but they do have a
past history of abusing power once they get it. 

Steve

re Note 1083.51 by TINCUP::BITTROLFF:

> Going back
> into our own history, take a look at some of the early colonies that were based
> on theology, and the rather drastic penalties they imposed on those that did not
> agree with them, 

        The irony was that many of those colonies were founded
        because of intolerance of their religious views back home
        (even though "back home" was thoroughly Christian) -- and
        they then turned around and were intolerant in their own way!

        Given the opportunity and absent legal restraint, people,
        even Christians, even Bible-believing Christians, will be
        intolerant of other religions.

        Bob

    	I think it is interesting to note that Dr. James Dobson (Focus
    	on the Family) is against mandated prayer in public schools.
    
    	He supports the moment of silence.  He supports the ability of
    	a student to choose the Bible as his study hall reading material
    	(which is currently prohibited in some schools.)  He supports
    	the ability of a student to fold his hands and bow his head and
    	say a silent prayer before lunch (which has been prohibited in
    	some schools.)  He supports the ability of a valedictorian to
    	express his faith in his valedictorian speech.
    
    	But he is opposed to mandated, state-sanctioned prayer in
    	public schools.

    The May 15, 1995, issue of Time magazine features on its cover Ralph
    Reed, the 33 year old director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition.
    Doubtlessly many will find any associated articles within hopelessly
    biased toward the left.
    
    Reed has been mentioned elsewhere in CHRISTIAN-PERSPECTIVE.
    
    Richard
    

TIME May 15, 1995 Volume 145, No. 20

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO RALPH

Reed's burgeoning Christian Coalition evokes zeal and fear as it mobilizes
to dominate the political center

BY JEFFREY H. BIRNBAUM/WASHINGTON

[Ralph Reed and family] On Sunday, Ralph Reed rests--at least he tries to.
                        But on the night of April 30, his two-year-old,
Christopher, lay awake for hours, badly sunburned from a picnic, leaving
Reed little time for sleep in the modern, red brick house in Chesapeake,
Virginia, that he and his wife Jo Anne recently purchased . Reed struggles
for time with his family. "I get home as often as I can, even if it's only
for a day," says the 33-year-old father of three. Still, the executive
director of the formidable Christian Coalition has another mission, and at
dawn on Monday he was up and off to catch a 7 o'clock flight to Washington,
the beginning of a hectic but typical week of lobbying, socializing and
expanding his movement. Tuesday morning he was in New Hampshire, where
Governor Steven Merrill joked about Reed's imminent appearance before the
state senate: "They want to know you don't have two heads, that you don't
have horns." Reed, who looks every bit the eagle scout he once was,
responded with a guffaw that was too loud by half for his 140-lb. frame. The
New Hampshire senate, which usually deigns to listen only to would-be
Presidents, paid close attention to his message. The ranks of conservative
Christians, Reed said, are now "too large, too diverse, too significant to
be ignored by either major political party."

Not long ago, the Christian right was dismissed as a group of pasty-faced
zealots, led by divisive televangelists like Jerry Falwell, who helped yank
the Republican Party so far to the right that moderates were frightened
away. But Reed has emerged as the movement's fresh face, the choirboy to the
rescue, a born-again Christian with a fine sense of the secular mechanics of
American politics. His message, emphasizing such broadly appealing themes as
support for tax cuts, has helped make the Christian Coalition one of the
most powerful grass-roots organizations in American politics. Its 1.6
million active supporters and $25 million annual budget, up from 500,000
activists and a $14.8 million budget just two years ago, hold a virtual veto
on the Republican nominee for President, and will exert an extraordinary
influence over who will occupy the Oval Office beginning in 1997. In fact,
Reed's success represents the most thorough penetration of the secular world
of American politics by an essentially religious organization in this
century. To some, this ascendancy evokes more ancient spirits--say, that of
17th century New England theocracies, which were as invasive as they were
close-minded. To the movement's adherents, however, it signifies a bracing,
expansive and historic spiritual Renaissance.

Even as he courts centrist voters, however, Reed has been determinedly
pressing Republican politicians to move toward the Coalition's right-wing
policies. Last week the Coalition lobbied hard against the nomination of Dr.
Henry Foster as Surgeon General. Next week the Christian Coalition and many
of its G.O.P. allies will unveil their sequel to the Contract with America:
the Contract with the American Family. Meanwhile, presidential candidates
are dropping in on Reed for counsel. Bob Dole's attack on the morals of
Hollywood was the result of consultations with Reed. Lamar Alexander, who
last summer held that Washington should neither subsidize nor prohibit
abortion, began shifting his view to the right after calling on Reed, who
then rewarded the candidate by describing him as "pro-life." Says William
Lacy, chief strategist for Dole's presidential bid: "Without having
significant support of the Christian right a Republican cannot win the
nomination or the general election." Reed is so hot a commodity that the
presidential campaign of Senator Phil Gramm of Texas offered to hire him as
its political director, the No. 2 staff job. Reed declined. It would have
been a demotion.

As executive director of the Christian Coalition, Reed is master of a much
more powerful and effective machine than is almost any presidential
candidate. By mobilizing eager volunteers down to the precinct (and local
church) level and handing out 33 million voter guides--often in church
pews--prior to last November's election, the Coalition is credited with
providing the winning margin for perhaps half the Republicans' 52-seat gain
in the House and a sizable portion of their nine-seat pickup in the Senate.
As a result, Ralph Reed is the man to see among G.O.P. lawmakers and
candidates for President. He stands astride the most potent faction in the
ascendant Republican Party. And with that power comes scrutiny and
criticism--from both the left and the right.

Behind Reed's cool blue eyes is steel. He is no innocent, talking tough
politics like the late Lee Atwater, a Republican operative of decidedly
secular mien. Last week Time got a close look at Reed and his organization
by traveling with him as he moved from Washington to New Hampshire and back.
He also provided a rare insider's glimpse at the real source of his
clout--the satellite-Internet-and-fax machine juggernaut employed by his
soldiers in the field.

Reed got this far by refocusing the Coalition on more than its basic agenda
of support for school prayer and opposition to abortion. It now works hand
in hand with the congressional Republican leaders and defines its purpose
loosely as "pro-family," which encompasses such mainstream issues as
deregulation and welfare reform. Acting then as a team player for the
G.O.P., the Coalition poured more than $1 million into the effort to pass
the Contract with America, including $250,000 for advertising, direct mail
and phone-bank work on behalf of the balanced-budget amendment--not
generally considered a scriptural imperative.

Now it's payback time. With the backing of prominent Republicans, the
Coalition next week will unveil its Contract with the American Family. Its
centerpiece, Time has learned, will be a proposed constitutional amendment
to protect "religious expression"--including a voluntary moment of silence
in schools, the use of religious symbols in public places and religious
invocations at public ceremonies. The bill would also expend $30 million to
fund an experiment in "school choice" in low-income regions; it would end
federal funding for such allegedly liberal efforts as the National Endowment
for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Department of
Education. In addition, the bill would probably include a federal ban on D&C
abortion procedures, which are used primarily in late-term abortions.

That the religious right could virtually dictate an important part of the
congressional agenda was unimaginable when the modern movement began in
1979. Back then, such conservatives as Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie
helped Falwell set up the Moral Majority. Their idea was to mobilize white
Evangelicals in the South and border states--many of whom had once supported
Jimmy Carter--against Washington's perceived intrusiveness. The Moral
Majority gained legitimacy, along with White House access, during the Reagan
years, but Falwell neglected to build real foundations at the grass roots.
So other groups were formed to fill the void, including Pat Robertson's
Freedom Councils. After Robertson ran unsuccessfully for the Republican
nomination for President in 1988, he converted his huge mailing lists into
the Christian Coalition and turned its operations over to Reed, then 27.
Reed sought to build the organization from the bottom up, making it largely
community-based, with activists much more involved in local issues. The
strategy has paid off. A survey by Campaigns & Elections magazine reported
last year that the Christian right exercised considerable control of
Republican parties in 13 states and completely dominated 18 others.

"The future of America is not [shaped] by who sits in the Oval Office but by
who sits in the principal's office," Reed told a group of activists in New
Hampshire last week. If the Coalition grows large enough, he advised, "then
everyone running for President will be pro-family; they'll have to come to
us." And so they have. The latest closed-door meeting of Coalition state
directors held in Washington in January drew both Dole and Gramm.
Furthermore, Coalition lobbyists sat among the select group of outsiders who
met regularly in Newt Gingrich's suite to coordinate the campaign to pass
the Contract with America.

   Reed gets that kind of respect because he can deliver. With a fat war
   chest and so many activists on call at all times, the Coalition can stir
a flurry of telephone calls and letters to lawmakers on almost any subject
within a matter of hours. To train its operatives, the Coalition runs
leadership schools, instructing supporters to form rapid-response networks,
connected by phone, fax and modem, in hundreds of counties, located in every
state in the Union. They update their information on the third Tuesday of
every month by attending satellite downlinks of "Christian Coalition Live,"
an hour of specific instruction on political organizing at which Reed
himself plays host. The broadcasts feature target lists of lawmakers to
contact regarding specific legislation. More than 200 conservative
evangelical churches serve as the meeting places for these high-tech
gatherings; the Coalition hopes to have 1,000 downlink sites by year's end.

Such meetings are not confined to the Bible Belt. Last month, for instance,
20 activists braved the rain to attend a showing at the Bethel Full Gospel
Church in Rochester, New York, and that was just one of 12 downlink sites in
what is supposed to be a liberal state. The meeting began when the county
chairman, Tom Jessop, bowed his head and said, "Let's come together in
prayer." But he moved quickly to such topics as how to become a Republican
committeeman and how to "blitz E-mail." Indeed, the group was nothing like
the Coalition members uncharitably described by the Washington Post in
February 1993 as "poor, uneducated and easy to command." Jessop, 54, is a
senior project engineer at Eastman Kodak. His deputy Rahm Goswami, 44, is a
research chemist with a Ph.D. A similar meeting a month earlier in
Charleston, South Carolina, was attended by several lawyers and
physicians--all in business suits. Another misconception is that the
Coalition is exclusively white. Two blacks came to the meeting in Rochester.
"I don't look at it as a color thing," explained Angie Whitlock, one of the
African Americans there. "I don't know why more of us don't join up." The
chief reason is the blind eye the Christian right turned to segregation in
the 1960s.

Despite its increasing sophistication and secularization, the movement
remains insular, distrustful and eager to impose what it sees as a
Bible-backed morality on the public at large. Reed was brought up short by
his own people when he agreed not to press for a school-prayer amendment
earlier this year in the House and instead backed the Contract with such
fervor. To keep peace, he gave what is now called his "litmus-test" speech,
in which he warned that a presidential candidate who did not oppose
abortions would not be acceptable to conservative Christians. Meanwhile, a
fund-raising letter in March stated in unusually harsh terms that the
Coalition was committed to saying "NO to condom distribution in the schools,
NO to taxpayer funding of abortion, NO to sex-education classes in the
public schools that promote promiscuity [and] NO to homosexual adoptions and
government-sanctioned gay marriages." Some of its officials insist that
solely the Coalition knows the way, the truth and the right. During a
training session in Oklahoma City this spring, Fred Sellers, the state
chairman, said, "Only we can restore this nation. Only the people here
today, and people like us, can turn this around ... only Christian believers
doing the work ... in the thick of battle."

Still, Reed is actively trying to cast a "wider net." After the litmus-test
speech, he tacked back a bit and said he had issued no ultimatums. And he
wants to attract both blacks and Jews to the fold, which is almost entirely
made up of white evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Catholics. He is
even toying with the idea of starting a Jewish auxiliary, an idea that has a
long way to go.

Robertson is the founder and guiding spirit of the Coalition. But he has
ceded operational control to his young protege. "I am, if I can use that
exalted term, moving more into the elder statesman's role," the 65-year-old
Robertson told Time. That transition began when Reed and Robertson sat next
to each other at a dinner honoring George Bush's Inauguration. At first,
Reed wondered whether the broadcasting tycoon seriously wanted a
brass-knuckled pol like himself to run the operation. Reed, then a doctoral
candidate in American history at the University of Georgia, was a veteran of
Republican headquarters in Washington and the rough-and-tumble campaigns of
Jack Kemp and Jesse Helms. But Robertson, the son of a Virginia politician,
readily allowed Reed to suffuse the Coalition with a new professionalism.
Reed continues to work unstintingly to plane the rougher edges off
Robertson's image. In the meantime, his own book, Politically Incorrect, is
considered the manifesto of the movement. With Robertson's approval, he is
working on a second.

Ralph Reed Jr. was born in 1961, the son of a Navy physician from
Portsmouth, Virginia. Nicknamed ''Buddy,'' Reed displayed his nature from
the beginning. Asked what her son always aspired to be, his mother Marcy
told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "In charge." Raised a Methodist, Reed
was an indifferent Christian--though an avid Republican--through his early
college years. He wrote a rabid column while at the University of Georgia,
taking hawkish positions on gun control and the nuclear freeze. (He resigned
from the paper after a reader charged him with plagiarism.) As a student, he
ran school campaigns and gained a reputation as a player of dirty tricks.

However, in 1983, shortly before he became the director of a national G.O.P.
student committee, Reed not only gave up booze and cigarettes but also found
God. At about that time, he had seen a politician he admired--a "pro-family,
traditional values" type--drinking and fooling around with someone he was
not married to. The sight disgusted Reed and helped lead him toward being
"born again." He apologized to one of his political victims, picked up a
phone book, found an evangelical church and started attending. "Since 1983,
I haven't been involved with anybody in politics for whom I bear a grudge in
my heart,'' Reed told Time. "Which doesn't mean I don't want to win. It
means a religious person in politics understands that he's working for goals
more universal than taking the next election."

