view the rest of the comments
News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
As much as I feel churches should be taxed regardless, I could go along with stricter enforcement of the non-taxable status if it were unbiased and actually enforced regularly. I wholeheartedly agree with you on having that enforcement applied to all sides.
We often see how rules and regulations are easily abused, and the amount of money to buy someone has been shown to be relatively low so actual enforcement is questionable at best. Were it not though, and we were seeing verifiable (transparent) progress on actual enforcement, I would be ok with that status being maintained.
Not that my single opinion matters, but things can work when done correctly and I believe in the right of individual people to practice their own religion as long as those beliefs stay contained within their circles and do not have any influence in policies, politics, communities outside of their own personal choices. Though that is an extremely difficult task to accomplish. People have jobs, and lives, some of which happen to be in influential positions and their choices can and likely are influenced by their personal beliefs related to their religion.
We end up in this conundrum where someone else's beliefs are imposed upon the masses. To that point, you could also say, well non-religious voices also influence choices that are imposed on people as well, but generally these choices are more about being less restrictive to access to things like medical care or abortions or whatever other myriad of things there are that get voted on. So it's kind of a double edged sword, but the religious choices are often more restrictive to people's rights.
The end result often being, we don't like this thing so we are going to take away your ability to do it, read about it, etc. So no progress is made. This also coupled with rampant corruption and the use of religion by corrupt individuals to reduce education and control the masses keeps leading us down the road we are on, and until we have another revolution or the government is expelled en masse and rebuilt with a younger, educated, less corrupt (hopeful wishing) generation, then we will never make any strong and lasting changes that would serve to help everyone rather than restrict their rights.
It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where people could have their beliefs but mind their own business when it came to other people's choices.
Thanks for responding and have a great day!