Theos-Talk Archives (February 1997 Message tl00384)

At 08:12 PM 2/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 Drpsionic@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> If the TS is chartered as a religious or spiritual body, no politician will
>> touch that with a ten foot pole.  The first amendment lawyers will come in
>> and make hash of any attempt at an investigation with every major and minor
>> religious body in the US (especially the Roman Catholic Church) filing friend
>> of the court briefs.
>> Chuck the Heretic
>
>Actually, I think you may be wrong here Chuck - what you say used to be
>the accepted wisdom in political circles until recently, but my friends in
>DC tell me there is an immense (though quiet) shift of the winds underway
>- brought about by several different reasons ... first, the great public
>abuses of the fundamentalists in the 80's - the Swaggert, Baker and other
>fiascos made national news, but numerous similar things happened at a
>smaller level - put the first chink in the armor of the "hands off
>religion" idea; the huge movement into politics of the Christian right
>further blurred the line, and finally, this is all taking place in a
>Washington environment in which Republicans are making a huge push to have
>the IRS look *much* more closely at non-profits in general. The groups
>that get in trouble, however, virtually always do so (as with Baker and
>Swaggert) because the group itself engaged in internal nefarious
>behaviour. Other organizations will support one another when the case is a
>simple one of religious freedom, but look at the TS if Doss' scenario
>comes true - an "Occult" organization, claiming to be democratic and
>enjoying non-profit status, siezes property by using a bylaw a ruling
>faction shoved through *illegaly* (that is, the TS broke its own bylaws in
>changing the bylaws), is discovered to have a clearly non-democratic ES
>with possible ties to India calling virtually all the shots - and on top
>of that we must remember that in the view of Christian fundamentalists
>*HPB* is to this day preached about as sitting pretty much at the right
>hand of Satan ... is held responsible for introducing the darkest of evils
>- oriental occultism, the "new age" and etc., to the western world ...
>	No, I suspect the Catholic church would be too politically astute
>to comment (they'd have little to gain and much to lose) and the
>fundamentalists would very likely file amicus briefs *against* the TS,
>they'd love to see it perish altogether. And a whole pile of the new
>conservative class of politicians would actually feel their careers
>would be *helped* by going after an "occult" group ... *they'd* have much
>to *gain* and little to *lose* with their constituants.
>
>								-JRC

Dear John:

Thanks for giving an additional angle to the situation I did not realize.

Let me add another factor to the scenario.

Let us say the problem of asset seizure is in dispute in one city. Let us
assume members in 10 different cities, who by now through Internet contacts
become aware of the problem and a handful of members from each one of the 10
cities get in touch with their elected representatives and communicate their
fears that their property can be at risk and impress on their representative
(congressman and senators) that the property was donated by local donors for
local use and an out of state/out of country organization is a threat to it,
then you will see 10 congressmen and 10 senators getting interested.

Usually congressmen and senators pay attention to local issues, and
inquiries coming from multiple congressman and senators will surely draw the
attention of DC people.

In such an eventuality, the only thing going for TSA is their multi-million
dollar TIT funds to finance the litigation/inquiry/investigation using some
of the top legal talents that such money could buy. Once something like this
get started by people in DC, they have unlimited resources, since they have
our tax dollars to spend.

The above possibilities do clearly exist and could not be completely ruled out.

MKR


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