As Reed made his rounds among the nation's most important politicians last
week, he looked for all the world like a junior executive, neatly attired in
a crisp, dark suit and starched button-down shirt, dashing, luggage in hand,
from taxicab to commercial aircraft. At times, he thumbed through his
history book of the moment, Doris Kearns Goodwin's new biography of Franklin
and Eleanor Roosevelt. But there was nothing mundane--or junior level--about
his encounters. In addition to New Hampshire's Governor, he met with Senator
Dan Coats to discuss the Foster nomination and a new bill on school prayer
and choice. He then socialized with a collection of the G.O.P.'s movers and
shakers in New Hampshire. Through it all he kept in constant touch with his
headquarters in Virginia and his Washington office by way of a cellular
phone.

At the state capitol in Concord, New Hampshire, the local press was all over
him after his senate appearance. But he was not universally applauded. State
senator Burt Cohen, a Democrat, left the chamber in a huff even before Reed
spoke. "He [Reed] represents a dangerous trend in this country. We should
keep religion and politics separate," Cohen said later. Another state
senator, Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic stalwart, heard Reed out. But she also
was offended. She said, "Anytime you paint yourself as having the right
answers because of a direct connection to God, that's very dangerous."

Theirs was a minority view in the heavily conservative and Republican
senate. Reed was welcomed at a lunch at the estate of a conservative and
politically active couple, Ortwin and Pat Krueger. Neither is a member of
the Christian Coalition yet, but they love politics and professed to like
the Coalition's approach. So with an eye toward helping the Coalition raise
money, they happily played host to 10 current and potential contributors at
their huge, old house, overlooking a pool, a tennis court and 130 rural
acres. George Fellendorf, a semiretired teacher of the deaf who is the state
chapter's unpaid chairman, told Reed that after 18 months of organizing, it
was time for the state association to get a full-time, paid executive
director. "We're at a turning point," he said. Looking around at his
affluent welcome, Reed could not help agreeing. That night he attended
another, larger gathering of activists--this one involving 250 people--and
expanded on his optimism. The Coalition had just registered its 1,600th
county chapter, he said. "We're the McDonald's of American politics."

Maintaining that momentum will take patience, and, Reed admitted, "some
degree of retraining of me." Though he says he dislikes the word control,
dominance of the G.O.P. remains the movement's ultimate objective. But by
grabbing for too much of it too soon, he could squander the incredible gains
he has made.

He must also fend off insinuations from liberal adversaries that his
movement's antigovernment stands contributed to the poisonous rhetoric
spewed by violent extremists like those responsible for the Oklahoma City
bombing. "We must forsake violence of the fist, the tongue and the heart,"
he said last week, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. "The Christian Coalition
provides an avenue to bring alienated citizens into mainstream political
action. Were we not here, the ranks of the disaffected would be much
larger." He adds correctly that the Coalition, despite its conservative
agenda, does not coordinate with the National Rifle Association, nor does it
lobby on gun issues. Nevertheless, at the grass-roots level, there is a
large overlap among Coalition supporters and anti-gun-control activists.

Reed tries to keep his eye on the long term. "I'm asking myself where do I
want this movement located in the political system in the year 2025," he
told Time. "If I fall for the temptation of acting as a power broker within
a given political party, then 25 or 30 years from now I will be where the
labor unions are today."

But to this point, Reed has steered the Coalition solely into the arms of
the Republicans. It is supposed to be nonpartisan, but it clearly plays
favorites. Former Coalition staff members hold key positions in the
campaigns of Dole,

Alexander, Gramm and Pat Buchanan. None work for Bill Clinton. Democrats are
concerned the Coalition may be eating into their dwindling base. Voters are
looking for more morality in their politics, and the Coalition is providing
it. "Thanks in great part to people like Ralph Reed, they have become a
mainstream constituency," said Democratic consultant Mark McKinnon, who is
based in Austin, Texas. "I have been advising my clients that we get
ourselves in a lot of trouble by attacking the religious right. Instead of
inciting them, we ought to try to co-opt them. We need to show we have a
backbone of morality in this party."

Still, acclaim for Reed and his Coalition is far from universal, even within
the Republican Party. Senator Arlen Specter launched his campaign for
President with a broadside against Reed and his alleged "intolerance."
Congresswoman Marge Roukema, a moderate Republican from New Jersey, said
flatly, "Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition will create a lot of trouble
for the Republican Party." And, in fact, if Reed succeeds too well at moving
the G.O.P. in his direction, he stands to alienate the
middle-of-the-roaders, whose votes, while notably absent in Republican
primaries, tend to decide general elections.

Meanwhile, powerful figures on the religious right feel the G.O.P. isn't
right enough for them, posing a danger for Reed if he continues to
accommodate himself to the party's moderate elements. In March, James
Dobson, head of the powerful Focus on Family organization, fired off open
letters to G.O.P. chairman Haley Barbour, complaining bitterly about the
lack of immediate payoff from the November election. Fearful of compromising
with "anti--family" elements, Dobson argued that it was time to fold the
all-inviting "big tent" of the Republican Party. In contrast, Reed argues
for a more inclusive Coalition and struggles to appear more secular (in New
Hampshire last week, for example, he declined an invitation to give the
invocation before the senate because he did not want TV cameras to record
him in prayer). There are two faces to the religious right, says Michael
Hudson, executive director of the liberal People for the American Way, "the
moderate face that meets Bob Dole and the grass-roots state chapters that
are still bashing gays. Ralph Reed is trying to create a big tent in the
religious right, but can he sell political expediency to his grass- roots
movement?"

Other conservatives play down the importance of Reed. Says Gary Bauer, a
former Dobson associate and now head of the Family Research Council, a
conservative think tank: "I don't think the movement depends on Bauer or
Dobson or Reed or any of the names the press focuses on. I see this as a
permanent force in American government and politics, and I think it will
have a lot to say about public policy for the foreseeable future."

At the moment, however, Reed is the most attractive name attached to the
movement--and he shows no sign of resting. "You have to organize, organize,
organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a
permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part." He speaks about
forming a cadre of at least 10 workers in each of the country's roughly
175,000 political precincts, raising his budget to between $50 million and
$100 million and gaining access to 100,000 churches, compared with his
current reach of 60,000 churches. "If we do all that," he told an audience
last week, "we will be larger and more effective and will reach more people
than the Republican and Democratic parties combined."

"The Christians are close to winning the whole war; they might do it by
'96," says Frank Luntz, the pollster behind the Contract with America. "By
playing hardball they may win everything, but hardball also risks losing
everything." Reed frankly admits, "We're on the very threshold of having to
make that kind of decision. It's fraught with both opportunity and hazard.
If we make this decision the wrong way, 20 years from now we're going to
look back and regret it."

Whatever Reed decides--to press for control of the G.O.P. now or to rise
above partisanship for a while--the religious right is moving toward center
stage in American secular life. Henceforth, Reed told Time, "issues are
going to have a moral quotient." The Christian Coalition, says Arthur Kropp
of People for the American Way, "won't be content to be background music."
They will want the oomph of the big band. And a choirboy will lead them.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, traveling with Ralph Reed, and
Richard N. Ostling/New York

Copyright Time Inc. All rights reserved.

.53 CSC32::J_OPPELT "Whatever happened to ADDATA?"

Joe,

I would agree with Dr. Dobson on most of the points you mentioned. I would agree
that where schools have ruled non-disruptive private prayers, or the reading of
the bible during study hall time they have gone too far. The contents of the
valedictorian speech are up to the valedictorian. (I do, however, object to the
school delivering an invocation). 

I am more cautious about the moment of silence for two reasons. First, why? What
is the benefit of a moment of silence. The kids that are thoughtful enough to
use it in the first place don't need it, and those that might benefit won't use
it. Second, I see this as an attempt to get a foot in the door by those that
would mandate school prayer. 

Joe, if you and I can find some common ground it should be possible for almost
anyone!

Steve

re .55, 

thank you john for entering this whole article!

> 							With a fat war
> chest and so many activists on call at all times, the Coalition can stir
> a flurry of telephone calls and letters to lawmakers on almost any subject
> within a matter of hours. 
> 
> Despite its increasing sophistication and secularization, the movement
> remains insular, distrustful and eager to impose what it sees as a
> Bible-backed morality on the public at large. 
> 
> 					"You have to organize, organize,
> organize, and build and build, and train and train, so that there is a
> permanent, vibrant structure of which people can be part." He speaks about
> forming a cadre of at least 10 workers in each of the country's roughly
> 175,000 political precincts, raising his budget to between $50 million and
> $100 million and gaining access to 100,000 churches, compared with his
> current reach of 60,000 churches. "If we do all that," he told an audience
> last week, "we will be larger and more effective and will reach more people
> than the Republican and Democratic parties combined."


i have to say this, there's certainly no lack of ambition or direction as 
to how to accumulate influence and power!

i can't help reading this as ralph reed being on a power-trip and that the 
man runs a very high risk, over the next years, of forsaking long-term goals 
for short-term gain, and possibly of tripping over his own legs and taking 
the movement down with him...

but, to be safe, i'd certainly start now in building up an opposing pressure
group....! how about naming it "the christian conscience"! :-)



andreas.

    
    Some people have suggested I have a mistaken understanding of the
    Christian Coalition, although after seeing Ralph Reed on Meet the Press
    I don't think I do. To better understand the Christian Coalition and to
    speak from a more informed frame of reference, I would like to get a
    printed copy of the "Contract for the American Family," and any other
    information they'd care to send me. Could someone please provide me
    with a contact or mailing address for the Christian Coalition? Feel
    free to send me mail if posting it here is against conference or
    company policy.

    Thanks,

    	Eric

    .58 Eric,
    
    Darn.  I know have their phone number and address somewhere.  I'll
    let you know if locate them.
    
    I do not think your assessment is very far askew.
    
    Shalom,
    Richard
    

    Copied from Womennotes!

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Christian Coalition Presents
The Contract With The American Family



Introduction

    In the 1994 midterm elections, the American people elected the first
    Republican Congress in 40 years in what was the largest transfer of
    power from a minority party to a majority party in the twentieth
    century. The message of the election was clear: the American people
    want lower taxes, less government, strong families, protection of
    innocent human life, and traditional values.

    The 104th Congress devoted its first hundred days to the Contract with
    America, including a Balanced Budget Amendment, tax relief for
    families, welfare reform, and term limits. Christian Coalition
    enthusiastically supported the Contract and launched one of the most
    extensive grassroots campaigns in its history to support the Contract's
    passage. The Coalition will continue this effort as the Contract moves
    through the Senate.

    The problems our nation faces are not all fiscal in nature. The
    American people are increasingly concerned about the coarsening of the
    culture, the breakup of the family, and a decline in civility. A recent
    Los Angeles Times poll reported that 53 percent of Americans believe
    the moral problems facing our country are more important than the
    economic problems.1 Other survey data indicates that 80 percent of
    Americans believe there is a problem of declining morality within our
    nation.2

    The Contract with the American Family is a bold agenda for Congress
    intended to strengthen families and restore common-sense values. The
    Contract represents a valuable contribution to a congressional agenda
    beyond the first hundred days. These provisions are the ten
    suggestions, not the Ten Commandments. There is no deadline or
    specified time period during which they are to be enacted. But Congress
    would be well advised to act with all due and deliberate speed. The
    provisions in the Contract enjoy support from 60 to 90 percent of the
    American people.

    These items do not represent the pro-family movement's entire agenda.
    There are many other prominent pro-family organizations that will work
    on many other issues - women in combat, welfare reform, budget policy -
    in the months ahead. This contract is designed to be the first word,
    not the last word, in developing a bold and incremental start to
    strengthening the family and restoring values.
    

    Restoring Religious Equality

    A constitutional amendment to protect the religious liberties of
    Americans in public places.

    With each passing year, people of faith grow increasingly distressed by
    the hostility of public institutions toward religious expression.
    Public interest law firms dedicated to preserving religious liberties
    receive thousands of calls every year on issues pertaining to the
    rights of students in public schools.

    Examples of hostility toward religious values and those who hold them
    abound. In Nevada, an elementary school student chosen to sing a solo
    in the school's Christmas pageant was forbidden from singing "The First
    Noel" because of its religious overtones.3 At a public elementary
    school in Rhode Island, the principal announced shortly before the
    beginning of a Christmas concert that he had censored all of the
    pageant's songs.4 A Scarsdale, New York school board banned all
    religious celebrations from schools, although parties with non-holiday
    themes were still permitted. According to the Catholic League for
    Religious and Civil Rights, the ban included "displays or exhibits,
    such as wreaths, garlands, caroling and menorahs that appear to promote
    or give approval to religious matters," as well as "candy canes, bells,
    holiday music, and Hanukkah or Christmas parties and concerts."5
    Teachers in New Jersey were told to avoid references to Easter,
    including jelly beans and the colors purple and yellow.

    Children have been told they cannot read the Bible during silent
    reading time.6 In one school, a little girl was told there was a
    problem with the book she chose to read to her class - it mentioned
    "God" four times.7

    This anti-religious bigotry is not confined to the classroom. Nativity
    scenes are now barred from federal post offices,8 and from the lawns of
    public buildings unless accompanied by a non-religious display such as
    Santa Claus. Some courthouses are prohibited from displaying the Ten
    Commandments (despite the fact that they are chiseled into the walls of
    the United States Supreme Court). And landlords have been sued by the
    state for discrimination because they refused to rent to unmarried
    couples for religious reasons.9

    This hostility toward faith is the result of 30 years of confusing and
    often quixotic jurisprudence in establishment clause cases. The Supreme
    Court's application of the three-pronged "Lemon test," first developed
    in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971),10 has become so tortuous that some court
    decisions allow states to lend textbooks, but not movie projectors,
    maps, or laboratory equipment to parochial schools; to supply guidance
    counseling services outside of parochial schools, such as mobile units,
    but not within the schools; and to provide bus services to and from
    parochial schools, but not for school field trips.11 Justice Scalia,
    who like many has argued for ending the use of this confusing test, has
    likened it to "some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly
    sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed
    and buried-"12

    Despite such rollbacks in religious rights, the American public
    consistently supports freedom of religious expression in the public
    square. An April 1994 Wirthlin poll indicates that reinstating
    voluntary school prayer not only continues to receive overwhelming
    support (78 percent of Americans), but it also enjoys support across a
    broad spectrum of Americans: 79 percent of African Americans and 80
    percent of whites support school prayer; 85 percent of low income and
    71 percent of high income Americans support school prayer; and 65
    percent of non-Christians and between 80 and 94 percent of Christians
    support school prayer.

