# Persecution in America



## SolaScriptura (Mar 15, 2010)

Check THIS out: An Arizona town has fined a church for it's members holding Bible studies in members' homes. This town outlaws "religious assemblies" meeting in homes. 

Persecution is all around us. Pray for our brothers and sisters.


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## Montanablue (Mar 16, 2010)

Unreal. Freedom of assembly, anyone? Hopefully this will be turned down.


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## Christoffer (Mar 16, 2010)

Persecutions of christians seems more severe in the US than in Finland sometimes... lets pray for justice in this case.


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## OPC'n (Mar 16, 2010)

Ridiculous! That law slipped through on the tail of another bill I bet! That law is certainly breaking the higher law of our constitution. Hope they win....praying!


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## smhbbag (Mar 16, 2010)

I keep waiting and waiting for a news release of an apology, retraction, or something similar from the authorities saying "Oops! We didn't mean for that to happen, even though the wording in our law says that"....and then they fix it and all is well.

Or, perhaps, a new article may come out showing how the whole thing was an innocent misunderstanding.

Neither has come. In similar cases, the local governments always had a reasonable case - documented parking issues, noise disturbances, etc. 

It doesn't look like they have _anything_ to go on. And yet this thing may stand. Ridiculous.


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## EricP (Mar 16, 2010)

Apparently the town officials have responded: http://www.abc15.com/content/news/s...banning-religious/VtcgOGTn70qMHJvU3mq0Cw.cspx


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## JBaldwin (Mar 16, 2010)

Check your local county development standards ordinance, and you might find similiar codes which are not being enforced. We have a local citizen group which reads legislation before it is passed in our county. They often come across similar draconian laws which were not even thought up by our local officials. Rather the laws are thought up by members of a committee which writes legislation. These committees are made up of realtors, developers and believe it or not (in my county) college students who are working on a project who don't always think of the constitutionality of laws. Worse than that, sometimes blanket legislation borrowed from another county is passed before it is even thoroughly read by local officials. I cringe at what could have passed in my own county if folks hadn't been watching more closely.


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## TimV (Mar 16, 2010)

Eric, I was thinking about the traffic deal that the article brought up. A neighborhood with limited curb space, someone parks in front of a mailbox or driveway or takes the usual space of someone else....I can easily see someone complaining. I highly doubt it's religious persecution. Any meeting with all those cars probably would have resulted in the same complaint.


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## SolaScriptura (Mar 16, 2010)

TimV said:


> Eric, I was thinking about the traffic deal that the article brought up. A neighborhood with limited curb space, someone parks in front of a mailbox or driveway or takes the usual space of someone else....I can easily see someone complaining. I highly doubt it's religious persecution. Any meeting with all those cars probably would have resulted in the same complaint.


 
Tim,

Except the law didn't forbid large family gatherings or parties or whatever, only "religious assemblies." Of course the evildoers will attempt to say that they had real concerns that were not anti-Christian... but the fact that other types of things which would produce traffic weren't prohibited shines a light through their smokescreen. It was anti-religious bias plain and simple.


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## TimV (Mar 16, 2010)

Thanks, Ben, you could be right.


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## Jack K (Mar 16, 2010)

It sounds like careless law-writing more than evil intent. In such situations, charity calls for us to let it slide since they've realized their mistake and intend to correct it.


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## ValiantforTruth (Mar 16, 2010)

JBaldwin said:


> Check your local county development standards ordinance, and you might find similiar codes which are not being enforced. We have a local citizen group which reads legislation before it is passed in our county. They often come across similar draconian laws which were not even thought up by our local officials. Rather the laws are thought up by members of a committee which writes legislation. These committees are made up of realtors, developers and believe it or not (in my county) college students who are working on a project who don't always think of the constitutionality of laws. Worse than that, sometimes blanket legislation borrowed from another county is passed before it is even thoroughly read by local officials. I cringe at what could have passed in my own county if folks hadn't been watching more closely.


 
This is the great and almost completely unrecognized legal crisis that has enveloped us in the 20th and 21st centuries: administrative law. Elected officials do not write the laws. Bureaucrats write the laws. These officials are unelected, permanent, and almost impossible to get rid of. The Federal Register prints 70,000 unreadable pages of regulations per year, year after year, decade after decade. Most of it doesn't get enforced, and none of it gets read. Anything put into the Federal Register has to be challenged and examined by Congress within 15 days to be rejected.

This is the overthrow of the rule of law. When the number of laws is effectively infinite, it is impossible to know whether anything you do is legal or illegal, and hence we are constantly breaking the law without knowing it. No problem, since they don't enforce any of them. But it means they can get anyone they want, anytime they want.


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## Tripel (Mar 16, 2010)

Sounds like a dumb law, but I wouldn't call it persecution.


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## JennyG (Mar 16, 2010)

ValiantforTruth said:


> This is the great and almost completely unrecognized legal crisis that has enveloped us in the 20th and 21st centuries: administrative law. Elected officials do not write the laws. Bureaucrats write the laws. These officials are unelected, permanent, and almost impossible to get rid of. The Federal Register prints 70,000 unreadable pages of regulations per year, year after year, decade after decade. Most of it doesn't get enforced, and none of it gets read. Anything put into the Federal Register has to be challenged and examined by Congress within 15 days to be rejected.
> 
> This is the overthrow of the rule of law. When the number of laws is effectively infinite, it is impossible to know whether anything you do is legal or illegal, and hence we are constantly breaking the law without knowing it. No problem, since they don't enforce any of them. But it means they can get anyone they want, anytime they want.


It's bad, - but you can still be thankful you don't live under the EU. Imagine if that toxic fog of regulations originated from the Catholic lands of South America.
Some of it does get enforced, too


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