Tuesday, July 09, 2024

A Christian Nation

The dream of the “new” Republican party is totally opposite of the ol’ Republican party of small government and getting the government off your back. The “new” Republican party wants to tell you what religion to belief in and not only that but also their interpretation of the Bible. You know that part about feeding the sick and sheltering the homeless… well scratch that part out.
Ken Paxton, champion for religious freedom but not Christian charity
Ruling regarding El Paso migrant shelter shows hypocrisy of attorney general’s stance.
Dallas Morning News
By Dallas Morning News Editorial
July 5, 2024


Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has never let his myriad legal troubles, an alleged extramarital affair or an FBI investigation interfere with his work to champion religious freedom. Paxton has gone to bat for public school cheerleaders who wanted to display banners with Bible verses at high school football games. He has advocated for a Marine who refused to remove a paraphrased Bible verse from her work space. He has suited up for a justice of the peace who faced a legal challenge for opening court proceedings with prayer.

But for an El Paso nonprofit that offers Christian hospitality to migrants? Oh, for that charity Paxton had something special in mind. For those Christians he would unleash the power of his office to try to shut them down.

A state district judge this week tossed a baseless lawsuit by Paxton to try to close Annunciation House, a private network of migrant shelters in El Paso. The nonprofit was founded in 1978 and has been associated with the Catholic Diocese of El Paso from the beginning. By all accounts, it is driven by staffers and volunteers who sincerely believe in the Christian principle of helping the sick and the poor, no matter who they are.
You are free to believe what you want as long as it is the same as I believe.
Paxton’s office made all sorts of allegations without proof. It said Annunciation House was enabling human smuggling and operating a stash house. Never mind that the group is so well established that federal agencies send over migrants who have been recently processed.
Oh by the way, he doesn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of it standing up in court! This is settled law!
In January, Border Patrol agents walked up to a ramshackle old building on the outskirts of a small town in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. They found three men.

Two were Central Americans who had crossed the border illegally. The third was an American — a university lecturer and humanitarian activist named Scott Warren.

Warren was arrested and ultimately charged with two federal criminal counts of harboring illegal migrants and one count of conspiracy to harbor and transport them. Warren has pleaded not guilty.
But Scott Warren was with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson and was part of No More Deaths. They were arrested in January 2018 and charged with harboring illegal immigrants after providing food, water, and shelter to two undocumented migrants and later found guilty. They believed that their faith compelled them to provide humanitarian aid to people in need, including migrants crossing the desert. But they appealed…
FEDERAL JUDGE REVERSES CONVICTION OF BORDER VOLUNTEERS, CHALLENGING GOVERNMENT’S “GRUESOME LOGIC”
The judge agreed with the No More Deaths volunteers’ religious liberty defense and condemned the U.S. government’s “deterrence by death” border strategy.
The Intercept
By Ryan Devereaux
February 4 2020


A FEDERAL JUDGE in Tucson, Arizona, reversed the conviction of four humanitarian aid volunteers on religious freedom grounds Monday, ruling that the government had embraced a “gruesome logic” that criminalizes “interfering with a border enforcement strategy of deterrence by death.”

The reversal, written by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Márquez, marked the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s crackdown on humanitarian aid providers in southern Arizona, and the second time in matter of months that a religious freedom defense has prevailed in a federal case involving the provision of aid to migrants in the borderlands.
But Texas Attorney General doesn’t believe in the Constitution or federal law… you know the part, the Second Amendment? He wants to score political points with the right-winger and then when case is thrown out of court he can blame those liberal judges.
The defendants established that they were exercising their “sincere religious beliefs,” Márquez wrote, while the government failed to demonstrate that its application of the refuge rules was carried out in the “least restrictive” manner available.
The Annunciation House was following their religious beliefs but not those religious beliefs of the Attorney General, so therefore in his eyes not a legitimate belief. As I said, he doesn't have a leg to stand on,

1 comment:

  1. The religious establishment wonders why church attendance and affiliation is on the decline? It's a case of selective Christianity. Basically, churches have become a club of like thinkers who choose to exclude others. The consensus is "spirituality" is not on the decline. One does not need to attend a four-wall building to follow the teachings of Jesus. Now, governments decree to have the Ten Commandments on the classroom wall, yet forget about upholding them. Of course, the Ten Commandments are suspended for some running for higher office.

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