    The Religious Equality Amendment would not restore compulsory,
    sectarian prayer or Bible-reading dictated by government officials.
    Instead, we seek a balanced approach that allows voluntary, student and
    citizen-initiated free speech in non-compulsory settings such as
    courthouse lawns, high school graduation ceremonies, and sports events.

    A survey by the Luntz Research Company found that 78 percent of all
    Americans support a Religious Equality Amendment. We urge the 104th
    Congress to pass an amendment that not only protects the rights of
    students, but the religious liberties of all Americans.


    Returning Education Control to the Local Level

    Transfer funding of the federal Department of Education to families and
    local school boards.

    The need for education reform is plainly evident if one considers the
    trends of recent decades. SAT scores have dropped by more than 75
    points since 1960.13 Ten nations outperform U.S. 13-year-olds in math
    and science tests.14 And as education performance drops, the level of
    school violence in our schools is on the rise. The dramatic increase in
    shootings and violence-related injuries occurring in our nation's
    schools is well-known. Because of the prevalence of weapons, many
    American students are greeted with metal detectors when they arrive for
    school in the morning. In 1992, 10 percent of tenth-graders admitted
    they had taken a weapon to school during the past month.15 There are
    250,000 crimes committed on school property each year.

    Parents are distressed over the failure of schools to teach children
    basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Too often, sex
    education emphasizes contraception and condom use rather than
    abstinence and self-control. Homosexuality is promoted as an acceptable
    alternative lifestyle. Outcome-based education (OBE) supplants basic
    skills. Psychological counseling takes place without parental
    involvement or notification.16 Christian Coalition members believe
    schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values taught in
    homes, churches and synagogues.

    Parental involvement and local control is the most pressing need in
    education today. A current report by the U.S. Department of Education,
    "Strong Families, Strong Schools," corroborates the fact that parental
    involvement in children's education results in higher student
    performance.17 Many local and state reform initiatives focus on
    increasing parental rights and participation in their children's
    education.

    Despite this trend at the local level, the federal government has done
    little to advance these initiatives. In 1993 and 1994, Congress
    tightened the federal choke hold on local schools by passing Goals
    2000, the Educate America Act18 and the Improving America's Schools
    Act, which re-authorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
    (ESEA).19

    Christian Coalition seeks to return greater power and control over our
    children's education to parents and local communities. This reform
    begins by transferring much of the funding for the U.S. Department of
    Education to families and local school boards, and applying the
    remainder to deficit reduction.

    The U.S. currently spends approximately $275 billion per year on public
    education.20 Yet student performance and educational achievement do not
    reflect this financial investment. As Time magazine recently noted,
    "The U.S. spends a greater percentage of its gross national product on
    education (7.5 percent) than any other country except Israel, and yet
    is out-performed in math and science among 13-year-olds by more than 10
    nations, including Hungary, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union."21 Less
    than half of federal education dollars reach classrooms for
    instruction.22

    Increased spending is not the answer. In fact, the 10 states ranking
    highest in education performance do not top per-pupil expenditures.23
    Rather, the answer lies in eliminating bureaucracies, administrative
    costs, and federal restrictions that prevent effective reform at the
    local level.

    Since the time of its creation in 1980, the U.S. Department of
    Education has grown in magnitude to the point that it now consists of
    241 separate programs, a budget of $30 billion,24 and more than 5,000
    employees.25 Moreover, federal control over education has dramatically
    increased, ultimately culminating with the 1994 passage of Goals 2000
    and H.R. 6, the Improving America's Schools Act.

    Goals 2000 established several new federal bureaucracies, including the
    National Education Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), which
    many view as equivalent to a national school board. NESIC has powerful
    authority to certify national education standards regarding educational
    content and student performance. Although these standards are not
    binding on states, they do have national stature, and states have to
    "voluntarily" develop comparable standards in order to receive a
    portion of the billions of dollars in federal funding authorized under
    the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

    When Congress passed Goals 2000, many people predicted it would lead to
    the establishment of "politically-correct" national education
    standards, resulting in the introduction of outcome-based education
    (OBE) on a national scale. Verification of this prediction came
    quickly.

    With 1994's release of national history standards, developed with $2.2
    million in federal funding from the National Endowment for the
    Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education, it became obvious that
    national education standards would not be objective.26 Criticism of the
    biased and distorted views prevalent in both sets of standards - the
    National Standards for United States History, as well as the National
    Standards for World History - was widespread. Criticism of the U.S.
    History standards included the fact that the United States Constitution
    was never mentioned in any of the 31 standards, and was relegated to
    the supporting materials;27 the establishment of the National
    Organization of Women and Sierra Club were viewed as notable events,
    but not the first assembling of the United States Congress;28 and
    according to one reviewer, the material revealed only one quotation
    from a congressional leader, and that was Tip O'Neill calling Ronald
    Reagan "a cheerleader for selfishness."29 The World History standards
    drew widespread criticism also, particularly for their anti-Western
    bias.30

    The bias in these standards was so grave that the United States Senate
    overwhelmingly adopted (99 to 1) a resolution condemning the standards
    and expressing the sense of the Senate that NESIC not certify them.31
    Nevertheless, 10,000 copies of these standards already have been mailed
    to school administrators and others throughout the nation.32 These
    national standards undermine parental involvement and local control of
    education.

    The time to return federal education control to parents and local
    communities through elimination of the United States Department of
    Education is long overdue, and a good first step would include
    repealing Goals 2000 legislation.


    Promoting School Choice

    Enactment of legislation that will enhance parents' choice of schools
    for their children.

    School choice initiatives are sweeping the nation like wildfire.
    Sixty-two percent of Americans favor choice among public schools, and
    50 percent favor vouchers.33 School choice legislation was either
    introduced or pending in 34 states in 1993.34 These initiatives take a
    number of forms, including voucher programs, tax credits and charter
    schools.

    Voucher programs provide monetary assistance to parents for use at the
    school of their choice. Tuition tax credits achieve the same goal of
    school choice, and are preferred by some communities. Charter schools
    are a creative new initiative through which states charter and fund
    alternative schools designed to meet the needs of a diverse student
    population. Other local initiatives include the privatization of public
    schools, such as in Baltimore, Maryland and Hartford, Connecticut. As
    parents and local communities strive to reform our country's
    educational system, the federal government must do more to assist these
    efforts.

    One possible example of federal school choice legislation is S. 618,
    the Coats-Lieberman Low-income School Choice Demonstration Act. This
    legislation would establish up to 20 demonstration projects that would
    provide financial assistance to low-income parents to help them send
    their children to the school of their choice, whether public or
    private. The legislation requires an evaluation of the effectiveness of
    this demonstration initiative in order to provide objective
    documentation of the merits of school choice. With almost half of high
    school students in inner city schools failing to graduate,35
    educational reform for low-income parents in these cities is becoming
    increasingly urgent.

    We urge the swift passage of school choice legislation such as S. 618
    during the 104th Congress as a means of promoting school choice for
    parents. We believe passage of this bill will spur grassroots efforts
    to reform education and give parents greater choice in selecting the
    best school for their children.


    Protecting Parental Rights

    Enactment of a Parental Rights Act and defeat of the U.N. Convention on
    the Rights of the Child.

    The United States Constitution does not explicitly set forth
    protections for parental rights, but a long line of court cases have
    held that the United States Constitution protects the right of parents
    to control the upbringing of their children. The rights of parents,
    however, are under increasing assault in modern day society.

    For example, state officials removed an eighth-grade girl from her home
    because she objected to the ground rules (regarding use of drugs,
    curfew hours, etc.) her parents had set.36 One mother's child was
    removed from her home because the mother refused to continue to take
    her first-grade child to therapy lessons for hyperactivity.37 And in
    1992, a San Diego grand jury found that 35 to 70 percent of the
    county's foster children "never should have been removed from their
    parental homes."38

    Enactment of a Parental Rights Act will ensure that parental rights are
    not violated and ensure that parents have the foremost duty and
    responsibility to direct the upbringing of their children.
    Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK) and Mike Parker (D-MS) in the
    House, and Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Howell Heflin (D-AL) in
    the Senate, are drafting a parental rights act to address this critical
    problem. While language is still being finalized, the authors intend
    that the Parental Rights Act of 1995 will clarify that "the right of
    parents to direct the upbringing of their children," includes
    overseeing their children's education, health care, discipline, and
    religious training. Moreover, it requires that any governmental
    interference in the parent-child relationship be justified by "clear
    and convincing evidence" that it "is essential to accomplish a
    compelling governmental interest" and that it is applied in "the least
    restrictive means" possible.

    The threat to the rights of America's parents is very real, as the
    movement to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
    exemplifies. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a human
    rights treaty adopted in 1989 by the General Assembly of the United
    Nations. It has not been ratified in the United States. In the past,
    the United States has not supported the treaty due to concerns that it
    may concede jurisdiction over United States citizens to an
    international body and international court.39

    Christian Coalition opposes the treaty because it interferes with the
    parent-child relationship, threatens the sovereignty of U.S. law, and
    elevates as "rights" such dubious provisions as access to television
    and mass media. The following are some of the examples of the absolute
    rights given to children through this treaty:

    "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with
    his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence - The child has the
    right to the protection of the law against such interference or
    attacks."40

    "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right
    shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
    of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in
    print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's
    choice."41

    With respect to the right of the child to freedom of association or
    peaceful assembly, "[n]o restrictions may be placed on the exercise of
    these rights other than those imposed in conformity with the law and
    which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of
    national security or public safety, public order, the protection of
    public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of
    others."42

    Under the treaty, parents could well lose their right to prevent their
    child from associating with disreputable individuals such as
    delinquents, or receiving literature or gaining access to mass media
    communication (including films and television) that is not
    age-appropriate.

    Pursuant to the treaty, a Committee on the Rights of the Child has been
    established to review reports from nations regarding their progress in
    implementing the treaty. The committee has urged that in the area of
    sex education, parents be required to give the opinion of the child
    equal weight. The committee warned that "the possibility for parents in
    England and Wales to withdraw their children from parts of the sex
    education programmes in schools" undermines "the right of the child to
    express his/her opinion."43

    The committee's concern about soliciting children's views prior to
    "exclusion from school" should be of particular concern to parents who
    educate their children at home. It is clear that rejection of this
    treaty by the United States Senate would be in the best interests of
    American parents.


    Family-Friendly Tax Relief

    Reduce the tax burden on the American family, eliminate the marriage
    penalty, and pass the Mothers and Homemakers' Rights Act to remedy the
    unequal treatment that homemakers receive under the Internal Revenue
    Service Code with respect to saving for retirement.

    It has been said that the intact family is the most successful
    Department of Health, Education, and Welfare ever conceived. Yet the
    federal government, through the tax code, has punished families for
    working, saving, and staying together. The Contract with the American
    Family addresses not only the cultural pressures on families, but the
    financial pressures as well.

    1. Tax relief for families with children.

    In 1950 the average family of four in America paid just 2 percent of
    its adjusted gross income in federal income taxes. Today that same
    family sends one out of every four dollars to Washington. When state
    and local taxes are added, the average family of four pays 38 percent
    of its entire income in taxes, more than it spends on such essentials
    as housing, clothing and food.

    Christian Coalition's top legislative priority since 1993 has been tax
    relief for America's hard-working families. We strongly favor the $500
    tax credit for children that has been passed by the House and awaits
    action in the Senate. Our long-term goal is to restore the standard
    deduction for children to its inflation-adjusted 1946 value: $8,000 to
    $10,000 per dependent child.

    Christian Coalition also supports in concept a flat or flattened tax
    (with a generous personal exemption for children) as an ultimate goal
    to simplify the tax code, reward work and savings, and reduce the
    crushing tax burden on families.

    2. Eliminate the marriage penalty.

    Under current law, many married couples pay more in taxes than they
    would if they remained single because their combined income puts them
    into a higher tax bracket. On April 5, 1995, as part of the American
    Dream Restoration Act, the House of Representatives voted to restore
    tax fairness for married couples. H.R. 1215 makes married couples
    eligible for a tax rebate of up to $145 if their tax liability goes up
    as a result of being married. In a time when family breakups are so
    common, the Senate should pass this legislation to encourage marriage
    and ease the burden on families trying to form and stay together.

    3. The Mothers and Homemakers Rights Act.

    The Contract with the American Family calls for the enactment of
    legislation such as the Hutchison-Mikulski Individual Retirement
    Account equity bill (S. 287), which will allow homemakers to contribute
    up to $2,000 annually toward an IRA, thereby providing equitable
    treatment to spouses who work at home.

    The Internal Revenue Code currently allows a double-income married
    couple to contribute up to $4,000 per year toward retirement by
    allowing them to contribute up to $2,000 each toward an IRA. However,
    in the case of a single-income married couple, the couple can only
    contribute up to $2,250 per year toward retirement through an IRA, with
    the homemaker's contribution limited to $250. This inequity in the tax
    code reflects a disrespect for the valuable role of the homemaker in
    our society. Christian Coalition urges Congress to remedy this
    injustice by amending the tax code to allow homemakers to contribute
    equally up to $2,000 annually toward an IRA. This could provide an
    increase of up to $150,000 in savings for a couple after 30 years.44
    Furthermore, because the value of families never decreases, the
    contribution amount should be indexed to inflation.


