Saturday, May 22, 2004

Unitarians Not Religion? Okay, we're several days behind on this one, but I'm still plenty outraged. From BoingBoing via several sources: Texas State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has denied a Unitarian Universalist congregation tax-exempt status because not everyone there is a theist. My favorite quote from the story: (free registration required) Strayhorn vows to continue the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. "Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption," she said. Now Texans have a lot of reasons to hang their collective heads in shame, but this is a pretty good one. As others have pointed out, several US presidents, Congressfolk past and present, and several hundred thousand ordinary folk (me included) are proud to call ourselves Unitarian Universalists. We attend Sunday services much like other Christians, but we don't make anyone believe things which are contrary to their experience. Our clergy get trained in any one of several recognized schools of theology (the Harvard Divinity School began as a Unitarian institution!). Quite a few of our congregations are older than the state of Texas itself. All this is to say: If  you happen to be living in the Lone Star republic, you might want to share some of this information with your state comptroller, and suggest she come up with a different standard (like, say, the federal standard?) to determine what is and is not a religion. 6:22:24 PM    comment []

Another Radio Year Just signed up for another year at the Radio server. Given the relative lack of frequency of my posting here, I gave serious thought to moving to the new Blogger. It would feel like I was regressing, though. I like the look and feel of the blog here. I'm starting to learn more about Radio's features, and I just don't have time to get up to speed in Movable Type (and moving to TypePad would cost more). We appear to be at the beginnings of a syndication format war that I don't want to be involved in. Dave is sticking by RSS and won't support Atom. Google/Blogger is now only supporting Atom. I wish we could do both here, since I don't have the energy to research and pick the "superior" format. C'est la vie. Don't want to keep promising beaucoup posting in the coming weeks, because I haven't been delivering of late. But I am finding more interesting things that y'all should know about, and that should generate more grist. Here's hoping for another producting blogging year! 3:28:39 PM    comment []