The Whore of Babbling On came to Wichita today to engage in some illegal campaigning with a local hate church, Immanuel Baptist. I say it is illegal because churches may not engage in partisan politics and legally maintain their tax exempt status. Immanuel Baptist is a 401(c)3 organization and therefore were required to send invitations to Tiahrt's two political opponents including the esteemed Michael Kinard who didn't receive an invitation. It's not like the church or Tiahrt cared because the Bush administration is pushing churches hard to elect Republicans to office and have snuck many midnight bills through Congress to erode the Separation of Church and State to allow tax exempt churches to openly endorse candidates while still maintaining their tax exemption. If churches weren't so greedy they'd pay their fair share to alleviate societal problems like poverty however Immanuel Baptist would rather spend $150,000 on a giant cross and millions on church swimming pools and running tracks. I guess all those comments by Jesus to aid the poor was just lip service as the Southern Baptists figured he was full of shit half the time anyway.

Spunky organized the protest and despite many people being involved with 4th of July activities she organized a decent sized turnout. We peacefully held our signs and didn't engage anyone in insults as we were there just to protest Tiahrt and the illegal activities organized by the Pastor Terry Fox. However we were greeted by many rude gestures and one fundamentalist Christian thought it amusing to throw lit firecrackers at us. Nobody was harmed in the attack though, it's a wonder what morals they teach to those children in the church.

A few of the fundies engaged us in conversation after the campaign stop/sermon. Many of

the people who joined us were from a local gay rights organization and one fundy family preached to one young male about his "sin" of homosexuality (which God never condemns in the Bible). Brad Bennett who attends the church (which explains his weekly hate filled rant against everybody on the Godarchy Line) approached us and invited us into the church. I highly doubt the armed security would have let us past. Why do they need guns at a church when God will provide protection? Probably the same reason why so many churches have lightning rods. A few parishoners seemed honestly interested in what the signs had to say, many others simply shook their heads in disgust. Spunky made one sign about Tiahrt's vote concerning HR2861. The vote Tiahrt placed would eliminate a large chunk of funding for VA hospitals and was roundly condmened by a veteran's rights organization (www.amvets.org). Despite this fact that Tiahrt voted to cut benefits for veterans one

Baptist took issue with it claiming that Tiahrt voted against riders on the bill (but never mentioned what those riders were). There were no riders. All that was voted on was to fund an additional $1.8 billion to fund the VA to deal with the increased workload due to increasing number of wounded coming home. Republicans largely voted against supporting our troops while the Democrats, largely criticized as not supporting the troops, favoured the increased funding. How considerate of Tiahrt. His children stay home in America safe while others get their limbs blown off and he rejects funding to care for those amputees who are lucky enough to come home alive. He went to inform D-cubed that the concept of Separation of Church and State didn't exist in the Constitution. Despite a failure to quote the First Amendment where the concept of the Establishment Clause exists (he tried to say the U.S. couldn't establish a national church or a religion but what the Amendment says is that Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion, not "a" religion as the Baptist tried to inject into the Constitution.) Despite his ignorance he told D-cubed to re-read the First Amendment. What does it say? Read it for yourself at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html

The nutty fundy went on to rant against Michael Moore and his award winning documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 about how Michael Moore is a pathological liar and his movie is filled with lies. Not that the fundy is concerned with lies considering Tiahrt made it his campaign promise to impose upon himself a term limit to not exceed more than three terms (he is going on number five). D-cubed queried him about a number of subjects like how the 9-11 Commission said there was no link between the 9/11 attack and Iraq (the 9/11 Commission's findings are not presented in the movie, only that Bush tried to block such investigation) but the fundy insisted I was wrong and, despite this information being widely available on the internet, received all this information from the movie. Asked whether or not he had seen the movie he said he hadn't which makes it rather hard to conclude that the movie is filled with lies if he had never seen it. It is the sort of thing the conservatives have to resort to. They couldn't block the film, they couldn't get it banned so they have to go after Michael Moore's character but what they couldn't do is refute the facts that Moore has presented in the movie. The facts are that Bush stole the election and Gore is the legally elected President, that the Bush administration was highly incompetent when it came to the entire 9/11 disaster and the Iraqi invasion had nothing to do with terrorism but was all about greed. Bush should be redefeated in 2004, if you haven't already be sure to register to vote and get the fraud out of office as well as his lapdog Tiahrt.

The following day the Wichita Eagle put out a small article about the protest. Not surprising the same conservative paper which lauded Bush and is seldom critical about him failed to mention the highlights about why the protest was so important. The Maggot Punks' main focus was the Tiahrt was violating campaign laws and that Immanuel Baptist Church was violating it's tax-exempt status by not inviting rival candidate Michael Kinard. Despite Spunky's organizing of the protest the credit was given to another organization and the article made it seem as if the protest was about a sacriligeous use of the church to promote politics (which Christians should find demeaning but seeing that modern Christianity is more about profit and power rather than Christ's message of compassion towards mankind I doubt many people get upset anymore).

Book of the day: Creationism's Trojan Horse by Barbara Carroll Forrest, Paul R. Gross

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