    Restoring Respect for Human Life

    Protecting the rights of states that do not fund abortion, protecting
    innocent human life by placing real limits on late-term abortions, and
    ending funds to organizations that promote and perform abortions.

    In speaking to the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, Mother Teresa
    delivered an eloquent and stirring defense of the rights of innocent
    human life. "The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion," Mother
    Teresa of Calcutta said at the National Prayer Breakfast in February
    1994. "It is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent
    child."45

    The foundation of all our rights as Americans - to speech, assembly,
    and religious expression - are all built upon the right to life. The
    genius of the American idea is that every person is endowed by his
    Creator with certain inalienable rights, the first of which is the
    right to life.

    Christian Coalition seeks by all lawful and non-violent means to
    protect innocent human life for the disabled, the elderly, the infirm,
    and the unborn. We support constitutional and statutory protection for
    the unborn child. Our ultimate goal is to establish the humanity of the
    unborn child and to see a day when every child is safe in their
    mother's womb.

    We urge Congress to take the following action as a beginning toward
    that end.

    1. Real limits on late-term abortions by providing legal protection to
    children in the latter months of pregnancy and ending the practice of
    "partial-birth abortions."

    Most Americans would be shocked to learn about the methods that are
    used in late-term abortions in America today. These methods have
    reached the point to where a fully formed child can be completely
    delivered alive, with the exception of the child's head, and then the
    abortionist is free to end the child's life. This "partial-birth
    abortion" procedure is also known as "dilation and extraction," or D&X,
    in which forceps are used to remove second and third-trimester babies,
    with only the head remaining inside the uterus. The child's life is
    then ended, and the dead child is delivered.46

    Most tragic of all is the fact that the majority of these babies are
    alive until the end of the proceeding.47 Indeed, virtually all of the
    victims are beyond the 24th week of pregnancy, and many can survive
    outside the womb.

    It is difficult to estimate the number of partial-birth abortions
    performed, because abortion statistics in general are unreliable. The
    Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research group affiliated with Planned
    Parenthood, estimates that about 10 percent of abortions occur in the
    second or third trimester. One abortionist who specializes in D&X
    procedures testified in 1992 that he had performed 700 of them.48

    Establishing real limits on late-term abortions is one of the most
    important steps Congress can take to protect innocent human life. A
    child has a better than 50-percent chance of survival outside its
    mother's womb at 26 weeks.49 But the D&X technique has been used on
    children up to 40 weeks gestation, which is a full-term pregnancy.50
    One physician experienced in this procedure admitted to having mixed
    feelings on its morality:

    "I do have moral compunctions. And if I see a case that's later, like
    after 20 weeks where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over
    it because the potential is so imminently there. I think, 'Gee, it's
    too bad that this child couldn't be adopted.'"51

    We call on the 104th Congress to enact restrictions on late-term
    abortions and end the practice of D&X abortion. Children at any stage
    of pregnancy should not be subject to this cruel and inhumane form of
    death, but such treatment of those who can clearly survive outside the
    mother's womb is particularly cruel.

    2. Protect the rights of states that do not wish to use taxpayer funds
    to take innocent human life.

    In 1993 Congress re-authorized the Hyde Amendment, in effect since
    1977, with rape and incest exceptions. Christian Coalition believes
    taxpayer funds should only be used to pay for an abortion when the
    mother's life is in danger.

    The Clinton administration issued a new interpretation of the Hyde
    Amendment, and rather than permitting states to use Medicaid dollars to
    fund abortion in rape and incest cases, it requires them to do so. This
    created havoc in the states because 30 states prohibited public funding
    of abortion, with the life of the mother being the sole exception.
    Another six states had reporting requirements for abortions due to rape
    and incest which were invalidated under this new directive. As a
    result, many states are now involved in litigation over this issue and
    seven states are facing administrative enforcement proceedings which
    could ultimately result in the termination of federal Medicaid funding
    to the state. Moreover, as a result of litigation, two state
    constitutional provisions have been invalidated and now the states are
    required to pay for abortion for any reason, with state funds. Enacting
    legislation to clarify the congressional intent behind the Hyde
    amendment and to protect states' rights in this area is a matter of
    urgency for the 104th Congress. 

    The Coalition urges Congress to adopt the Istook/Exxon Amendment that
    would protect the rights of the citizens of states that do not use
    taxpayer funds to take human life.

    3. End taxpayer subsidies to organizations that promote and perform
    abortions.

    We call for an end to federal funding for organizations that promote
    and perform abortions. This includes an end to funding for
    international family planning organizations that promote and perform
    abortions.

    Christian Coalition, along with numerous American taxpayers, believes
    that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that tax dollars
    should not be used to promote it. Yet, organizations that receive
    funding under Title X are required to counsel and refer young
    adolescents on abortion. This implicitly sends the message to these
    youngsters that abortion is an acceptable method of family planning.

    The merits of continued funding of the Title X program have long been
    questioned. It is estimated that one-third of the clients served
    through Title X funding are teen-agers.52 And yet, during the course of
    the 25 years of Title X's existence, the out-of-wedlock birth rate
    among girls aged 15-19 has increased 100 percent, the abortion rate for
    teens has more than doubled, and sexually transmitted diseases among
    teens also have increased.53 Today, one out of every four sexually
    experienced teen-agers becomes infected with a sexually transmitted
    disease annually.54

    Family planning expenditures for all ages under Medicaid now
    approximate $252 million annually,55 and the annual appropriation to
    the Title X family planning program is now $193 million,56 one-third of
    which is expended on adolescents. The time is long overdue for the
    United States Congress to eliminate funding for such programs. 

    Similarly, the American taxpayer should not be forced to fund
    international family planning organizations that promote abortion
    overseas. The United States contributed $50 million to the United
    Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) alone for this year,57 despite its
    involvement in China's coercive population-control program that
    includes forced abortions.58 Amnesty International USA recently
    outlined some of the reports coming out of China regarding the method
    used to enforce its "one-child" policy:

    [D]etainees were beaten and tortured to accelerate the payment of
    fines. Some were reportedly hung upside down, others received electric
    shocks on their tongue with electric batons or live wires-

    One man who could not bear to see his wife tortured in a cell for days
    attempted to sell their children in Beijing- other women pregnant eight
    or nine months were given - against their will - injections to induce
    miscarriages.59

    In fiscal year 1993, the United States contributed at least $580
    million toward world family planning programs.60 Any of this money that
    is contributed to organizations that encourage or perform abortions
    should be eliminated. Moreover, the entire budget should be reviewed to
    determine the success of the program to ensure that, like Title X, we
    are not subsidizing failed programs.


    Encouraging Support of Private Charities

    Enactment of legislation to enhance contributions to private charities
    as a first step toward transforming the bureaucratic welfare state into
    a system of private and faith-based compassion.

    A 1994 report by the National Center for Policy Analysis details the
    growing evidence that private sector charities do a better job than
    government "of getting prompt aid to those who need it most,
    encouraging self-sufficiency and self-reliance, preserving the family
    unit and using resources [more] efficiently."61 According to the same
    report, "94 percent of all shelters for the homeless in the U.S. are
    operated by private sector organizations."62 Studies have shown that
    "as many as 80 percent of low-income people turn to the private sector
    first when facing a crisis."63

    In light of this evidence, as well as the growing evidence of the
    failure of government programs to discourage welfare dependency, the
    federal government should take steps to encourage donations to private
    charities which serve the needy.

    In their Contract with America, House Republicans have enacted the most
    dramatic and sweeping welfare reform in decades. By turning welfare
    spending over to the states in the form of block grants, this reform
    will encourage innovation at the local level, promoting work and
    personal responsibility.

    The Contract with the American Family takes the next step. We propose
    unleashing the charitable capacity of the American people by providing
    private, non-governmental solutions to the problems of the underclass.
    Through the Salvation Army and other private charities, millions of
    Americans will be able to provide compassionate assistance to those in
    need without sending more tax dollars to a failed, discredited
    bureaucratic welfare state.

    Many citizens are not as generous in their contributions to private
    charitable organizations these days because they already are overtaxed.
    However, if given the choice between having their tax dollars subsidize
    government welfare programs or subsidize private charitable programs,
    many would prefer to designate the money to a private charity of their
    choice. Christian Coalition urges the United States Congress to enact
    legislation to give taxpayers this opportunity.

    One possible means to do so would be to allow individuals to designate
    on their income tax returns a limited amount of their taxes to
    qualified private charities. Another would be to create pilot programs
    through federal welfare block grants that earmark funding to encourage
    charitable giving and assistance to needy individuals through charities
    and religious organizations. For every dollar the taxpayer designates
    toward a private charity, the federal welfare funding to that
    taxpayer's state would be equally reduced.64 As a result, "private
    charities would compete on an equal footing with government welfare
    programs for the portion of the federal budget that is allocated to
    poverty programs," thereby increasing competition. This will not only
    change government, it will change our citizenry's pattern of thinking -
    people will once again feel more of a civic duty toward their fellow
    man.

    In the words of Acton Institute head Father Robert A. Sirico,
    "[G]overnment has no monopoly on compassion. Indeed, government is
    compassion's least able practitioner." Through a private charity
    check-off or other means, the 104th Congress can replace the welfare
    state with a culture of caring.


    Restricting Pornography

    Protecting children from exposure to pornography on the Internet and
    cable television, and from the sexual exploitation of child
    pornographers.

    1. Enactment of legislation to protect children from being exposed to
    pornography on the Internet.

    Pornography, both soft core and hard core, is freely available on the
    Internet to virtually anyone with a home computer. Several magazines
    post pornographic images that can be viewed by anyone, including
    children, for free. There are also numerous sites on the Internet where
    hard core pornography depicting a variety of explicit sexual acts, even
    rape scenes and bestiality, are available free and can be accessed with
    a few clicks of a computer button.

    Christian Coalition urges Congress to enact legislation to protect
    children from being exposed to pornography on the Internet. Criminal
    law should be amended to prohibit distribution of, or making available,
    any pornography, soft core or hard, to children, and to prohibit
    distribution of obscene hard core pornography to adults.

    2. Enactment of legislation to require cable television companies to
    completely block the video and audio on pornography channels to
    non-subscribers.

    Many children throughout the country are exposed to pornography, often
    hard core, on cable television because of incomplete scrambling of the
    signal on pornography channels. Cable companies have asserted that it
    is the parents' responsibility to guard their children. Christian
    Coalition believes that the responsibility should be on the cable
    companies to help parents keep pornography out of their homes. Cable
    companies should not be allowed to transmit pornography to
    non-subscribers. We urge Congress to require cable television companies
    to completely block the video and audio on pornography channels to
    non-subscribers.

    3. Amending the federal child pornography law to make illegal the
    possession of any child pornography.

    Sexual exploitation of children through child pornography continues to
    be a major problem in society. Possession of child pornography should
    be a crime. President Reagan proposed such a law in 1988, hoping that
    those with collections of child pornography would destroy them for fear
    of federal prosecution. In an 11th hour compromise on the bill,
    however, a conference committee of House and Senate members changed the
    Reagan bill to criminalize only the possession of "three or more" items
    of child pornography, videos, magazines, etc. Thus, federal law
    sanctions the possession of some child pornography - less than three
    pieces. A person with two hour-long videotapes depicting the rape of a
    child cannot be charged with a federal crime, yet a person with three
    photos depicting a child in a lascivious pose can. Christian Coalition
    urges that the federal child pornography law should be amended to make
    illegal the possession of any child pornography.


    Privatizing the Arts

    The National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the
    Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Legal Services
    Corporation should become voluntary organizations funded through
    private contributions.

    Christian Coalition urges the privatization of the National Endowment
    for the Arts (NEA) because we do not view such funding as a proper role
    for the United States Government. The issue is not whether the arts
    should receive funding, but rather which entity should do so - the
    government or the private sector.

    Through its grant selection process, the nea acts as an arbiter of art
    and places its endorsement or "seal of approval" on certain works. This
    federal imprimatur is as important to artists as is the funding which
    accompanies the grant. And yet, as William Bennett pointed out during
    his testimony calling for elimination of the nea, this role of arbiter
    itself should be questioned, as well as the "seal of approval" which
    gives the "official blessing - the blessing of the people of the United
    States - to things both worthy and horrible."65 This federal
    endorsement is particularly objectionable when it applies to obscenity,
    pornography, or attacks on religion.

    Despite repeated attempts by the United States Congress to place
    common-sense restrictions on federal funding of the arts, nea dollars
    continue to go toward controversial works that denigrate the religious
    beliefs and moral values of mainstream Americans.66 William Donohue,
    president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has
    joined the call for de-funding the nea, stating: "We, as Catholics,
    have rights too, and among them is the right not to be defamed, and
    this is especially true when defamation is funded with government
    money."

    At a time of fiscal restraint and budget austerity, cultural agencies
    cannot expect to be exempt from the broader realities of declining
    federal spending. Americans spend more than $7 billion annually on the
    arts; only $173 million is derived from federal funding. The
    privatization of the nea into a voluntary, charitable organization
    would unleash the creative capacity of the American people and
    de-politicize one of the most controversial agencies in recent years.
    It is an idea whose time has come.

