What is it about Free Speech that scares you so much? --thats the issue here.
Its already been pointed out that leftist pastors and muslims already ignore the IRS rules of political speech.
These two groups ignore the law with impunity. They know that no one will prosecute them.
--Seriously. Black churches do this all the time.
the only threat of prosecution is against CONSERVATIVE speech in the pulpit. Pastors who even talked about the evils of abortion are threatened to be prosecuted. Obama's pastor of 20 years was never ever threatened even after his tapes were shown to be almost all about politics.
So the Left ignores the law. Why then are you threatened if the right seeks to legally speak in freedom?
and certainly I take issue with your reference to a pastor speaking about conservative issues and idea as Spewing at the congregation.
And how can you say say that free speech will lead a congregation astray?
Aren't you really arguing for govt regulation of religious speech?
Liberals are always threatened by people of faith. Do we scare you?
There are times in everyones life growing up that we remember like it happend yesterday.
I was raised in a small church Congregational that hired a young pastor that we all loved. He had a lovely wife and a couple of kids my age.
He was not like the old Pastors we were used to ,this Man of God made one think about ourselves and believed that just faith in Jesus was useless with out doing good works in his name.
One day my grandma came home crying uncontrollably, seems that as she was on the board of deaconess the rest of the board had decided to fire this Pastor due to just one sermon he gave about free speech.
He was afraid for the country because of the McCarthy hearings and neighbors turning against each other, people loosing their jobs because they may have slipped and voiced their openion that was not popular at the time.
The conserved members of the congregation were horrified that their pastor would stand up for the Communists, the blight on America according to Old Joe, in Washington.
This was my first introduction into the world of adult paranoia and censership. Years later as a young mother living in Conn. I was horrified to find that by state law---late 1960's ----I would spend a year in jail if I were to give out information on birth controll of any kind by word or written. In fact we military dependents were warned not to carry the birth controll pills in our purse that could only be gotten on a military base as to carry them off base could be reason for arrest.
Free speech has its boundary's and today we are again loosing it.
Now we have laws against using certain words that are in the dictionary, it is called Hate Speech, discrimination and not PC.
However this is warped as the courts are given great latitude on this.
Example, if my purse is stolen on the street by a man in drag, I have to describe him as just that, if I yell after him as he runs down the street with my purse, "Stop that Faggot" and someone goes after the thief and knocks him down, the SOB can walk due to Hate speech and whoever tackled him will face charges that they attacked him because he was wearing a dress---
Have you ever heard of any non white going to jail for hate speech for calling someone a Cracker, Honkie, White Trash, Gringo, Frog, Kraut, Jap, Greaser, you get the idea I hope. All these words are fine and not hate speech.
Because of all this in my life I indeed was a liberal excepting for abortion rights and our military. We were at freaking war and I supported our Troops. Aborting was killing people, I have never thought anyway else.
Took a long time for me to realise that the Conservatives of my youth were nothing like today's Conservatives, it was my oldest son that convinced me to study and pay attention to politics.
So Mr. Mannn, just to set the record straight, as things stand today I am a Conservative in this stage of life, most likely this will be the last stage of life for me at my age.
Sorry about this long post, I just feel that to make a decision on someones ideas without knowing where they come from and what leads up to their ideas is a bit short sighted.
I
you too.