Robert Schwartz: Some one cruising for a date in Easton PA is sending out a cry for help. Don’t confiscate his car. Send him to Vegas.

I like your line of thought, Mr. Schwartz…but I think we can do better than that! Take the confiscated vehicles from the liquor smugglers and give one to any individual caught crusing Easton for a booty call to make sure they can make it to Vegas!

geeber: I visited Easton last year for a wedding reception downtown…I got the impression that the city was making an effort to fix itself up, but there were still several “struggling” neighborhoods.

How ’bout some gasoline for the fire? “Scummy” parts? “Struggling” neighborhoods? Sounds like it could become another “they’re just targeting the poor black man”! Somebody call Al Sharpton!

I refuse to worry about what the religious think of the laws based on their holy book b/c while I may share their ideas about many things, I don’t share their religion or their books. What their deities or books may say carries no weight with me. What good sense the religious may have to share I will welcome.

Still feel that the separation of church and state to be a very, very important concept b/c we don’t all share the same religion, same religious texts, or the same deities.

I’m sure that this measure is aimed at helping those neighborhoods…I also wouldn’t be surprised that the main impetus for this has come from people who live in those neighborhoods, and are tired of prostitutes on street corners and constant traffic.

All too often the best of intentions lead to the worst of regulations. It seems to be a bug more endemic to the UK and western Europe, but it happens in the US too.

The well-meaning, civic-minded residents and elected officials may have inadvertently opened the door to tyrannical law enforcement who will use this as a “revenue source” just as easily as cops in the South use cash seized as “evidence” to fund their operations.

I’m sure that this measure is aimed at helping those neighborhoods…I also wouldn’t be surprised that the main impetus for this has come from people who live in those neighborhoods, and are tired of prostitutes on street corners and constant traffic.

What about leased vehicles? My guess is that they’ll be quietly returned without fuss.

Off topic:
Oh boy, a religious war!

menno:
Well, RoweAS, I can say exactly this with kindness and respect back to you; You have apparently a very wide view of what Christianity includes, if you apparently think it includes what God specifically prohibits!

God specifically prohibits, at certain points in the Bible: Blended textiles (do you wear a cotton-poly shirt?), castrating animals (get your cat/dog fixed?), and many other things that we do today without even thinking. The edicts that God hands down are a reflection of God’s goodness and universal moral law, applicable to the original audience of the edict and not necessarily applicable to people today. It is the spirit of the moral law that is important, not the specific application for that time and environment. When God told Noah not to castrate animals, the point was that cruelty is bad, not that castration of animals is prima facia evil.

In the Greco-Roman times in which the New Testament was written, there was a lot of sick, sadistic sexual stuff going on that was culturally acceptable. Conquering armies would forcibly sodomize the defeated armies. Men would have relations with boys. In that environment, God said, “You will not have any part of this, it’s evil and you KNOW it.”

Today we know that there are some who are born with a sexual and romantic attraction to the same sex. They can’t help it, they didn’t ask for it, and their feelings of love and affection are the same as those that others have for the opposite sex. There is no cruelty or inherent evil. Because of this, you have to ask yourself, in light of a plain understanding of universal goodness, was God really talking about Sigfried and Roy when he inspired men of ages past to write against homosexual relations?

The real central problem is one of Christians basing their entire understanding of morality and doctrine on sola scriptura, rather than the more holistic formulation of scripture, church tradition, and reason. The Bible is put in a vacuum and the mind is turned off. It’s a self-contradictory philosophy, since it was church tradition that defined what should be in the Biblical cannon to begin with. This is why I left my “Evangelical” church and became an Episcopalian.

RF, I won’t cry if you delete this whole topic, since I know you probably don’t want the site to “go there,” but I had to say my piece before the hammer came down.

Thanks.

Would the reason it was confiscated show up on a Carfax report?

RoweAS: That’s exactly the kind of comment I expected. If I don’t agree with you I am clearly wrong.

If one’s opinions are all logically consistent with each other, one is either right about everything or wrong about everything.

Can’t resist an anecdote from a bio of LBJ I’m reading. When LBJ had his massive heart attack in ‘55, he was taken to the hospital, where they made him stop smoking. He had one last cigarette, and he said something to the effect that “I’d rather lose my pecker” than have to quit smoking.

