dbb@aicchi.UUCP (Burch) (10/17/85)
Well, I think an important point has been missed in this discussion. What we have here is a bill backed by two interest groups. The first group wants to end the tax fraud caused by many folks who send off for ministerial documents in order to defraud the government the share of taxes that they justly and legally owe. I have run across people like these. I worked with a man who had his own religion; He offered to let me join. They met four times a year, at the equinox/solstice times, and he was quite blatently using this as a tax dodge; in other words, this was not a *bona fide* religion. I have no arguments with the restriction of these religions, but the current laws already have tests for this sort of horse hockey, and these fools seldom go uncaught. The other group simply wants to impose their religous ideas. They do not care if these religions that they would exclude are bona fide. They only want them destroyed because they are (to their eyes) "the enemy" of their God. These are the same kind of arguments that led to special status of Jews in 1936 in Germany. Can we afford to support that sort of fascism in the U.S.A.? I hope not. If we choose as scapegoats the so-called "Aquarian" religious sects, how long before we lump in the Bahai, the Buddists, the Coptics, and Hmmm... Those Jews sure are strange... God help us all if this law is passed or if we allow this sort of Nazi thinking to dominate the thought of our society. -Ben