Cuban-Am Bishop compares GOP request for list of names to Castro

[Rose Siding]

As the Bush-Cheney campaign mounts an offensive to solidify a religious base for the November election, the Episcopal bishop of Southeast Florida has joined a chorus of religious leaders denouncing the campaign's plan to obtain church directories for electioneering purposes.

To Bishop Leo Frade, the Bush-Cheney strategy violates the separation of church and state.

''Handing over names for partisan politics to any party would be an infraction of our tax-exempt status as a religious institution,'' said Frade, who heads 82 Episcopal churches in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Martin counties.

Frade, who was born in Cuba and came to the United States in 1960 as a college student, went further in a July 2 diocesan letter.

''I'm alarmed by any suggestion of providing the names of church members to any particular political group,'' he wrote. ``I saw this request made by Fidel Castro at the beginning of his regime, and his persecution of churches that refused.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/9181348.htm?ERIGHTS=4774004787159691698miami::[e-mail]&KRD_RM=2jkqipmnmimmiiiiiiiiijrkkn

[flordehinojos]

1. Finally! A Cuban-American who has been through the experience speaks up!

Finally, a Cuban-American who has experienced the developing tentacles of a dictator first hand speaks up.

Unfortunately, other Cuban-Americans who have been through the same experience will probably accuse him of being a Castro spy,a communist, a varmint or a vermin, an undesirable at any rate, no matter that he is the Bishop of the Episcopal Church for S.E. Florida and a man seemingly gifted with insight and good judgment.

;(

[enough]

2. Wow that is a stunning statement.

and here's another cleric who is appalled, from the same article:

snip>

''I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way,'' Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said recently in a statement, noting that such efforts would likely 'rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way.''

snip>

[peacetalksforall]

3. There they go again...we are down on the ground and they are

slapping us back and forth with copies of the tax statutes having to do with the requirements of tax exemptions - religious organizations who don't pay taxes are not supposed to play politics. But they flaunt it. They are not even trying to cover it up.

Didn't the right wing go after Jesse Jackson to try to get his tax exemption status revoked?

I'd like to know the count of right wing church and preacher affiliations who spend time 'politicking' and who don't pay taxes.

I'd like to know the number of legal investigations and convictions that are being pursued legally. Where is the IRS? Where are the retractions of tax exempt status? Why are they exempt if they use their preachers, congregations, properties to play politics?

Yes, there they go again. They flaunt the law. They laugh at us. They think we're stupid.