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Home Front
Cross-dressing Wiccan official: Shelter serving homeless since 1939 accused of discrimination
2003-10-11
EFL from WND
A Christian mission serving homeless people since 1939 is under investigation for discrimination because its walls are adorned with crosses and other religious imagery.
Hope this becomes a national issue that the candidates have to take sides on. Will be fun to watch Bean, Kerry and Clark try to waffle through this issue.
The probe was prompted by a city fair-housing investigator, who also happens to be a cross-dressing Wiccan openly contemptuous of mainstream religions, the Charleston, W. Va., Daily Mail reported.
Sounds like a smaller version of the Micrsoft anti-trust case. Smaller unsucessful companies spurring the government to penalize a larger competitor. Wiccans are free to feed the homeless whatever potions they deem appropriate.
The investigation began May 8 when Okey Napier Jr., walked into the Huntington City Mission in West Virginia and noticed the "Christian imagery" and other things that caused the city’s Human Relations Commission to probe allegations the homeless shelter violated the state’s fair housing laws.
How does a fair housing law apply to people that have no place to live? The homeless have neither a fair house nor an unfair house to live in. Their homeless. Its part of the definition. Will Napier also demand that religious symbols be removed from all cardboard boxes sold in WV?
The mission is supported mostly by private donations but also receives some state and federal money.
Better not celebrate Christmas at the shelter either. Would hate to oppress the homeless with a message of hope.
The City Mission’s lawyers say the investigation raises serious questions about the length religious groups need to go to separate their beliefs from their charitable work, the Daily Mail reported. They filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. U.S. District Court in Huntington to abort the investigation. "Enough is enough," said attorney Dave Duffield, according to the paper. "How would you like them to come into your church and tear the cross down?"
Or how would you like it if they came into your coven and flushed all the ram’s blood down the drain without neutralizing it with pig knuckles?
He points the finger at Napier, who wrote a piece on his website criticizing major religions for their condemnation of homosexuality. "Nobody, unless they had an agenda, would do this," Duffield said.
Not necessarily so, unless you consider stupidity an agenda?
However, Sally Lind, the commission’s executive director, insists the probe simply is about how the mission can do its necessary work in a "non-discriminatory way."
If the mission was very discriminating, it wouldn’t have a whole lot of clients now would it. How much less discriminating can you be than a mission that shelters unbathed possibly-psychotic random walk-ins?
Last year, the Charleston paper said, the mission provided a place to sleep for thousands of people and served more than 82,000 meals. It also provides spiritual guidance and holds daily worship services.
The goal of the suit seems to be to require NGO’s to conform exactly to governemtal standards -- which they won’t.
The commission voted last month to scrutinize the mission’s policies, which include barring drugs and alcohol and not allowing unmarried couples to sleep in the same room.
This is an obvious violation of the inalienable right to party down at the old mission.
The panel, which enforces the state’s fair-housing laws, is looking at allegations the mission discriminates according to religion and gender. The accusations include requiring people seeking help to reveal their spiritual beliefs, serving non-Christians in facilities with Christian imagery and making married men spend two nights under "observation" in the men’s dorm before joining their spouse in the family dorm, the Daily Mail said.
An obvious violation of the right to spousal abuse.
The mission contends most of its clients do not use the mission’s spiritual services but still are welcome to anything the mission has to offer.
Pretty ineffective indoctrination and repression.
Lawyer Chad Lovejoy, who regards the probe as an attack on First Amendment rights, said the mission no longer has a policy of requiring clients to have a spiritual interview. The Huntington City Mission is affiliated with 300 other gospel rescue missions nationwide.
Which will be attacked one by one.
"If we don’t share the gospel, then it makes no difference to just feed and shelter," Phil Rydman, the spokesman for the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions, told the Daily Mail. "It doesn’t change a life just to feed a person a meal."
or welfare would be a more effective program.
Rydman believes the Huntington probe is unique, noting it comes as President Bush’s administration is giving federally funded charities more latitude to display emblems of their faith.
- in their own facilites.
Duffield said when he saw Napier’s website he realized "why all these insane attempts to put a cork in the First Amendment rights of our pastor" are being done, the paper said. Napier’s piece, which criticizes religious institutions for creating a culture that punishes non-traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity, includes a cartoon of the Bible’s three wise men in dresses with the caption, "You see! We’ve been around for a long, long time!"
I doubt the magi were sporting padded bra’s lipstick and heels.
The Daily Mail said Napier occasionally dresses in women’s clothes and performs as a drag queen under the stage name Miss Ilene Over. Napier’s supervisor, Lind, insisted "there is nothing on his website that makes him look like he is prejudiced against religion."
The sad thing is that Ilene Over would be welcome at the mission, but if Ilene is sucessful in his/her suit, who is hurt? The homeless, are.
Posted by:Super Hose

#6  There must be a limited supply of stage names like Ilene Over. What will the next generation of transvestites do for handles?

As for access to facilites for transgender homeless, Charleston is a big town. I'm sure there is a YMCA.
Posted by: Super Hose   2003-10-11 1:57:21 PM  

#5  "It doesn’t change a life just to feed a person a meal."

I think Super Hose's comment on that phrase:

"or welfare would be a more effective program."

is right on, Steve. If you give a man a meal, you may not change HIS life spiritually, but it does spiritually affect YOURS. Welfare is evil, since it breaks the chain between "donor" and recipient. Since when did a Welfare mother come to you and thank you for paying your taxes which funded her welfare check?
Posted by: Ptah   2003-10-11 1:46:47 PM  

#4  I doubt the magi were sporting padded bra’s lipstick and heels.

No, that's the Fighting 357th Heavy Bustier Regiment of the Liberian Army.

"It doesn’t change a life just to feed a person a meal."

Oh yes it does! That's a central point of the Gospel: what you do for your fellow man does make a difference.
Posted by: Steve White   2003-10-11 1:13:31 PM  

#3  Investigating a Christian Charity that helps all people of all faiths(or no faith).But Islamic Charities that only serve those of the Moslem faith get a free pass.

What a load of crap!
Hope a Federal judge throw's these people in jail for wasting the courts time.
Posted by: Raptor   2003-10-11 12:23:57 PM  

#2  Old Patriot

My understanding is that the priciple of Seperation of Church in State is not in the Constitution but was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. Jefferson, a free thinker, considered religious ideas dangerous, but he did not particpate in drafting the Constitution. He was overseas and read the Constitution in a letter or newspaper. My understanding is that Jefferson didn't think much of the document.
Posted by: Super Hose   2003-10-11 12:15:40 PM  

#1  There is so much stupidity being done in the name of the First Amendment, most of which our founding fathers would be up in arms about. The First Amendment does NOT require a "wall of separation" between religious activities and government activities. It merely states that the GOVERNMENT will neither establish a religion, or deny one the full right to practice. The lawyers have spun that so much it'd cause a tornado. It's time to start shooting stupid lawyers, stupid politicians, and stupid anti-Christians. The only way to protect our freedom of religion in this nation is to put a stop to Government infringement upon that freedom. THAT was the whole point of the SECOND Amendment.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-10-11 10:47:46 AM  

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