    The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) also would be improved
    by privatization. Lynne Cheney, the neh Chairman from 1986 to 1992,
    testified in January in support of ending federal funding for the
    agency. During her testimony she explained, "The humanities - like the
    arts - have become highly politicized. Many academics and artists now
    see their purpose not as revealing truth or beauty, but as achieving
    social and political transformation. Government should not be funding
    those whose main interest is promoting an agenda."67 The controversial
    national history standards, which neh funding assisted in bringing into
    existence, are one such example.68

    William Bennett cites another example of the neh's use of taxpayer
    dollars: "[T]he neh provides funding for the Modern Language
    Association (MLA) - Their annual convention attracts over 10,000
    professors and students and reveals the type of agenda that neh grants
    make possible. Past panels include such topics as 'Lesbian Tongues
    Untied;' 'Henry James and Queer Performativity;' [and] 'Status of
    Gender and Feminism in Queer Theory;'-"69 It is clear that at a time
    when 24 percent of the average American family's budget goes to the
    federal government in taxes, we can find a better use for these tax
    dollars than through continued funding of the neh.

    The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is another entity that
    should rely on private funding. Federal subsidies to the Public
    Broadcasting Service cost taxpayers $350 million a year, an example of
    transfer payments from the middle-class to the well-to-do.

    Children Television Workshop, producer of "Sesame Street," reaps more
    than $100 million in licensing fees annually. Its chief executive
    officer earns $647,000 annually in salary and benefits. A rate card
    sent out by Washington, D.C. pbs affiliate WETA in 1992 noted that the
    average net worth of its contributors was $627,000; one in eight was a
    millionaire; one in seven owned a wine cellar; one in three had been to
    Europe in the previous three years.

    Would privatization cause the death-knell of public broadcasting?
    Hardly. Private and corporate contributions already make up the vast
    majority of public broadcasting's revenue. Only 14 percent of the
    Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) budget comes from the federal
    government, and only 3 percent of the National Public Radio's (NPR)
    budget is composed of federal funds.

    Lastly, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a federally chartered
    corporation established to provide legal assistance to the poor. It
    received an appropriation of $415 million for FY 1995. What many
    Americans don't realize is that divorce proceedings are a high priority
    for many legal services grantees.70 The LSC alone paid for 210,000
    divorces in 1990, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $50 million.
    Yet, as study after study has revealed, divorce is not helping our
    nation's poor break out of poverty. Rather, as historian Barbara Dafoe
    Whitehead has pointed out: "Children in single-parent families are six
    times as likely to be poor. Twenty-two percent of children in
    one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven
    years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in
    two-parent families."71 Therefore, an agency that was established to
    help ameliorate poverty is instead fostering it through its financing
    of divorce actions.

    Christian Coalition urges Congress to privatize all four entities, the
    NEA, NEH, CPB, and LSC, and turn them into organizations funded through
    private contributions.


    Crime Victim Restitution

    Funds given to states to build prisons should encourage work, study,
    and drug testing requirements for prisoners in state correctional
    facilities, as well as requiring restitution to victims subsequent to
    release.

    Today's prisons are not designed either to punish convicts or provide
    justice to victims. In Pennsylvania, felons can receive in-cell cable
    TV.72 At a facility in Fallsburg, New York, outdoor weight training
    areas feature televisions prisoners can view as they work out.73 Hard
    labor has been replaced in many prisons with recreational activities.

    Christian Coalition urges Congress to enact legislation that will
    encourage states to instill work and study requirements for prisoners.
    More than one million inmates are imprisoned in our country's
    correctional facilities - 919,143 in state prisons and 93,708 in
    federal prisons.74 Although a majority of institutions have academic
    programs, many prisoners do not participate in them.75 In fact, a 1990
    census found that "[a]pproximately 570,000 inmates, accounting for
    two-thirds or more of both sexes in State and Federal facilities, were
    not participating in any academic activities." Moreover, about a third
    of the prison population had no work assignment, and 25 percent of the
    population was idle - meaning prisoners neither worked nor participated
    in an academic program.76

    An estimated 70 percent of inmates in U.S. prisons are functionally
    illiterate. Without the ability to read and write, these individuals
    are unable to find work outside prison, a contributing factor giving
    the United States one of the highest prison recidivism rates in the
    Western world. Literacy programs - many of which can be provided by
    private charities and prison ministries at low cost - will give
    prisoners hope and give society a better chance to absorb former
    inmates upon their release.

    Moreover, with one out of four American households victimized by crime
    each year, as well as more than 700,000 days of hospitalization
    resulting from crime-related injuries, victim restitution is very
    necessary.77 Requiring an offender to make restitution to the victim
    will not only force the offender to confront the consequences of his
    actions, but also compensate the victim monetarily.

    Christian Coalition urges Congress to remedy this by conditioning the
    receipt of federal prison construction funding by the states on
    enactment of work and study requirements. Moreover, we urge that
    restitution to victims subsequent to release also be required.


    Conclusion

    The Contract with the American Family is the first word, not the last
    word, on a cultural agenda for the 104th Congress during the
    post-100-day period. The ideas included in this document are
    suggestions, not demands, and are designed to be a help, not a
    hindrance, to Members of Congress as they seek to fulfill their mandate
    for dramatic change.

    Christian Coalition welcomes the support of Republicans and Democrats
    alike as it seeks passage of the items in this bold legislative agenda.
    There is no specified deadline on acting on the Contract. The Coalition
    and its grassroots members will work on behalf of these mainstream
    proposals in this Congress and in as many subsequent sessions of
    Congress as necessary to secure passage.

    The Contract with the American Family emerged from a survey of
    Christian Coalition members and supporters conducted in March and
    April, 1995. It has been improved during the drafting process by
    extensive polling and focus groups and consultations with members of
    Congress and their staffs. Each item in the Contract enjoys support
    from between 60 and 90 percent of the American people. More than half
    of the items in the Contract already have legislative sponsors, and
    several have already been passed by committee.

    The American people now have a Congress that is receptive to their
    desire for religious liberty, stronger families, lower taxes, local
    control of education, and tougher laws against crime. With the 
    Contract with the American Family, the nation now has an agenda with
    broad support that addresses time-honored values and cultural issues
    for the 104th Congress and beyond.


Endnotes

1. Ronald Brownstein, "Dissatisfied Public May Spell Democrat Losses," Los
Angeles Times, July 28, 1994.
2. Nationwide survey by Luntz Research and Strategic Services, conducted
February 11-12, 1995. Sample Size: 1000. Theoretical margin of sampling
error: + or - 3.1%.
3. Keith A. Fournier, Religious Cleansing in the American Republic, 1993,
p. 17. The decision was later reversed after counsel intervened. 
4. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1994 Catholic League's
1994 Report on Anti-Catholicism, p. 14.
5. Ibid.
6. Keith A. Fournier, Religious Cleansing in the American Republic, 1993,
p. 16. In both instances, the children were allowed to read their Bibles
after legal counsel intervened.
7. Only after the student's parent contacted the school board was the book allowed. 
8. Mark Kellner, "Postal Grinch Who Stole Christmas," The Washington Times,
November 20, 1994; Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1994
Catholic League's 1994 Report on Anti-Catholicism, p. 17.
9. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1994 Catholic League's
1994 Report on Anti-Catholicism, p. 16.
10. 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
11. Jesse H. Choper, The Establishment Clause and Aid to Parochial Schools
- An Update, 75 Cal.L.Rev. 5, 6-7. (1987). 
12. Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School Dist., 113 S.Ct. 2141, 2149
(1993) (Scalia, J., concurring). 
13. William J. Bennett, The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators (March
1993), p. 17.
14. "[T]he U.S. spends a greater percentage of its gross national product
on education (7.5%) than any other country except Israel, and yet is out
performed in math and science among 13-year-olds by more than 10 nations,
including Hungary, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union." Claudia Wallis, "A
Class of Their Own," Time, Oct. 31, 1994, 56
15. 140 Congressional Record S9917 (daily ed. July 27, 1994).
16. Maria Koklanaris, "Virginia parents may get option to exclude pupils
from counseling," The Washington Times, Oct. 28, 1994.
17. U.S. Department of Education, Strong Families, Strong Schools
(September 1994).
18. Pub. L. 103-227.
19. Pub. L. 103-382.
20. Claudia Wallis, "A Class of Their Own," Time, October 31, 1994, p. 56.
21. Claudia Wallis, "A Class of Their Own," Time, October 31, 1994, pp. 53,
56, citing a 1992 report by the Educational Testing Service. 
22. Claudia Wallis, "A Class of Their Own," Time, October 31, 1994, pp. 53, 56.
23. Carol Innerst, "Education Still Lacking Bang for Buck, The Washington
Times, September 21, 1994.  24. Family Research Council, "Freeing America's
Schools[:] The Case Against the U.S. Education Department," Family Policy,
p. 5.
25. Letter from Terrel Bell, to The Washington Post, February 1, 1995.
26. Carol Inherst, "Some Historians See New Standards as Revisionist Coup,"
The Washington Times, October 27, 1994.
27. Lynne V. Cheney, "The End of History," The Wall Street Journal, October
20, 1994. 
28. Lynne V. Cheney, "The End of History," The Wall Street Journal, October
20, 1994.
29. Ibid.
30. See Congressional Record, S1025-1040, January 18, 1995. 
31. Congressional Record, January 18, 1995, S1025-2040.
32. Statement of Senator Slade Gorton, Congressional Record, January 18,
1995, p. S1034. 
33. U.S. Department of Education, Center for Choice in Education, Issue
Brief, "Public Opinion on Choice in Education" (March 1992), Executive
Summary.
34. The Heritage Foundation, "School Choice Continues to Gain Ground,"
Business/Education Insider (June/July 1994).
35. Statement of Senator Coats, Congressional Record, March 24, 1995, S4582.
36. In re Sumey, 94 Wash.2d 757, 621 P.2d 108 (1980).
37. Matter of Ray, 408 N.Y.S.2d 737 (1978).
38. K.L. Billingsley, "Sex, Lies and County Government: Abuse Case Shows It
All," The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 19, 1992. 
39. Human Events, February 24, 1995.
40. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 16.
41. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 13.
42. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 15.
43. Committee on the Rights of the Child, Eighth Session, Consideration of
Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 44 of the Convention, p.
3.
44. Statement of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Congressional Record,
January 26, 1995.
45. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast,
February 3, 1994.
46. Illustration Adapted from Drawings Appearing in the February 1993 Issue
of "Life Advocate," National Right to Life News, July 14, 1993, p. 12.
47. Diane M. Gianelli, "Shock-tactic ads target late-term abortion
procedure," American Medical News, July 5, 1993 (emphasis added to
quotation). 
48. Douglas Johnson, "AMA Newspaper Investigative Report Supports NRLC
Statements on Brutal 'D&X' Abortion Method," National Right to Life News,
July 14, 1993, pp. 12, 13. 
49. Ibid., p. 13.
50. Douglas Johnson, "AMA Newspaper Investigative Report Supports NRLC
Statements on Brutal 'D&X' Abortion Method," National Right to Life News,
July 14, 1993, p. 12.
51. Diane M. Gianelli, "Shock-tactic ads target late-term abortion
procedure," American Medical News, July 5, 1993.
52. Family Research Council, "Suffer the Children: Title X's Family
Planning Failure," Insight, by Gracie S. Hsu; Family Research Council, "An
Estimate of Federal Spending on Contraceptive-'Safe Sex' Services for
Adolescents 1970-1993," Insight, by Charles A. Donovan, Sr., p. 2.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Family Research Council, "An Estimate of Federal Spending on
Contraceptive-'Safe Sex" Services for Adolescents 1970-1993," Insight, by
Charles A. Donovan, Sr., p. 2. 
56. H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 103-733, 103d Cong., 2d Sess. 64 (1994).
57. National Right to Life Committee, Inc. Memorandum, From Douglas
Johnson, Legislative Director, to "Interested Parties," April 20, 1995, p.
2.
58. Ibid.
59. Amnesty International USA, "People's Republic of China[:] Catholic
Villagers in Hebei Province," March 14, 1995.
60. National Right to Life Committee, Inc., "The Clinton Administration's
Promotion of Abortion as a Tool of Population Control in Less-Developed
Nations," June 1, 1994, page 2.
61. National Center for Polcy Analysis, "Why Not Abolish the Welfare
State?" (October 1994), Executive Summary. 
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. For a general discussion of this concept, see National Center for
Policy Analysis, Why Not Abolish the Welfare State? (October 1994), p. 30. 
65. Written Testimony of William J. Bennett, Before the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, January 24, 1995, p.3.
66. Rod Dreher, "S&M 'Art' Video Exceeds Shocking Stage Version," The
Washington Times, January 26, 1995.
67. Written Testimony of Lynne V. Cheney, Before the Interior
Appropriations Subcommittee on January 24, 1995, p.1.
68. Congressional Record, January 18, 1995, S1025-40. 
69. Written Testimony of William J. Bennett, Before the House
Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, January 24, 1995.
70. Kathleen B. DeBettencourt, Office of Policy Development, Legal Services
Corporation, "Legal Services Corporation vs. The Family," March 1988, p.15.
71. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, "Dan Quayle Was Right," The Atlantic Monthly,
April 1993, p. 47.
72. Robert James Bidinotto, "Must Our Prisons Be Resorts?" Reader's Digest,
November, 1994, pp. 65, 76. 
73. Robert James Bidinotto, "Must Our Prisons Be Resorts?" Reader's Digest,
November, 1994, p. 65. 
74. U.S. Department of Justice, "State and Federal Prison Population Tops
One Million," October 27, 1994.
75. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Census of
State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 1990," p. 11. 
76. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Census of
State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 1990," p. 12. A survey of state
prison inmates in 1991 also substantiated that approximately one-third of
the inmates had no work assignments. See Bureau of Justice Statistics,
"Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991," p. 27.
77. H.R. Rep. No. 104-16, 104th Congress, 1st Sess. at 4 (1995).

                                                                               

Copyright � 1995 by The Christian Coalition of this page and all contents.
All Rights Reserved. 

