LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY moirawolf)

A friend has linked me to this page:

House proposes to Repeal the 22nd Amendment, thus ending Term Limits

While not on the official website of the House of Representatives it does appear to be some sort of govermental website, aligned with the Library of Congress.

Is this a Hoax? Or is someone in Washington actually thinking about ending Presidential Term Limits? Could this country stand even *more* of George Bush? What would that mean in terms of the Christian agenda?

We're all just waiting for his 2nd term in office to end, so that someone new, anyone new will get into the office (and we can always hope for a Democrat). Speculation?

Personally, if this is true, it's yet one more reason to write your congressman/woman, Representative and protest.

Either that or move to another country.

crossposted to my personal LJ

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Talk To Action article goes into the "Patriot Pastors" and the history of the involvement of Dominionist Christians with the political Right:

Ohio, Blackwell & the Christian Right Part II
Recently, the Ohio Restoration Project announced plans to mobilize conservative Christian voters towards the 2006 elections. The principal beneficiary appears to be Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell who is running for the Republican nomination for governor. (I referred to this in passing in Part I, which described Blackwell's involvement in a dominionist seminar at Cedarville University on June 17th.) The story has been widely reported, including by the New York Times, and much blogged, for example by Bruce Prescott at Talk to Action.

But there was one part of the Ohio Restoration Project action plan that was strikingly familiar to me. It incorporates a feature of two pivotal events in the development of the contemporary Christian Right -- the Washington for Jesus rallies held on the mall in Washington, DC in the 1980s. Interestingly too, they may very well also follow the model of abuse of non-profit tax-exempt organizations that accompanied these events. ( Read more... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This past weekend, there was a conference (reported here by Frederick Clarkson) that was entitled "Taking Back the Gates". It was a conference aimed at Christian businessmen. The homepage blurb reads:

CONSIDER THIS…

* What would happen if a Godly influence owned CNN, FOX News or the New York Times? (In the 1880's the New York Times was the leading pro-life voice in America referring to abortion as "child killing" - It has since changed hands!)
* What if Christians owned the stadiums and arenas in town and a lot more real estate?
* What if 1 in 8 websites offered help and hope to the world instead of posting pornography? (Source: www.internetfilterreview.com)
* The portals of power (gates of the city) have been captured by the enemies of the gospel and have now been turned on us, assaulting our liberties and stealing our children.

WANT TO TURN BACK THE TIDE?

I just want to know one thing: What the heck is a 'godly influence', anyway? No, don't answer that- I know that it's a code word for rich, white, dominionist Christian males. No one else need apply.

One of the speakers at this business conference was Gary Cass, who runs the Center for Reclaiming America, which the Christian Science Monitor describes thusly:

The Center for Reclaiming America, the Monitor reported, "aims to increase its 500,000-strong 'e-mail army' to 1 million, and to encourage Christians to run for office. It has plans for 12 regional offices and activists in all 435 US House districts. And a new lobbying arm in Washington will target judicial nominations and the battle over marriage."

"'If they don't vote our way, we'll change their view one way or another,' executive director Gary Cass tells the group. As a California pastor, Dr. Cass spearheaded efforts to close abortion clinics and recruit Christians to seek positions on local school boards. 'We're going to take back what we lost in the last half of the 20th century,' he adds."

The title of Cass' Cedarville talk is: "Winning the Culture Wars."

"We'll change their view one way or another..." Is it me, or does that sound like a threat?

As I have previously noted, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now aggressively investigating hate activity (including hate activity against les/bi/gay/trans folks and, for that matter, hate activity against anyone who isn't dominionist) and considers several of the major dominionist groups hate groups on par with Klan or Neo-Nazi groups (see http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/intrep.jsp?iid=31 for this months' Intelligence Report)

I have been providing SPLC as much info as I can (including links to Dark Christianity here, as well as to Yurica Report, mikeditto.com, and Theocracy Watch) regarding this, including detailed info on Frank Simon (Kentucky's local hater) who, as it turns out, *is* linked to Family Research Institute (which is one of the groups SPLC lists as a hate group) and the info on the FRC/David Duke associations.

Per private email from SPLC, their next Intelligence Report will be focusing on the "ex-gay" movement, and they will be doing heavy focus in future regarding hate activity among dominionists. (I would also expect that the list of groups formally listed as hate groups will also expand.)

When the new Intelligence Report comes out, I will post a link.

Anyone who has info that may be helpful to SPLC is *strongly* encouraged to forward this to them via their comments page (at http://www.splcenter.org/center/contact.jsp and yes, they will keep your comments anonymous). (Sunfell, anyone who's suffered harassment at the hands of dominionists--this means *you*. One of the biggies that would be useful is if we can get folks from Yurica or Theocracy Watch *directly* to contact SPLC, too--I've emailed them both to let them know regarding the SPLC beginning active investigation of and warnings regarding dominionist groups. We also need to get more info to them regarding things like links between groups (I've notified them on how the Family Research Council is pretty much the "official" political wing of Focus on the Family, and how Exodus International links together many groups--the more they have, though, the more it's going to be helpful) and how dominionist groups infiltrate organisations (the US Airforce Academy's takeover by dominionists is a *prime* one here).)

(Again, as backgrounder for folks who might not know--Southern Poverty Law Center is the group formerly known as Klanwatch. They, along with the Anti-Defamation League, are probably the two single largest and most active groups fighting racism and hate. SPLC offers, among other things, training courses to law enforcement on hate groups and hate activity; SPLC has also successfully sued and shut down Klan and neo-Nazi groups in past. This is *very* historic for them to start listing dominionist groups as hate groups and investigating dominionism as hate--for that is, at its core level, what it is--and they are going to need all the support and help they can get on this, especially from those of us who are walkaways from those groups.)