Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Politics
posted by martyb on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-is-not-the-law...-yet dept.

Alabama lawmakers have voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a police department. The church has over 4,000 members and is also home to a K-12 school and a theological seminary with 2,000 students and teachers:

"After the shooting at Sandy Hook and in the wake of similar assaults at churches and schools, Briarwood recognized the need to provide qualified first responders to coordinate with local law enforcement," church administrator Matt Moore said in a statement, referring to the mass murder of 20 first graders and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by a deranged man with an AR-15 style rifle just before Christmas 2012. "The sole purpose of this proposed legislation is to provide a safe environment for the church, its members, students and guests." The church would pay the bill for its officers.

[...] "It's our view this would plainly be unconstitutional," Randall Marshall, the ACLU's Acting Executive Director, told NBC News. In a memo to the legislature, Marshall said they believe the bills "violate the First Amendment or the U.S. Constitution and, if enacted, would not survive a legal challenge." "Vesting state police powers in a church police force violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment," his memo states. "These bills unnecessarily carve out special programs for religious organizations and inextricably intertwine state authority and power with church operations."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 13 2017, @06:44AM (#493280)

    Christian nutballs have killed less people in 30 years than Islam dirtbags have killed in the last 6 months.

    Meh..ISTR Christians and their stooges directly killing about 100,000 people in the Iraq debacle, 26,000 in the Afghan debacle, if you want to talk figures deaths caused indirectly by the shit-stirring actions of your 'Christian nutballs', well, Iraq the total jumps to 250,000 or so, Afghanistan you get 91,000, by destroying Libya you get around 400,000.

    Point is, fine, followers of Islam are nutjobs, but so are Christians..I also feel the need to point you to 33,000 people being killed each year, something like 3 per hour shot dead in that fine upstanding Christian country that is the US, maybe because that's nominally-Christians killing fellow nominally-Christians in your eyes that's somehow 'different' or 'acceptable', maybe the last thought that goes through their head is 'well, thank fuck at least I wasn't murdered by a fucking Islamic dirtbag..'

    Christians all rush to CONDEMN the nutballs that kill in the name of Jesus...

    John 8:7, their book, and I don't see a lot of people in allegedly Christian governments practising that one...

    ...not cut a check to their families for their service to God and treat them as martyrs instead of the shitstains they really are.

    I refer you to the way you turn state paid thugs (aka Military) into 'heroes' when they get killed, and hell, they've even got a whole welfare infrastructure supporting them and their families as well.

    Why stupid fucking middle class white people can't seem to grasp this is beyond me, but its REALLY simple...the other religions grew the fuck up, Islam didn't.

    If we're going to play the 'grow the fuck up' card, it took Christianity 2000 years (give or take, lets round it) to get to this point, Islam started 700 years later (again, rounded date), so, lets see a summary of where Christian countries were 700 years or so ago... [wikipedia.org], well, lookie see, Christians killing other Christians, the church splitting, Jews getting it in the neck for being Jews..and, let's not forget, the rolling party that was the Inquisition started to pick up the pace, peaking somewhere in the 1500s and only finally ran out of steam in the 1800s..wasn't a good time to be a heretical Christian either.

    And this is a really big deal because when the other religions were stoning women and chopping hands off of thieves?

    Last heretic killed by the Inquisition?, 1826 in Christian Spain
    Last of the 50,000 or so 'witches' killed in Europe?, 1782 in Christian Switzerland.
    Historically speaking, not that long ago.

    The most dangerous weapon they had was slings and arrows, not Sarin gas and dirty bombs.

    Oh, look here [wikipedia.org] and here [wikipedia.org] FFS!, or track down some books on the subject..

    Until the day comes when they are not stoning rape victims and throwing gays off of roofs? No contact should be the rule of the day

    I refer you to the way rape victims are treated by the system in the west (Disclaimer: one of my sisters was raped, and not a fuck was given by the system, so I'm slightly bitter here), as for gays, I refer you to Alan Turing and his forced Chemical Castration, way back in the mists of time, or the 1950s if you prefer.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Insightful=1, Informative=4, Total=5
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5