Actually, it’s not. Read the Bible – there’s some pretty harrowing stuff in there, in both the Old and New Testaments.

Now, as for this law – it’s not aimed at Christians, it’s aimed at those who solicit prostitutes. The goal here is to improve the downtown area and inner city neighborhoods, because, in my experience, even the most liberal person doesn’t want to live or shop in a neighborhood where prostitutes openly ply their trade on street corners.

Reviving a city is virtually impossible when this activity occurs on a regular basis, because this is the sort of stuff that keeps people (well, except for those who solicit prostitutes) in the suburbs. Generally, prostitution is not seen as a economic activity that revives an area.

Whether this will work remains to be seen…

Incidentally, in Pennsylvania all hard liqour must be purchased through a state-owned liquor store. Courts have ruled that the state can seize the vehicles of people who smuggle liquor in from out of state. So I wouldn’t hold my breath regarding a constitutional challenge…

So, do you have kids? Do you let them play in the pool unsupervised, maybe? Did you read my post? You can’t even say “hmm, ok he may have a point, there”?

You have every right to think what you please, as we all do – this is a right given to us not by laws, but by God. You don’t have to even believe in God to still have the rights He gives you. Much of humanity does not believe in God!

Clearly we disagree; I was only stating fact that given the black & white opinions that you and I don’t share on this matter, that one of us clearly has to be wrong. 2+2 = 4 not 2+2 = 3 and = 4 at the same time. Correctomundo?

So, let’s postulate that I’m wrong in taking what I see as God’s “owners manual for humanity” seriously and taking the warnings literally.

So, after I die, I appear before the God as you perceive him, what wrong have I done? Nothing – I hurt nobody, only did the best I could do in warning people against doing harmful things to others and themselves; I acted in love, not hate. I can’t speak for religious nuts who speak in hate; I’m not them, even though you might be confusing me with them. That’s not my fault!

So now can you imagine standing before God if I’m right? Uh oh.

Remember that Dodge commercial with the big sheriff dressed in white, in the late 1960’s? The tag line was “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy.”

So with that in mind, I can see how you hope you’re right and I’m wrong!

That’s exactly the kind of comment I expected. If I don’t agree with you I am clearly wrong.

Sorry RF, I don’t want this to get into a pissing contest, it’s just that it truly rubs me the wrong way when intolerance masquerades as good Christian belief.

Prostitution is a problem for several reasons (public health, abuse, exploitation, poverty, ties to the drug trade) and there’s ways to deal with that, not the least of which is ensuring that people aren’t hitting the level of poverty that would drive them to this kind of thing.

Of course, this is America, where the kind of social safety net that would keep people from getting this far and help them out if they do is barely existent. Social programs, after all, are for communists. In this part of the world, we just lock you up or let you die if you fall below the acceptable income level.

Are they seizing and selling the cars of drunk drivers? No? Are Johns’ cars somehow a safety issue? Then doesn’t this seem just a wee bit like a cash grab?

But let’s agree to disagree on that – it is our right both as a citizen and a child of God.

But, clearly, one of us is wrong.

It’s kind of like when my boys were young. A responsible father, I wanted to try to watch out for them – and not let them run in the street, reach up little hands and scald themselves on the kitchen stove, go try to play with a frothing-at-the-mouth doberman pincher, etc.

I guess I am always amused by folks who think that God our father would look down on us in any other light, since He is Love.

His Bible is nothing more or less the equivalent, to use a car metaphore, of a very large owner’s manual filled with warnings and cautions. Instead of it being to simply give a car a good long and useful life, it’s written to help us to live a good and long and useful life.

A loving father sometimes DOES SAY, NO – BAD! That’s harmful! No matter what, that’s harmful!

I can’t fathom why that’s so difficult to perceive for so many, not just you, brother.

Isn’t this what teenage boys do every Saturday night? Isn’t cruizing up and down the street, stereo blasting, turning around at the Dairy Queen, a normal ritual for teenagers in small towns? All thought their chances of getting lucky are slim, at its essence, that is what this activity is all about.

That’s a pretty broadly written law.