LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY inkedgeekfreak)

According to Fox News in Orlando Florida State Rep. Robert "Bob" Allen, of Merrit Island, was arrested on second degree misdemeanor charges for soliciation for prostiution. In a move right out of George Michael's life, Allen solicited an under cover cop for a blow job while in a public bathroom. It was the cruising in and out of the bathroom that caught the cops attention.

Beyond the usual reaction of oh a ranking government official got busted there's a little more going on here. This entire story is reminiscent of Ted Haggard. Allen received as score of "A" from the Christian Coalitions 2005-2006 scorecard. His voting record proves he's very conservative, even against property rights. He agreed with the Christian Coalition 92% of the time. Ironically he was the author of the failed HB 1475 - Lewd or Lascivious Exhibition act. In addition to this Allen sought mandatory life without parole sentences for those designated as sexual predators.

Most of the articles I have read do mention his widely spread anti-gay rhetoric although his PR is spinning that he never took that stances.

I don't know if this is for humor but his recreational activities are listed as water sports

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Hindu Prayer in Senate Disrupted

( Excerpt. Click Headline for full story. )

"Christians and patriots", eh? I submit that you are very much neither.

ETA: AU response (press release) here.

ETA 2: According to this Christian website:

Zed addressed a mainly empty Senate chamber. Among other staff, only Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) were present for the opening invocation and Pledge of Allegiance. Reid's office sponsored Zed's request to serve as a guest chaplain. Inhofe was there to deliver a speech moments later on the Fairness Doctrine.

According to a recent Action News article, the environment may soon become considerably less friendly for dominionist "frat" frontgroups in the University of Florida system:

( 'Christian' frat banned from University of Florida campus under UF's anti-discrimination acts. Aforementioned 'Christian' frat gets dominionist group Alliance Defense Fund to sue )

For a bit of backgrounder, Beta Upsilon Chi is a frat that promotes the use of abusive "cell groups"--in other words, it operates much like Campus Crusade, only organised as a fraternity. It was set up explicitly as a frat to serve the dominionist "parallel economy"; most of its base is in the Southeast US, and practically all the staff are either Aggies or alumni of Texas Christian University (which has been targeted for steeplejacking expressly by BYX members; TCU is a college associated with the Disciples of Christ, but is fairly ecumenical in its alumni).

This is also not the first legal case of this kind that Beta Upsilon Chi has been involved in--they tried the exact same tactic against University of Georgia when they refused to allow them on campus (under a similar anti-discrimination rule)--they were eventually forced to change their rules.

Other "Christian" frat groups have tried legal challenges--Alpha Iota Omega, a frontgroup of Maranatha/MSI/Every Nation, has done similar legal challenges over its frat status being revoked by University of North Carolina due to a similar anti-discrimination rule (it should be noted that Maranatha was banned from several state college campuses due to its coercive behaviour), and a group calling itself Christian Legal Society (which is effectively a dominionist law group) has filed at least two separate lawsuits of this sort (against Southern Illinois University and the University of California school system).

As the setting-up of "frat" front-groups is increasingly common among dominionist groups (including Chi Alpha, an Assemblies of God frontgroup founded by John Ashcroft's dad (yes, *that* John Ashcroft) which counts among the earliest of the known Assemblies frontgroups), it will be interesting to see which way the courts decide...and how much noise dominionist groups will make if things don't go their way.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY codeman38)

...this time, in West Palm Beach. Found via Digg.com:

Mom urges WPB school board to ban 80 books

Eighty books in high school library stacks are corrupting students with tales of abortion, homosexuality and atheism. That's according to a West Palm Beach mother who has appealed to the school board to remove the books from the shelves of Dreyfoos and Royal Palm Beach high schools.

Laura Lopez has been fighting since September to ban these books that she says "promote sin and lies."

[...]

Lopez admits she hasn't read a single one of the objectionable books cover-to-cover.

In her appeal, she quotes scripture and blames the Columbine school shootings, drugs, bullies, teenage pregnancy and other ills on what she considers the removal of God from schools.

Earlier today, Dark Christianity reported on an attempt by three dominionists to disrupt the first ever Hindu invocation of Congress and the arrest of the individuals responsible.