    
    Thanks for posting the Contract with the American Family, Jack. I
    noticed that it's just over the 100 line limit thought. :^)

    I haven't finished reading through it yet, but so far I have about as
    many margin notes as there is text to the document! To their credit
    they do a good job with their end notes. However, when I read their end
    notes, or better yet looked up some of the references, it caused me to
    raise my eyebrows more than once. Some (many) of the abuses cited were
    over turned in court, thus giving a false impression of legally
    sanctioned anti-religious activities. Some (many) citations reference
    conservative authors commentaries of government and medical reports
    rather than the reports themselves, casting a cloud on the objectivity
    of the reference. Some (many) citations refer to the comments made by
    certain senators as entered into the congressional record, as if a
    senators estimations and professions are the same as documented proof
    rather than simply hearsay.

    While I feel that the Christian Coalitions main objective if to infuse
    conservative Christian ideals into public schools and government, they
    do raise some issues that I agree with. I'm just not so keen or their
    solutions. By and large I think their Religious Equality Act is an
    attempt for them to foist their agenda into the public arena; and their
    tax and economic suggestions range from absurd to short sighted.

    I can't wait to get home and read more... :^)
    
    	Eric

Well, surprise, surprise!!

I find my name has somehow gotten on the mailing list of Pat Robertson's
Christian Coalition!

In this "Monitored Delivery" initial mailing with "Immediate Action Requested,"
I received my "New 1995 Congressional Scorecard (Contract with America
edition)," my "1996 Pre-election Presidential Ballot for Christian Voters,"
and the anticipated solicitation for my financial support.

Shalom,
Richard

    I've never donated a dime to him and I don't appreciate organizations
    that pester you for money all the time.  I still receive his scorecards
    despite sending them a letter explaining why I will not support him
    financially.
    
    Mike

    A quote from their literature:
    
    	"Or will America's Christian voters stay home on Election Day, as
    they did in 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected..."
             -------------------------------------
    
    (Their underline, not mine.)  I found their propaganda to be laced with
    innuendo and tacit assumption.
    
    Richard
    

    	Many *DID* leave their brains at home!  :^)

    I don't believe they stayed home.  It's obvious that Perot dividing
    conservatives allowed Clinton to win.  this isn't unique in history
    either.  Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party had the same effect
    in the Woodrow Wilson election, who had only 45% support of the voters. 
    Some speculate the Federal Reserve was behind this.
    
    Mike

    I don't believe Christians stayed home either.  Pat Robertson et al
    apparently believe otherwise.
    
    Richard
    

    Richard:
    
    I made the error of subscribing to National Review a few years ago.  
    I think it is a fairly good magazine but I decided not to renew.  Well,
    because I subscibed, I was and still am inundated with mail from Dole,
    Buchanan, Gram, etc. for president, I am now a member of the Republican
    National Committee, I receive numerous surveys, mail from the NRA,
    letters from the police officers in jail from the Rodney King
    incident, the Christian Coalition, the list goes on!  
    
    I started at first by doing a few surveys and then the mail came in.
    Later, I started doing the surveys opposite to what they wanted.  Now I
    just throw them out.
    
    I believe communication should be open with all constituents but I
    resent having my name given out to these organizations by National
    Review...so I don't subscribe anymore.  Hey, I believe in being up
    front here...I lean more toward the Republican ideology but I can still
    get annoyed with those people!
    
    -Jack

    Wow, Jack!  I thought my mail was bad! ;-)

Speaking of the CC,

They publish a list of 'threats' to religious freedom on a monthly basis. 
Some I agree are ridiculous, some I believe are correct and the CC is way 
off base, some I am on the fence about. What I would like to do here is to 
get your comments on some of what they say, so that I can understand it 
from both sides. My discussion will start in the next note.

To start: 

Supreme Court Denies Texaco Franchise Hearing

(Washington, D.C.) - The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal in the 
case of a former Texaco franchise owner who wanted to close his service 
stations on the Sabbath. Barry Davis, who leased three gas stations from 
Texaco near Salem, Ore., violated a federal court order when he began 
closing his stations from dusk Friday to dusk Saturday in January 1993.
Texaco sought the action after Davis informed the company in October 1992 
that he would begin the policy at the start of the new year. Lowell Elsen, 
of Texaco's corporate legal department, said his company tried to work 
things out with Davis. "We worked diligently to find some middle ground 
whereby Mr. Davis would exercise his personal religious preference while
the stations would remain open and customers could be served," Elsen said. 
"We even offered to operate the stations for him, free of charge, on his 
Sabbath." Davis says Texaco made no such offer but he wouldn't have taken 
it anyway. "Deuteronomy 5:14 says you shall not work on the Sabbath and 
neither shall your son or daughter or your manservant or maidservant," 
Davis said. "I could not let the stations remain open without violating the 
spirit of that commandment." Write to Barry Davis at 850 22nd Ave., N.W., 
Salem OR 97304. (Facts on file, Christian Coalition national headquarters.) 

Most franchises of this sort stipulate the hours the store must remain open, I 
am assuming that Texaco did. From my viewpoint Texaco is not persecuting him 
due to religion, but more probably due to breach of contract. Do you folks 
agree that this is an attack on religious rights, or should Mr. Davis have 
persued a career that allowed him to follow his own conscience?

Thanks for your comments,

Steve

    It is not spelled out in the article, but it is implied that Mr. Davis
    was a franchise owner for a period of time before he became Sabbath
    sensitive, if you will. Apparently, Texaco and Mr. Davis had agreed
    to the terms of the franchise contract and that Mr. Davis, at some
    point in the future, chose to violate those terms. It seems to me that
    in this circumstance Mr. Davis must chose to honor his agreement with
    Texaco or sell his franchise in order to comply with his religious
    convictions.

    What if he owned a TGIFriday's franchise, and at some point decided to
    stop serving liquor due to religious conviction? What if he owned a
    McDonald's franchise and at some point decided to stop serving beef due
    to a religious conviction? 

    If the shoe were on the other foot, that is the franchising agent
    (Texaco in this case) changed the rules in a way that violated Mr.
    Davis' religious convictions, then I would be on his side.

    Eric

	I agree with Eric! 

I agree with Eric also, this does not seem like an attack on religious 
freedom to me, either.

How about this one?


(Williamsburg, Va.) - When Julia Oxrieder put her home on the market for 
sale she took out an ad in the local newspaper. Close proximity to grocery 
store, public transportation and churches," Oxrieder's ad stated. The 
Newport News Daily Press informed Oxrieder that state laws against housing 
discrimination would not allow them to publish her classified ad unless the 
reference to churches was removed. Oxrieder agreed to the change, but she 
wrote letters to the editor of the Daily Press and other area papers. 
Virginia State Delegate George W. Grayson, D-Williamsburg, called the law 
"just crazy" and recently proposed a revision to state housing law that 
would "allow citizens and their agents to mention proximity to churches, 
synagogues, temples, mosques, and other places of worship in describing 
property to be sold or rented." In a mid-July letter to state Legislative 
Services Director E.M. Miller, Grayson summarized Oxrieder's predicament. 
"This is just political correctness run amok," he told the Richmond 
Times-Dispatch. To thank Grayson for his stand on this issue, write to Hon. 
George W. Grayson, House of Delegates of Virginia, State Capitol, Richmond, 
Va. 23219 or phone (804)786- 6609. (Richmond Times-Dispatch July 14, Facts 
On file, Christian Coalition national headquarters.) 

    
    I've got to agree with Delegate Grayson; if there is such a law
    barring real estate ads that mention the proximity of the property
    to churches, it's "just crazy." If someone want's to describe
    their house as being in an "close to Bible believing Christian
    church," or "within walking distance to abortion clinic and adult
    book store" they should be allowed to do so. Refusing to *sell* on
    anyone other than a Christian or abortion advocate is a different
    story, however. 

    I a bit incredulous as to whether there is such a law or not. I
    suspect that there is merely a mistake made by an uninformed clerk
    or editorial associate. More times than not I have seen this to be
    the case when one claims religious oppression. They may have been
    repressed, but not legally. This doesn't stop paranoids on either
    side of the issue from grandstanding, of course. Perhaps this is
    the case here.

    Eric

    P.S. From time to time churches (the buildings) are sold. I guess
         the news is spread by word-of-mouth, since there is a ban on
         publishing its availability. :^)

    .74
    
    Sounds like a misunderstanding to me.
    
    Richard
    

    	re: gas station franchise owner
    
    	If he wants to remain part of the franchise and benefit from
    	being a franchise, then he should remain open on Saturday.  (Or
    	accept Texaco's offer to run it for him on Saturday.)
    
    	If closing on Saturday is so important, he should become an
    	independent dealer.  (Or get out of the business altogether.)
    
    	re: "near churches"
    
    	Either it's a misunderstanding, or political correctness
    	run amok.  Denying the advertisement of that one feature
    	is discriminatory.  I wonder if she would have been allowed
    	to advertise that it's "not near any churches at all".

I don't think it's a misunderstanding.

It's part of a so-called fair housing law.

The theory is that the mere mention of "church" in an ad for _housing_ will
discourage some people from investigating the property.

I'll see if I can get the text of the law.

/john

p.s.: re selling churches -- the law doesn't apply; they aren't "housing".

re Note 1083.78 by COVERT::COVERT:

> The theory is that the mere mention of "church" in an ad for _housing_ will
> discourage some people from investigating the property.

        It seems a bit ludicrous, since places called "churches" are
        so common in most places in the U.S.  But imagine an ad that
        said "near several synagogues" or "adjacent to the Muslim
        temple" -- an ad like that could be trying to hint at the
        religious and/or racial makeup of the neighborhood.  

        If there is a need to restrict such language, then the
        cleanest way is simply to restrict mention of religious
        facilities of all kinds.  (Otherwise you'll have regulators
        and/or the courts making distinctions of a kind that you
        probably don't want them making.)

        I don't know the law, or its origins, well enough to know if
        this explains it.

        Bob

I'm not sure that not allowing the mention of churches is an attack on religious freedom, but I do 
believe that it is ludicrous.

Moderators, should I create a new topic for each of these articles? At any rate, here is this weeks,
it is a little trickier I think...


School Principal Bans Pro-Life Student Posters

(Orlando, Fla.) - School officials at Palm Coast High School have banned a student pro-life club 
from advertising club activities with posters. School policy permits student organizations such as 
the Environmental Club and the Ebony Society to advertise activities and viewpoints through posters 
and morning announcements. But when Teens for Life put up posters, teachers tore them down. High 
school principal Larry Hunsinger told the Daytona Beach News-Journal: "I felt that in the interests 
of safety and well-being of the students and faculty, it was necessary for the posters to come 
down." Teens for Life, a student pro-life group, filed a lawsuit against the Flagler County School 
Board alleging violations of their First Amendment right to free speech. Liberty Counsel, a 
religious liberties law firm, filed the suit in U.S. District Court Aug. 8. Mathew Staver, Liberty 
Counsel president, said federal law states that if a school permits any non-curriculum related club
to meet on campus, the school cannot discriminate against any other student club based on religious 
or political speech. Teens for Life is seeking temporary injunctive relief and eventually a ruling 
declaring the school policies unconstitutional. "School officials cannot censor student speech 
simply because they disagree with that speech," Staver said. "Abortion is perhaps the major 
political debate of the decade, and students have the right to form and express opinions about 
abortion." Write to the Flagler County School Board, P.O. Box 755, Bunnell, Fla. 32110 or call (904) 
437-7526. (Daytona Beach News-Journal, Aug. 9, Facts on file, Christian Coalition national 
headquarters.) 

Here is Steve Bittrolf's note, reposted for people who like to keep their
Notes windows sized to 80 columns:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure that not allowing the mention of churches is an attack on
religious freedom, but I do  believe that it is ludicrous.

Moderators, should I create a new topic for each of these articles? At any
rate, here is this weeks, it is a little trickier I think...


School Principal Bans Pro-Life Student Posters

(Orlando, Fla.) - School officials at Palm Coast High School have banned a
student pro-life club  from advertising club activities with posters.
School policy permits student organizations such as  the Environmental Club
and the Ebony Society to advertise activities and viewpoints through
posters  and morning announcements. But when Teens for Life put up posters,
teachers tore them down. High  school principal Larry Hunsinger told the
Daytona Beach News-Journal: "I felt that in the interests  of safety and
well-being of the students and faculty, it was necessary for the posters to
come  down." Teens for Life, a student pro-life group, filed a lawsuit
against the Flagler County School  Board alleging violations of their First
Amendment right to free speech. Liberty Counsel, a  religious liberties law
firm, filed the suit in U.S. District Court Aug. 8. Mathew Staver, Liberty 
Counsel president, said federal law states that if a school permits any
non-curriculum related club to meet on campus, the school cannot
discriminate against any other student club based on religious  or
political speech. Teens for Life is seeking temporary injunctive relief and
eventually a ruling  declaring the school policies unconstitutional.
"School officials cannot censor student speech  simply because they
disagree with that speech," Staver said. "Abortion is perhaps the major 
political debate of the decade, and students have the right to form and
express opinions about  abortion." Write to the Flagler County School
Board, P.O. Box 755, Bunnell, Fla. 32110 or call (904)  437-7526. (Daytona
Beach News-Journal, Aug. 9, Facts on file, Christian Coalition national 
headquarters.) 

John,

Thanks for reposting. I've got a new notes reader and I haven't learned yet how
to get it to post properly. I didn't even realize I had overflowed...

Steve

    Thanks for posting that.  I would assume that the Unitarian
    Universalist Church would support the right of the students since one
    of their tenets is the right to a democratic process and the support of
    the first ammendment.
    
    -Jack

    
    Re.83
    
    Jack,
    
    I read the article a few times, and saw no mention that the UU church
    was involved.  Or did I miss something here?
    
    Cindy

I would support the students' rights of free speech and of assembly.

Of course, I would have to support the same rights for:

	the Pro-Child_Pro-Family_Pro-Choice Club

I wonder if the Christian Coalition would be so eager to defend the rights
of such a group.

