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From: dbb@aicchi.UUCP (Burch)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Taxation, and religious freedom.
Message-ID: <583@aicchi.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 13:51:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: aicchi.583
Posted: Thu Oct 17 13:51:55 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 06:11:00 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Analysts International Corp; Chicago Branch
Lines: 26


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