In part due to a tip by a poster in the previous thread, I decided to do a little bit of background research on the persons arrested. Needless to say, the results are interesting...

Ante Pavkovic is linked with FIRE Ministries (a neopentecostal "Joel's Army" church which (among other things) explicitly targets Jewish people for conversion to "Messianics", has a bibolatrous statement of faith that mentions in part that the reason for the targeting of Jewish people is to make Jesus "hurry up and come back", promotes cell churches, has close links with a youth group that protested Michael Schiavo being allowed to execute his wife's end-of-life wishes that may be connected to Maranatha/Morning Star International/Every Nation, and uses a classic Joel's Army "codeword" as its name) and apparently works a lot with Operation Save America in clinic harassment as well as harassment of LGBT people and stumping for banning gay/straight alliances in schools. He's also been known to get into pissing matches with Calvinists on various religious forums. (Among other things, DailyKos has reported on his involvement with OSA.)

Kathy Pavkovic is apparently Ante's wife and also specialises in clinic harassment with Operation Save America. The Pavkovics have also worked with Repent America and Elijah Ministries; the first is a virulently anti-gay group run by Michael Marcavaige (and operates hand-in-hand with American Family Association of Pennsylvania), and the latter is a particularly nasty Joel's Army group that explicitly calls for the formation of a dominionist theocracy.

Kristen Sugar is also associated with Operation Save America, and is apparently a regular columnist for this group.

Of note, Operation Save America is in full spin mode in trying to create a martyr complex around the three parties arrested.

For those unfamiliar with Operation Save America, they are essentially Operation Rescue 2.0 (in that they have expanded their focus to things beyond abortion, including targeting LGBT people and in fact the entirety of secular society) but in some ways they are actually MORE extreme than the 1980's era Operation Rescue; their links page promotes some explicit domestic terrorism supporters (notably: Missionaries to the Preborn, which has close links to "Christian Patriot" militias and the Army of God domestic terrorist network and whose leader (Matthew Trewhella) has promoted the concept of "Christian Patriot" militia groups himself--he is furthermore known to have signed the "Justifiable Homicide" declaration supporting assassination of clinic workers; Life and Liberty Ministries, known to also have very close links to Army of God domestic terrorists; and the Minutemen militia groups, known to have links to racist organisations and "Christian Patriot" militias).

Knowing now that the arrestees were members of one of the scariest dominionist groups out there...we ARE lucky nobody got killed in this. :P

EDIT 13 July:

Operation Save America is still ramping up the martyr-engines, and Election Central is reporting that the now-infamous disruption was planned by the Operation Save America operatives on the spur of the moment (they were originally in Washington to protest a bill that would add hate crimes against LGBT people to federal laws mandating additional sentencing for hate crimes; dominionist groups have been falsely claiming the proposed bill would essentially outlaw dominionist churches that didn't care for LGBT people).

The head of Operation Save America has praised their actions, whilst even the hardline anti-LGBT American Family Association became a bit uncomfortable re their actions (the AFA has claimed they "didn't organise or encourage anything like that"--this is largely spin, seeing as the AFA actively encouraged its members to letter-spam Congress to get the invocation cancelled; AFA and Operation Save America have also been all too willing to participate jointly in tributes to Army of God assassin Paul Hill and the AFA has reportedly provided legal representation for OSA during aforementioned tribute (in which OSA leader Flip Benham burned a copy of the Quran, among other things)).

The Times of India has now reported on the disruption in a decidedly unfavourable light; dominionist groups already have a very poor image in India (partly because of problems with neopente and SBC pastors sneaking into the country without obtaining religious missionary visas--essentially entering the country as illegal aliens, in other words (yes, the US requires religious groups doing missionary work here to also obtain missionary visas, too, specifically the B-1 visa; it's a common practice worldwide to have a specialised category of worker's visa for religious workers)--and because of some controversies regarding forced conversions in parts of India (in particular, in Nagaland where fundamentalist Baptist and neopentecostal groups have literally forced villages to convert at gunpoint, are attempting to set up a bona-fide dominionist theocracy in the state of Manipur, and have forced the government of India to declare states of emergency in that state; there are reports of similar instances of forced conversions and dominionist secessionist movements in several other Indian states).