Richard

    ZZ       the Pro-Child_Pro-Family_Pro-Choice Club
    
    I would definitely support their rights...misguided though they be!

    
    As long as other student interest groups are allowed to post their club
    activities, the pro-life club should not be disallowed from doing so as
    well. The school may, however, set guidelines regarding the language
    and content of the posters. For example, the Ebony Society may be
    prohibited from calling is detractors 'racists' and the Teens for Life
    Club may not be allowed to call its detractors 'baby killers.' At least
    not on posters displayed in school.

    Eric

    I think that would be equitable!

.87

Yes, this is the piece that is left out of the article. I would agree that 
these students have the right to post like anyone else. On the other hand I 
have seen some very graphic anti-abortion posters, and I could understand 
these being taken down.

Steve

Note 1083.80

>Moderators, should I create a new topic for each of these articles? At any
>rate, here is this weeks, it is a little trickier I think...

You may, of course, create a new topic for each.  But in light of the source,
I think it's appropriate to continue in this string:

>(Daytona Beach News-Journal, Aug. 9, Facts on file, Christian Coalition
>national headquarters.)                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Richard

*****************************************************************
PRESS RELEASE            PRESS RELEASE            PRESS RELEASE

               THE HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FUND

 The Nation's Largest Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights Organization
*****************************************************************
To contact the HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FUND, please call us at
(202)628-4160, fax us at (202) 347-5323 or write to us at PO Box
1396  Washington, DC  20013.
*****************************************************************

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Friday, September 8, 1995

      HEAD OF NATIONAL GAY POLITICAL GROUP DELIVERS "OPEN LETTER"
                ADDRESS AT CHRISTIAN COALITION CONFERENCE

 -- Elizabeth Birch Calls for New Ethic of Respect and Decency --

     Washington -- Some members of Pat Robertson's Christian
Coalition today joined with progressive clergy and other
supporters of lesbian and gay equal rights to hear a speech by
Human Rights Campaign Fund Executive Director Elizabeth Birch
during the group's annual "Road to Victory" conference at the
Washington Hilton.   More than 300 people crowded into a ballroom
to hear the head of the largest national lesbian and gay
organization deliver an address in the form of an "open letter"
to Christian Coalition members.  The speech was held next to a
Gramm for President luncheon, and just down the hall from the
conference's main ballroom where most of the 1996 GOP
presidential hopefuls were addressing the two-day gathering.

In the 20-minute address during the lunch break of the
conference, Birch called for a new ethic in the public dialog.
"We may work for different outcomes..., but we can engage in an
ethic of basic respect and decency."

Birch s speech was delivered despite being rebuffed by a
Coalition spokesman after formally requesting to speak at the
Conference.  I have had the opportunity to meet thousands of
individuals from all walks of life who have grave concerns about
misconceptions put forth by representatives of the Christian
Coalition when addressing the hopes, dreams and aspirations of
lesbian and gay Americans and their families,  Birch wrote in a
July 5 letter to Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph
Reed.  I believe that it is time to address our differences face
to face,  she wrote.

When the formal request was turned down, Birch decided to reserve
a room in the same hotel that would host the conference, to
deliver her message directly to Christian Coalition members.
"Although your podium was not available to me, I am grateful for
those who have come today and will give me the 'benefit of the
doubt' and be willing to consider what I have to say."

The Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), the nation's largest
lesbian and gay political organization, works to end
discrimination, secure equal rights, and protect the health and
safety of all Americans.  With a national staff, and volunteers
and members throughout the country, HRCF lobbies the federal
government on lesbian, gay, and AIDS issues; educates the general
public; participates in election campaigns; organizes volunteers;
and provides expertise and training at the state and local level.


     (Text of letter in next reply...)
    

*****************************************************************

                     September 8, 1995
         Open Letter to Christian Coalition Members



Dear Members of the Christian Coalition:

An Open Letter was not my first choice as a way of reaching you.
I would have preferred speaking to all of you directly, and in a
setting where you would be most comfortable.

That was my motivation, some weeks ago, when I asked your
executive director, Ralph Reed, for the opportunity to address
the Christian Coalition's "Road to Victory" Conference.  It is
still my motivation today.  And it is supported by a single,
strong belief that the time has come for us to speak to each
other rather than past each other.

It took Mr. Reed very little time to reject my request.  Perhaps
he misunderstood my motivation.  But I can assure you that what
has driven my request is this: I believe in the power of the word
and the value of honest communication.  During my years of work
as a litigator at a major corporation, I was often amazed at what
simple, fresh and truthful conversation could accomplish.  And
what is true in the corporate setting is also true, I'm
convinced, in our communities.  If we could learn to speak and
listen to each other with integrity, the consequences might shock
us.

Although your podium was not available to me, I am grateful for
those who have come today and will give me "the benefit of the
doubt" and be willing to consider what I have to say.  I will be
pleased if you are able to hear me without prejudging either the
message or the messenger.  And I will be hopeful, most of all, if
you respond by joining me in finding new ways to speak with
honesty not only about one another, but also to one another.

If I am confident in anything at all, it is this: our communities
have more in common than we care to imagine.  This is not to deny
the many differences.  But out of our sheer humanity comes some
common ground.

Although the stereotype would have us believe otherwise, there
are many conservative Americans within the nation's gay and
lesbian communities.

What's more, there are hundreds of thousands of Christians among
us -- Christians of all traditions, including those represented
in the Christian Coalition.

And, like it or not, we are part of your family.  And you are
part of our community.  We are neighbors and colleagues, business
associates and friends.  More intimately still, you are fathers
of sons who are gay and mothers of daughters who are lesbians.  I
know many of your children very, very well.  I work with them.  I
worry with them.  And I rejoice that they are part of our
community.

Part of what I want you to know is that many of your children who
are gay and lesbian are gifted and strong.  Some are famous; most
of them are not.  But many are heroic in the way they have
conquered barriers to their own self-respect and the courage with
which they've set out to serve a higher good.  All were created
by God.  And you have every right to be proud of each of them.

I begin by noting the worthiness of the gays and lesbians in your
family and our community for a reason: it's hard to communicate
with people we do not respect.  And the character of prejudice,
of stereotype, of demagoguery, is to tear down the respect others
might otherwise enjoy in public, even the respect they would hold
for themselves in private.  By taking away respectability,
rhetorically as well as legally, we justify the belief that they
are not quite human, not quite worthy, not quite deserving of our
time, or our attention, or our concern.

And that is, sadly, what many of your children and colleagues and
neighbors who are gay and lesbian have feared is the intent of
the Christian Coalition.  If it were true, of course, it would be
not only regrettable, but terribly hypocritical; it would not be
worthy of the true ideals and values based in love at the core of
what we call "Christian."

The reason I have launched this conversation is to ask that you
join me in a common demonstration that this is not true.  I make
my appeal as an individual, as Elizabeth Birch, and also as the
executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, America's
largest policy organization for gay men and lesbian women.

This is such a basic appeal -- to human communication and common
decency -- that I do not even know how to distinguish between
what is personal and what is professional.  But my appeal is
sincere.  I am convinced that if we cannot find ways to respect
one another as human beings, and therefore to respect one
another's rights, we will do great damage not only to each other,
but also to those we say we represent.

I recognize that it is not easy for us to speak charitably to
each other.  I have read fundraising letters in which people like
me are assigned labels which summon up the ugliest of
dehumanizing stereotypes.  Anonymous writers have hidden under
the title of "Concerned Christian" to condemn me with the fires
of God and to call on all of you to deny me an equal opportunity
to participate in the whole range of American life.   I have
heard of political agendas calling not merely for the defeat of
those I represent, but for our eradication.

Such expressions of hatred do not, can not, beget a spirit of
trust.  Nor do they pass the test of either truthfulness or
courage.  They bear false witness in boldface type.  And I
believe that they must embarrass those who, like me, heard of
another gospel -- even the simple gospel taught me as a child in
Sunday School.

I would not ask that you, as members of a Christian group, or as
supporters of a conservative political cause, set aside either
your basic beliefs or your historic commitments.  The churches
which many of you represent -- Baptist, for example, and
Pentecostal -- were also the churches I attended as a young
woman.  In those days, I heard sermons about justice and sang
songs about forgiveness.  My greatest hope is not that you will
give up your faith, but that it will work among all of us.

Neither of us should forsake our fundamental convictions.  But we
could hold those convictions with a humility that allows room for
the lives of others; neither of us may be the sole possessors of
truth on every given issue.  And we could express our convictions
in words that are, if not affectionate, and if not even kind,
then at least decent, civil, humane.  We need not demonize each
other simply because we disagree.

I came to my task in the campaign for human rights with this
conviction: if we, in the name of civil rights, slander you, we
have failed our own ideals, as surely as any Christian who
slanders us in the name of God has failed the ideals of
Scripture.

Some of those who asked me to serve at HRCF may believe that I am
naive, that it is foolish to appeal to "the enemy" for common
decency, let alone to ask for trusting conversations.  But those
who wonder about my ideals may not know my childhood.

I am an American, born on American soil, but raised in Canada
throughout my formative years.  Even from a distance -- perhaps
especially from a distance -- the American ideal and the
centuries-old American dream captured my imagination and my
spirit.  When I saw America, I saw responsible freedom being
exercised everywhere from the picket line to the voting booth.
When I learned of the values rooted at the heart of the American
Spirit, I felt undying hope.  That hope is also rooted in the
Judeo-Christian tradition of this nation.  From my vantage point
on the Canadian prairies, the promise of America tugged at my
soul.  I could fight it, but I could not win, and America quite
literally won my heart.

More remarkable still, all this happened during my adolescence,
when we are most subject to peer pressure, and in the 1960's
during the height of Canadian nationalism.  It was, in those
days, as daring to publicly acknowledge your love for America as
it was to come out of the closet as a lesbian.

But I could not hide my affection for my homeland, even though I
saw its obvious failings and shortcomings.  I believed then, and
I believe no less staunchly today, that no other nation in the
world offers all its citizens such promises of fairness and
equality, principles that are equally reflected in the Christian
tradition and the American Constitution.

What surprised me when I first became active in America's gay and
lesbian communities was that, in this idealism about America, I
was not alone.  Gay men were beaten with baseball bats, and they
went off to find justice, confident that the American ideal would
protect them.  Lesbians were fired from their jobs, and they said
to one another, "We'll be protected by the law."  So keen was
confidence in the American hope that it took the gay and lesbian
communities decades to conclude, regretfully, that civil rights
are as likely to be withheld as granted, despite the
Constitution; and that true believers are as likely to engage in
cruel discrimination as in compassion, even in the name of
Christ.

Many of us in this community have a long history with the church.

Gay men I have loved deeply and lesbians I've known well have
talked long into the night about their love for God and for God's
church.  For some of them, the church had provided the one
message of hope they knew as children.  The promise of good news
was seized gladly by adolescents who did not understand why they
were different, or what that difference would mean.

For some, the deepest agony of life is not that they risk
physical abuse or that they will never gain their civil rights,
but that they have felt the judgment of an institution on which
they staked their lives: the church.  What they long for most is
what they once believed was theirs as a birthright: the knowledge
that they are God's children, and that they can come home.

And it is not only those of us who are gay or lesbian who have
suffered on the doorstep of some congregations.  Parents, fearing
what others at church might whisper, choose to deny the reality
that their son is gay or their daughter is a lesbian.  Brothers
and sisters suffer an unhealthy, and unwarranted, and
un-Christian shame.  They bear a burden that cripples their
faith, based on a fear that cripples us all.

This means, I think, that we are still a long way from realizing
the ideal of America as a land of hope and promise, from
achieving the goal of religion as a healing force that unites us,
from discovering that human beings are, simply by virtue of being
human beings, deserving of respect and common decency.

And so, I have come today -- in person, bearing this letter, and
in writing to those who will only receive it -- to make three
simple, sincere appeals to those of you who are members of the
Christian Coalition.

The first appeal is this: please make integrity a watchword for
the campaigns you launch.  We all struggle to be people of
integrity, especially when we campaign for funds.  But the fact
that we are tempted by money is no excuse.  We need to commit
ourselves to a higher moral ground.

I do not know when the first direct-mail letter was issued in
your name that defamed gay men and abused gay women, that
described us as less than human and certainly unworthy of trust.
Neither do I know when people discovered that the richest
financial return came from letters that depicted gays and
lesbians with intentionally dishonest images.  But I do know --
and I must believe that you know too -- that this is dishonest,
this is wrong.

I can hardly imagine that a money machine is being operated in
your name, spinning out exaggerations as if they were truths, and
that you do not see it.  But perhaps you do not.  In which case,
I ask that you hear my second appeal: I ask that, as individuals,
you talk to those of us who are gay or lesbian, rather than
succumb to the temptation to either avoid us at all cost, as if
we are not a part of your community, or to rant at us, as if we
are not worthy of quiet conversation.

We are, all of us and those we represent, human beings.  As
Americans, you will have your political candidates; we will have
ours.  But we could, both of us, ask that our candidates speak
the truth to establish their right to leadership, rather than
abuse the truth in the interest of one evening's headline.  We
may work for different outcomes in the elections, but  we can
engage in an ethic of basic respect and decency.

Finally, I appeal to you as people who passionately uphold the
value of the family.  You have brothers and sons who have not
heard a word of family affection since the day they summoned the
courage to tell the simple truth.  You have sisters and daughters
who have given up believing that you mean it when you say, "The
family is the basic unit of society," or even, "God loves you,
and so do I."

Above all the other hopes with which I've come to you hovers this
one: that some member of the Christian Coalition will call some
member of the Human Rights Campaign Fund and say, "It's been a
long time, son" -- or, "I'm missing you, my daughter" -- and
before the conversation ends, someone will hear the heartfelt
words, "Come home.  Let's talk to each other."

