Barry Lynn: An American United with others Against the Constitution
Michael Bray, 2008
Barry Lynn: An American United with others Against the Constitution
Non-profit Org Uses Tax Exempt Status to Subvert First Amendment
Americans United for Separation of Church and State defines itself as “a national non-profit religious liberty watchdog organization dedicated to preserving the Constitutional Rights of religious freedom guaranteed to all Americans in the First Amendment to our Constitution.” Religious freedom includes, we presume, the right to practice one’s religious faith. And what if that faith involves addressing the civil authorities with the law of God? Speaking in support of good candidates for office? What if it includes imprecatory prayers concerning God and the wicked; i.e. that He destroy the wicked in their unrepentant pursuit of evil doing? Is that okay?
The leftist AUSCS has been harassing orthodox (conservative) churches for years. It advocates for a false legal doctrine of “separation of church and state” and then applies it against those particular churches which hold a high (and traditional) view of the Scriptures and their relevant application to the pubic square. The AUSCS uses its own tax exempt status to harass and silence its political opponents.
“Pastor” Lynn Calls on IRS to Harass Pastor Wiley Drake (and others)
Pastor (of no local church) Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State wants to shut down Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake. While monitoring Drake’s radio show, Lynn’s spies heard him endorse Huckabee on the radio (www.crusaderadio.com) and observed the same in an August 11 press release.
Lynn’s AUSCS complained in a written note to the IRS on August 14, 2007 which resulted in harassment of Drake by the IRS with a letter on February 5, 2008 notifying Drake that his First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park was being investigated. Pastor Drake then called for imprecatory prayers from fellow Christians: viz., that the Almighty would bring judgment upon his (and “His,” presumably in the opinion or Rev. Drake and Christian co-workers and sympathizers) enemies by email on February 14. Lynn is outraged, indignant, horrified, and fashionably aghast.
Lynn was ordained by the apostate United Church of Christ and was a lawyer with the ACLU before taking over the reigns of the AUSCS in 1993. He has been a busy little bee ever since, always looking for signs of Christianity in the public square to oppose. And while focusing his attention on what has come to be known as churches of the “Christian Right,” he takes no notice of, say, Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson whose flagrant religious politicking for the Left he does not find objectionable.
And, pursuing a course outside the apparent boundary of his organization’s stated purpose, he has been a champion of pornography (in the name of freedom). Such is the estimation of attorney Benjamin Bull with the Alliance Defense Fund who says, “Barry Lynn, for over 20 years, has been the mouthpiece for the pornography industry, arguing that all pornography — including child pornography — is protected by the First Amendment and that the government can do nothing to stop distribution of child pornography”
His resume includes his attempt to enlist the IRS to abuse (the decedent) Jerry Falwell for speaking out against political leaders and their efforts to advance sodomy and abortion in the land. And he told Falwell that he wants eventually to have the motto, “In God We Trust,” stricken from our money.
Lynn’s organization more recently went after another church in Kansas, Spirit One Christian Center, which the AUSSC described as “a fundamentalist church that has long meddled in right-wing politics.”
According to AUSCS blogger Rob Boston, by posting a sign on church property which said, “ABORTIONIST TILLER HAS GIVEN $300,000 TO SEBELIUS. PRICE OF 1000 BABIES,” they were crossing a line into possible illegal activity.
“This reference was to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who was seeking reelection. The message attempted to tie her to George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who provides late-term abortions,” according to Boston. Lynn’s organization reported that a “Wichita resident snapped pictures of the marquee” and then boasted that “Americans United sent copies of the photos to the IRS and requested an investigation” and further claimed that subsequent IRS investigation of Spirit One was a product of their civic whistle blowing.
The pastor of Spirit One, Mark Holick, reported to World Net Daily that the IRS had raised questions about a voter information guide that was handed out in Wichita as well as an abortion-issue related e-mail he had forwarded. As Rev. Holick sees it, “These are not political issues, these are Gospel issues, Christian issues.” He also noted that the IRS even wanted to know whether Phil Kline, the Republican state attorney general, had ever spoken at the church and the details of his address.