In that hope, I appeal to each of you.

Sincerely,


Elizabeth Birch
------- end -------

    I have just read the entire letter and feel there are many good points
    within it.  Children still need love and understanding and the
    stability and support in order to make them solid people and perhaps
    followers of Jesus Christ; honoring Christ in all their actions and
    thoughts.
    
Z    We may work for different outcomes in the elections, but  we can
Z    engage in an ethic of basic respect and decency.
    
    A few years back when gays and lesbians became more open about who they
    were, I was immediately labeled a "homophobe".  I explained that I
    don't fear anybody, I just don't believe sex between two of the same
    gender was a sanctified act before God.  Nope, I was a homophobe
    commented this individual.
    
    I find the use of the word "Homophobe" to be a condescending term when
    it is used improperly and I am offended by it.  The term of phobia
    connotes a fear stemming from the mind, an unnecessary fear.  I find
    this label that was given to me first, insulting and irresponsible.
    
    There.  I have just treated my fellow man with dignity by speaking the
    truth.  Labels are just an uppity way of dragging somebody down to make
    ones self feel gratified...just like many other labels used today
    totally out of context.
    
    -Jack

I received another mailing from the Christian Coalition yesterday.
Included was my 1996 PRE-ELECTION PRESIDENTIAL BALLOT & SURVEY [their
caps].  I filled it out within the 48 hour window as requested,
blew a first-class postage stamp, and stuck it back in the mail.
I declined the invitation to join the 1,600,000 [their number]
members and supporters of the Christian Coalition and making a
monetary contribution to the cause.

I was also urged to call President Clinton at (202)456-1414 and
remind him that the 1994 mid-term elections represented a clear
rejection of his radical social agenda, which includes "gays in the
military, condoms for schoolchildren, taxpayer funding for abortion,
and his Big Government tax-and-spend policies."  The propaganda
sought me to urge Clinton "NOT to follow the advice of his wife,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, to continue doing more of the same."  I
declined all these directives as well.

Richard

    Richard, you mean they don't believe a man should listen to his life
    partner?  I am shocked!
    
    meg

The literature from Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition also contained
this plea:

	   Please Help Us Make America Great Again!

What I'd like to know is, just what era are we talking about here, Pat?

Richard

 I usually just toss their stuff in the trash.




 Jim

    How many take their spouse's advice on how to do their job at DEC?

    
    If she/he has expertise in your area of concern, one would be a fool
    not to solicit the advice of their life partner. My wife has been
    a force in my career, if not my specific job at the time.

    Eric

    Righty Snarf!

 ZZ   If she/he has expertise in your area of concern, one would be a
 ZZ   fool not to solicit the advice of their life partner. 
    
    Which again begs the question, would I offer advice to my wife on how
    to operate a classroom?  Would I ask Michele how to put a SCSI adapter
    on a DSSI based system?
    
    Let's get to brass tacks here.  Evita is good at making speeches and 
    Evita has been an advocate for poor women and children.  But the fact
    is that Evita was a lawyer who was married to a governor.  Because of
    this she was graciously invited to be on the Board of Directors for a
    few corporations...strictly because she was in a position to pull
    strings.  She made about ten court appearances in her whole career as
    an attorney.
    
    In regards to her credentials.  Yes, Evita did in fact graduate in the
    Ivy league and I give her credit for that.  However, let's dispell
    another myth right now.  Evita DID NOT graduate at the top of her class
    as we are lead to believe.  It is rumoured that she was at the top and
    Bill was ranked third.  Yale Law School at that time DID NOT rank
    students.  When they finished a course, their report card said "P" or
    "F"...that is all!  The Clinton's spent far more time that year at the
    democatic convention than they did in Connecticut.  
    
    Plain and simple!  Now, back to reality.  
    
    -Jack

    
    >  Now, back to reality.  

    Appropriate conclusion, since the body of your note was sheer escapism.

    My two pet peeves are spreading unsupported rumors as facts, and the
    use of name mutilation when referring to individuals with whom one
    disagrees (ie Evita, Gingrinch, Bubba). You did both. I think it's a
    sign of ignorance, and I think you're above that sort of thing. Am I
    wrong?

     Eric

 Z   My two pet peeves are spreading unsupported rumors as facts, and
 Z   the use of name mutilation when referring to individuals with whom one
 Z   disagrees (ie Evita, Gingrinch, Bubba). You did both. I think it's
 Z   a sign of ignorance, and I think you're above that sort of thing. Am
 Z   I wrong?
    
    Well, let's get the hard stuff out of the way first.  Yes, it perhaps
    can be construed as a sign of ignorance.  I use that pet name for her
    because the democrats in the White House had this crazy notion that
    they are capable of saving the world.  So out of respect for you all,
    I will not pick on Hillary any more.
    
    Secondly, the information I have brought forth is factual.  It was
    given by a class mate of Hillarys...a class mate who very much likes
    the Clintons and went through college with them.  This is in rgds. to
    the info on Yale.  As far as her background as an attorney, I stand by
    what I said.  That information is available for everybody to see.
    
    -Jack

    Jack,
    
    Perhaps I spoke too sharply. The point is *I* find the use of
    condescending caricature names for people one dislikes is a juvenile
    thing to do. I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with the
    first lady's politics, however, as long as it is based on reality
    and not rumor or innuendo. To that extent, feel free to pick on
    anyone you like.

    The factoids I had a problem with were:

    	o Mrs. Clinton slept/married her way to prominence, through no
    	  merit of here own.

    	o The implication that since she is not a trial lawyer she
    	  must be inferior, or in some way a token lawyer.

    	o That she falsely claimed to graduate at the top of her
          class, and the further implication that she and her husband
          falsified their academic record. (I've never heard them the 
    	  claim of graduating at the top of class at Yale. So maybe I live
    	  under a rock or something.)

    The whole point is Hillary is an intelligent, politically savvy
    individual. To that extent she is certainly more qualified to
    counsel her husband on political issues than your wife is to
    counsel you on SCSI standards. If Michele were a storage engineer,
    you would be foolish not to accept her advice. I simply rejected
    the blanket assertion that one spouse has no place advising the
    other in work related matters, as implied in .98
    
    Eric

    Oh,
    
    I thought Jack was talking about a former first lady in Argentina.
    
    I guess the blonde must be coming out again.  You mean he was talking
    about the current first lady of the US?
    
    meg

    Yes...but it was a joke!  Not funny to some of course!

Yet, from the same source comes this request (9.1688):

>    Finally, would you PLEASE get off this Rush Limbaugh kick.

    Richard:
    
    By your logic, every skeptic in the world must be a Unitarian
    Universalist, every segregationist must be in the Klan, every white
    seperatist must be a Nazi, every pro choice individual must hat it when
    an abortion doesn't happen.  
    
    Am I making my point here?  I seem to recall the names Tricky Dick,
    George Herbert Hoover Bush and the like bantered about over the years.
    
    Sorry...I don't like Hillary Clinton.  I brought up Rush because of
    your persistence that everybody who dislikes the Clintons must be a
    Rush Limbaugh listener.  
    
    -Jack

All I'm saying in 1083.107 is that it seems it just depends on whose bull
is being gored.

However, I'm so fascinated by your reaction, I've decided to save it.

Richard

================================================================================
Note 1083.108               The Christian Coalition.                  108 of 108
MKOTS3::JMARTIN "I press on toward the goal"         15 lines  25-SEP-1995 10:33
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Richard:
    
    By your logic, every skeptic in the world must be a Unitarian
    Universalist, every segregationist must be in the Klan, every white
    seperatist must be a Nazi, every pro choice individual must hat it when
    an abortion doesn't happen.  
    
    Am I making my point here?  I seem to recall the names Tricky Dick,
    George Herbert Hoover Bush and the like bantered about over the years.
    
    Sorry...I don't like Hillary Clinton.  I brought up Rush because of
    your persistence that everybody who dislikes the Clintons must be a
    Rush Limbaugh listener.  
    
    -Jack

 As it turns out I received the mailing about which Richard spoke .94, just
 this weekend.  I opened it, looked at it and read it a bit, and tossed it.
 My candidate was listed therein, but I would prefer not to encourage the
 Christian Coalition to continue to contact me.  While conservative in 
 my beliefs, I've never liked being attached to any "organized" political
 effort.



 Jim

    Actually, I tend to be that way also.  Organizations can always turn
    bad and rather than drop out, I just tend to avoid them.
    
    Yes Richard, I know.  I tend to categorize people...in other words, my
    entry that you saved is an indictment on myself.  So noted!! :-)
    
    -Jack

    
    Re.101
    
    Evita?  What/who are you talking about, Jack?  Eva Peron?
    
    Cindy

[Excerpts from my most recent mailing from the Christian Coalition:]

Dear Christian Friend,

	.....

	I know from you past activities that you are well-informed on
current events, and you understand the importance of getting Christians
involved in the political process.

	.....

	You see, I started Christian Coalition in 1989 because I saw a
need for an organization that could speak out against the ANTI-CHRISTIAN
BIGOTRY we see every day in the news media, in the political debate and
throughout popular culture.

	And I saw that many of the interest groups on the Left (including
MILITANT HOMOSEXUALS, RADICAL FEMINISTS, and Big Government liberals) all
have powerful organizations advancing their point of view in government.

    	.....
    

1981

   "The Constitution of the United States is a marvelous document for
self-government by Christian people.  But the minute you turn the
document into the hands of of non-Christian people and atheist people,
they can use it to destroy the very foundations of society.  And that's
what's happening."

					-- Pat Robertson, Founder


1990

    "I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once
again [I wonder what previous era he had in mind here] governed by
Christians....and Christian values." 

					-- Ralph Reed, Executive Director
					   Christian Coalition

    Well, I agree with you on that one.  Ralph needs to get a better grip
    on history.  
    
    As an opinion, I would say we are heading more towards apostacy!
    
    -Jack

>1981

>   "The Constitution of the United States is a marvelous document for
>self-government by Christian people.  But the minute you turn the
>document into the hands of of non-Christian people and atheist people,
>they can use it to destroy the very foundations of society.  And that's
>what's happening."

>					-- Pat Robertson, Founder

    Althought the intent behing the Constitution was not specific to
    Christianity in so many words, at this time, it was assumed by default
    (when the % of Christians was over 95%, there was little thought to
    it being designed for anyone else - though certainly protections for
    non-Christians were built in with the ratification of the BoR).
    
    I've posted many quotes from the FF in this forum, several of which
    specifically state that the Constitution would not serve any but a
    moral and religious people - that it would fail in the hands of any
    other.  Pat is not too far off base, here, though his use of Christian
    is somewhat deceiving, though not exactly untrue.  It is also quite
    divisive in today's climate, unfortunately.
    

>1990

>    "I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once
>again [I wonder what previous era he had in mind here] governed by
>Christians....and Christian values." 

>					-- Ralph Reed, Executive Director
>    					   Christian Coalition

    
    Althought I respect the Christian Coalition for their moral stands, and
    their willingness to fight for our historical values, I do not always
    agree with their tactics.  Mr. Reed seems to be a bit overly optimistic
    about the future, and is indeed wrong, IMO.  We will not move towards a
    Christian-run nation.  In fact, I believe it will be this very push
    that creates a hostile environment for Christians in America.  We are
    already characterized as bigots, within an ignorant media, and this is
    only the stepping stone for the next leap of demonization.
    
    I consider this inevitable, perhaps it is part of God's plan to
    separate "the wheat from the chaff" within Christ's church.  Though not
    an enjoyable thing, persecution, to one of faith, can do wonders for a
    person spiritually -  something that can be witnessed in other countries 
    where Christianity is outlawed.
    
    
    -steve

    > In fact, I believe it will be this very push that creates a hostile
    > environment for Christians in America.  We are already characterized as
    > bigots, within an ignorant media, and this is only the stepping stone
    > for the next leap of demonization.

    There exists a certain "victim mentality" among some ultra-conservative
    to fringe Christian groups and individuals, often, but not always,
    preoccupied with end-time theology. They see themselves as the only
    real Christians treat with all others with suspicion or disdain. They
    see society's non-capitulation to their way of thinking as creating a
    hostile environment; and society's condemnation of intolerance and
    extremism as demonizing them.

    The foundations of our Constitution are based on respect for humanity
    and the raising of the value of the individual human above the value of
    nobility, inherited authority, and military might. To suggest that
    non-Christians (i.e. Jews, Muslims...) are undermining the "very
    foundations of society" is self-serving poppy-cock. I suggest that the
    spiritual beliefs of the Founding Fathers, if they could be transported
    through time to today, would be very much alien to the political agendas
    of much of the religious-right. 

    (I didn't say they would all be McGovern liberals, so don't suggest
    that that was my implication.)

    Eric

    The minister of the UU congregation in Andover has authored a book on 
    the founding fathers.  His thesis is the extent to which Unitarianism
    and Unitarian Principles influenced the founding of our country.  The
    Unitarian Universalist principle of the inherent worth and dignity of 
    every individual is so fundemental to the Declaration of Independence
    and later to the Constitution.
    
    I just wish that Unitarian Universalism was as successful today in
    checking a narrow mean spirited definition of Christianity as it was in 
    the 18th and 19th century in offering an alternative to Calvinism.
                                                                      

 Z   I just wish that Unitarian Universalism was as successful today in
 Z   checking a narrow mean spirited definition of Christianity as it
 Z   was in the 18th and 19th century in offering an alternative to Calvinism.
    
    What alternative was that?

>    What alternative was that?

My guess is a Christianity based on the spirit of the Jesus
as opposed to rigid obedience to one interpretation of some book.

Tom

    Many of the so-called founding fathers (none of whom were my father) were
    deists.  Thomas Jefferson (who edited the Jefferson Bible) would be
    considered a Unitarian.
    
    Richard