We would disagree with both Rev. Holick and AUSCS on the dichotomy they proffer between politics and Gospel. Holick contradicts himself on this point when he says concerning the messages on his marquee, “The purpose is to obey the Lord, proclaim His Word (the Gospel), and establish the Kingdom.” Indeed! And to speak of establishing the Kingdom is to speak of political matters: justice, law, and rulers. Lynn and his AUSSC know this; they simply advocate for a twisted version of the Kingdom. And such “churches” which have supported sodomite and abortion rights get a pass from the AUSSC whenever they have their favorite politicians speak in their churches or when churches express support for their politicians. Al Gore “mined Detroit’s black churches” as “President Clinton, banished to the wings, preached at two Washington-area black churches, trying to excite likely Gore voters to turn out on Election Day” in the 2000 election campaign and repeated the same tactic in the 2004 campaign for Kerry. But “Pastor” Lynn is only interested in separating Evangelical churches and the state.
Take, for example, the Detroit United Church of Christ church hosting of vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman in late August during the 2000 presidential campaign where he declared, “As a people, we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and to God’s purposes.” They made no complaint to the IRS; they just wrote a note of warning to Lieberman! During that same campaign the AUSCS did make two complaints to the IRS regarding churches which (again) actually hosted Democratic candidates in their pulpits in Detroit and in Alexandria, Virginia. (Did AUSCS they really have a choice if it wanted to attempt to maintain their appearance as a neutral, Constitution-upholding organization?)
Or take the current Presidential campaign. Barak Hussein Obama was invited to speak at the June 2007 United Church of Christ national convention in Hartford, Connecticut. This is not simply a hint of endorsement from a local church and its pastor, but an endorsement by an entire (ultra-liberal) denomination. The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ (no thanks to Barry Lynn and his AUSCS). “We did not file a complaint with the IRS about the Obama appearance. We looked into the situation and did not see a violation of IRS rules. We saw no evidence of UCC officials seeking to appear to endorse his candidacy,” said Lynn.
Right.
Lynn’s Efforts to Embarrass Organizations which Associate with Christian Radicals
Lynn and his cronies are not engaged in “preserving the Constitutional Rights of religious freedom,” as their own tax exempt status allows. They are engaged in political advocacy by harassing their ideological and political enemies. Their advocacy, to be sure, is Leftist politics. What, for example, has their inveighing against Ann Coulter’s rhetoric or Pastor Wiley’s prayers got to do with the Constitution or with religious freedom? They have engaged in efforts to intimate their ideological opponents from engaging in political speech and they do this as a tax exempt organization.
When Ann Coulter spoke at the “Reclaiming America for Christ Conference” on March 3, 2007 sponsored by D. James Kennedy’s Center for Reclaiming America, she uttered some words that offended the liberal AUSCS speech monitors. Stepping out of their putative role as a guardian of the Constitution’s First Amendment, the tax-exempt word police scolded the Center concerning the content of Coulter’s speech. Indeed, they lectured the Center to “publicly disavow extreme statements made by Ann Coulter”:
“Ann Coulter’s statements can only be described as loathsome,” said Lynn. “It is astounding to me that this type of vitriol was unleashed before a religious organization that claims to be ‘reclaiming’ America for Christ. This rhetoric must be repudiated immediately.”
(Zounds! How astonishing! Yes. But to be sure, how offensively intolerant to sensitive human beings who disagree with Lynn.)
In his letter to Dr. Gary Cass, Executive Director Center for Reclaiming America, Lynn says he was “outraged.” Not only did Ann Coulter utter the word “faggot” in reference to (sodomy tolerating) Presidential wannabe John Edwards, but she spoke flippantly about the shooting of abortionists. This was “particularly outrageous,” said Lynn. He counseled as follows near the close of his advisory:
Reasonable people can disagree about issues like legal abortion and which candidates are best qualified to lead the country. But I hope you would agree that the level of rhetoric employed by Coulter in these two cases is appalling and has no place in America’s civic discourse. It is simply beyond the pale for Coulter to resort to slurs when referring to political leaders and to give tacit approval to murder.
Well, well, Mr. Lynn. “Reasonable people” do indeed disagree about “issues” like the termination of unwanted abortionists and whether or not such an act is a service to mankind. Hmm. Seems Mr. Lynn is a bit narrow-minded and intolerant here. What he calls “appalling” another man might call – “soothing.” And what he intolerantly declares to have “no place in America’s civic discourse” others think to be rhetoric long overdue.
The great dearth of abortionist slayers in contrast to the multitude of baby murderers was a matter of ridicule and served to illustrate the main topic of her speech: the failures of the “Right.” How poorly, she observes, anti-abortionists have waged their war for life, for example. And why, when pro-aborts use rhetoric like “perform” and “procedure” to describe commission of murder, do they complain when Coulter plays the same rhetorical game when she cheekily references the termination of unwanted abortionists as follows?
“Those few abortionists were shot, or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them. I’m not justifying it, but I do understand how it happened . . . The number of deaths attributed to Roe v. Wade about 40 million aborted babies and seven abortion clinic workers; 40 million to seven is also a pretty good measure of how the political debate is going.”
Yes, reasonable people can agree to peacefully disagree about some things. It seems that the ones doing all the tolerating, as child slaughter and sodomy advance throughout the land, are the ones who claim to actively oppose it (much less, those who have a “different opinion”).
Who is intolerant? Consider the University of Connecticut and its intolerance of Coulter before she uttered the forbidden “hate speech.” In a university where ideas of all kinds are generally entertained, there was no room for the ideas of Ann Coulter (or any other prominent defendant of Christendom). “Conservative columnist Ann Coulter cut short a speech at the University of Connecticut amid boos and jeers, and decided to hold a question-and-answer session instead,” was the report given by the Associated Press following her attempt to give an address at the University. The Hartford Courant reported on December 8 that she “gave up trying to finish a speech … when boos and jeers from the audience became overwhelming.” The Courant also said that a section of the audience was chanting “you suck, you suck.” Well, well, now that is one way that intellectually bankrupt Leftists can defend themselves. The AP report noted:
“About 100 people rallied outside the auditorium where she spoke, saying she spread a message of intolerance.
“We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech,” said Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major who heads campus group Students Against Hate.”
Well, in the name of hating hate speech, a trend among the elite of higher education personnel is to be intolerant of what is labeled as “hate speech.” The AP story reports on the same tactics employed by “hate speech” monitors at another institution: “In October 2004, two men ran onstage and threw custard pies as she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona.” It is nothing new. The easiest way to get a view of leftist intolerance of speech it doesn’t like is to follow the efforts of David Horowitz, the convert from Leftdom who has spoken at – and been shouted down from – many a college campus at which he was invited and paid to speak.
A curious feature in the whole censorship enterprise by the Left is its unabashed hypocrisy on the one hand and the asinine deference to the Left by the “Right” on the other. It is well known that the Left is never embarrassed by its ever-leftward drift from – to use the subject of sex, for example – historic and traditional heterosexual marriage to sodomy to pedophilia and (just on the horizon) to bestiality is never an embarrassment to the those Leftists standing upon the political ground they have secured. As the pioneers of the change press the limits further, there is no embarrassment. “No enemies on the Left” is the dictum first seized upon by French communists. It is an established creed.
On the other hand, those on the “Right” are expected to diligently police their ideological associates. Back to the brouhaha over Coulter’s “faggot” reference to John Edwards. She spoke as follows on the 34th annual Conservative Political Action Committee Conference on March 2 of 2007 and repeated the same words in a speech at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference the next day.
I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I’m – so, kind of at an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards, so I think I’ll just conclude here and take your questions.
The “rehab” reference was an allusion to Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington whose use of the epithet resulted in “psychological assessment” imposed by ABC executives. Her use of the term mocked the speech police as well as those who tolerate sodomy, one might conclude. But regardless of the precise intentions of her speech, the intolerant efforts to batter her with their own brand of name calling makes both the totalitarian Leftists and the cowering self-silencing “Rightists” look stupid.
Howard Dean issued a press release expressing his outrage. Dean called Coulter’s remarks “hate-filled and bigoted” and pontificated as follows:
“While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on the issues, we should all be able to agree that this kind of vile rhetoric is out of bounds. The American people want a serious, thoughtful debate of the issues. Republicans — including the Republican presidential candidates who shared the podium with Ann Coulter today — should denounce her hateful remarks.”
And agree they did.
A spokesman for Sen. John McCain said her comments were “wildly inappropriate”
A spokesman for Romney called it “offensive.”
Of course we expect from Ted Kennedy condemnation of anyone who condemns sodomy. The Chappaquiddick kid jumped on the opportunity to shamelessly moralize thusly: “Ann Coulter’s words of hate have no place in the public sphere much less our political discourse. Not only should she apologize but those who participated in the conference with her should denounce her shameful and divisive actions.”
The AUSSC seeks to overcome its opponents by embarrassing them. Lynn and his fellow leftist pundits calling their ideological opponents to renounce what they believe: “I hope that Coulter’s remarks do not represent the sentiment of your organization and assume you will have no reluctance in making that clear,” wrote Lynn to Dr. Gary Cass Executive Director Center For Reclaiming America on March 7, 2007. Here is the last paragraph of that letter:
“The comments made by Coulter at your recent gathering are shameful and bring dishonor to your organization’s reputation and the goals it seeks to achieve. She has done great damage to your organization. You can repair some of that damage by issuing a public statement disavowing Coulter’s remarks today. I urge you to do that. I also urge you to make it clear that Coulter will not be welcome at future Center for Reclaiming America events.”
But we ought not to expect such submission to the advancements of decadence from those who are championing righteousness and justice. Lynn and company are advocates of that which is contrary to what is good and right. They are champions of Lawlessness; they want to keep the Law of God out of the civil arena. And they want Christians to “disavow” and cut off those who stand boldly, even brashly, for Truth.
Back to Pastor Wiley
There is an intolerable intolerance on the part of the Leftists who admonish “reasonable” people to disassociate themselves from Pastor Wiley. It appears that some authorities in the Convention may be tempted to bow to the unholy indignation of AUSSC personnel. Will Hall, Vice President for News Services of the SBC Executive Committee and Executive Editor of Baptist Press wrote a message to one of staff members of AUSSC, Joseph Conn, as follows:
“You wrote that the position of ‘second vice president’ is the SBC’s ‘third highest post.’ The fact is the first and second vice presidents are honorary titles. . . period.
“Neither have any duties assigned relating to leadership of the Convention. There is no budget for either and neither has any power other than the one vote granted to each messenger attending an SBC annual meeting. The bottom line is your description appears to be an intentional misrepresentation to sensationalize AU’s position relative to its public tête-à-tête with Wiley Drake. It is an offense equal to Wiley’s having used the honorary title in his personal press releases.”
We can hope that Mr. Hall’s feeble efforts to distance the SBC from Pastor Drake are a product of momentary battle-phobia (formerly: cowardice). If Pastor Drake’s imprecatory prayers for his Godless tormentors are premature in the mind of Mr. Hall, he need not bow to the whines of these AUSCS apostates. Better that he be patient and confirm to Mr. Conn the essential propriety of calling judgment upon the manifest God-haters which the AUSCS represents. May God duly bring his justice to those who despise His Law and display that disdain in their calls for “separation” of His Law and ethics from the political realm, the very kingdom in which we live.
In a February 15 report, the AUSCS noted that “Religious leaders from a wide variety of faiths repudiated the pastor’s tactics.” The implication is that the crowd must be right. Cut off Pastor Drake from the rest of the hive as the crowd stays together and moves toward a more popular and agreeable environment. Submission to such intimidation leads to betrayal of fellow champions of the faith and, ultimately, betrayal of the very Lord in whom that faith rests.
The AUSCS is led by a man ordained by the United Church of Christ. As this variety of “Christian denominations” has abandoned the historic Faith grounded in the Scripture and defined by the ancient creeds, it is no surprise that this organization is hostile to those who remain true to the Faith and the ethics which are rooted in it.
The organization is not true to its claim to be “dedicated to preserving the Constitutional Rights of religious freedom guaranteed to all Americans in the First Amendment to our Constitution.” On the contrary, it seeks to suppress the fact that our Constitution places no restrictions upon churches. The Constitution places restrictions upon the federal government, prohibiting it from interfering with the rights of the states to establish whatever brand of Christianity they choose. That is the meaning of the Constitution as it was written in its historical context.
The AUSCS has 1) perverted the meaning of the First Amendment, 2) chosen to apply a popular misconception of the First Amendment – the “separation of Church and State” myth which words are not found in the Constitution – against a particular brand of modern churches, i.e. those that are traditional and historic in their affirmation of the authority of the Scriptures, 3) refused to apply its own misconceived Constitutional theories equally; i.e. it will not blow the whistle against “liberal churches” by the same standard it applies to “conservative churches.”
Another Truth Attack Communists and Christians: Blocking Access
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