BS: No pictures, please

Subject: BS: No pictures, please
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:39 PM

OK, what do you think about this?


Mennonites leaving Mo. over photo law By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER, Associated Press writer
1 hour, 46 minutes ago



HUNTSVILLE, Mo. - The grocer, the butcher, a cabinet maker and several other members of the town's Mennonite community are planning to move to Arkansas over a Missouri requirement that all drivers be photographed if they want a license.

The Mennonites — a plain-living sect whose members are similar to the Amish, but usually more worldly — say the 2004 law conflicts with the Biblical prohibition against the making of "graven images."

"We want to respect our government. We're not trying to fight them. But we still have our beliefs," said Ervin Kropf, a bearded, overall-wearing grocer whose market draws customers from miles around for the fresh milk, brown eggs and spices supplied by his fellow Mennonites.

Kropf said he is looking to sell his store. He said if he cannot find a buyer, he will stay in Missouri but rely on someone else to bring in his supplies, because he will not be able to hold a driver's license without agreeing to a photo.

Around Huntsville, community members say more than a dozen families altogether are preparing to move south to Arkansas, where state law offers a religious exemption to the photo requirement. Other Mennonite enclaves near Rolla, Springfield and Vandalia are facing a similar dilemma.

Missouri had an exemption similar to Arkansas' for more than 30 years. That changed in the security crackdown after Sept. 11. Now, those who object to the photo requirement can have their pictures left off their licenses. But the photos must remain on file with the state.

Many Mennonites in Missouri find that acceptable and plan to stay put. But "there are a bunch of us who don't want to do that," Kropf said.

Maura Browning, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Revenue, which oversees driver's licenses, said that while her agency is sympathetic, "we are the administrator, not the creator, of state law."

Some community members call their Mennonite neighbors peaceful, hardworking taxpayers wrongly ensnared in the government's war on terror.

"This whole business of homeland security is a farce," said Joel Hartman, a University of Missouri-Columbia professor of rural sociology. "These people are no threat whatsoever to the larger society."

Hartman estimated the combined Amish and Mennonite population in Missouri at 6,000 to 7,000. That number includes those who drive and don't object to the state law.

Several families have already left the state, with others waiting to sell their homes and businesses, said Mark Price, Randolph County recorder. Those planning to leave Huntsville include a cabinet maker, a butcher and an excavator, he said.

"They are pillars of the community," Price said.

Leo Kempf, a Mennonite butcher, said he has reluctantly decided to uproot his family and move. "It's something you don't take lightly," he said.

Unlike the Amish and members of some other Mennonite sects, Kropf, Kempf and their neighbors use telephones and drive cars, though they paint the vehicles black to make them less showy. They eschew radio, TVs and computers and dress in simple garb — men in overalls and black shoes, women in ankle-length dresses and head coverings. The men typically wear beards.

Community members are intensely private; many politely declined to speak with a reporter for this story.

"These people do not have a strong emotional and psychological attachment to the land that many of us do in society. If things become unacceptable in one area, they'll move to another," said Hartman, who grew up in a Pennsylvania Mennonite community.

Pennsylvania and Ohio — two of the states with the nation's largest Mennonite populations — continue to license drivers whose religious beliefs forbid photos. But other states, including California and Kentucky, have joined Missouri in recent years in eliminating the exemption.

There are an estimated 500,000 Mennonites in the U.S., according to Donald Kraybill, a professor and a fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

The Missouri Mennonites' opposition to having their photos taken for their driver's licenses put them in the minority among members of their faith nationwide, said Steve Scott, a research assistant at the Young Center. "Usually, if you accept a car, you would accept a photograph," Scott said.

The effect of the nationwide crackdown upon Amish and Mennonites is not limited to driver's licenses.

Amish who have been able to cross the border into Canada and Mexico for medical treatment or to visit relatives without passports will no longer have that option starting in January. So those who object to having their photos taken for their passports will effectively be unable to leave the country.

And in Pennsylvania, a state law requiring photo identification to purchase guns has prompted many Amish who hunt to hire non-Amish neighbors to buy guns for them, according to Kraybill.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:56 PM

How flaming ridiculous.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Wesley S
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:58 PM

Hmmm.... I can see both sides of the issue. That's a tough one.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: skipy
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 05:58 PM

So a terrorist can become a Mennonite, that will make their "mission" a little easier them! Bollox, comform to your elected government or go somewhere else!
Skipy
sitting on the fence!

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: GUEST,MarkS
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:01 PM

Somewhere in scripture there must be a dispensation. How about rendering to Caesar what is Caesars?

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:01 PM

Never thought of the religious views of others, did they? Perhaps, instead of a photo, a fingerprint??

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:03 PM

There is a similar problem with those religious women ( Islamic and perhaps others) who wear a veil, and are forbidden to show their faces to strange men.

How do we balance the religious rights with the need to have identification? Would a fingerprint be an acceptable substitute, and would THAT violate some religious rule?

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:05 PM

Rapaire,

Crossposted, but you get credit.

[ I guess great minds DO think alike...   8-{E ]

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: pdq
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:30 PM

I know my driver's license photo looks graven. No doubt about it!

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Becca72
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:42 PM

a drivers license is a privilege, not a right.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: skipy
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:47 PM

Answer:- get rid of religion, I know that that statement will piss a lot of people off, but it is my belief & I am entitled to it!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:50 PM

Yes, you are.

And I wonder what they're doing about the Navaho and Hopi and Zuni. They don't like photographs either....

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Peace
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:51 PM

They are moving, not asking for the law to be changed. So why all the pissin' and moanin'?

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: bobad
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 06:56 PM

Religion clashing with the 21st. century, nothing new there.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:43 PM

As I recall the actual mandate is against making graven images of God, isn't it? If so, it seems a bit far fetched to include driver's licenses. If they tried to Poloraid God he'd probably melt the camera anyway.

A

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:46 PM

Not for the Hopi, Navaho and Zuni....

A friend of mine heard a radio preacher offer "an autographed picture of Jesus Christ" once. He was going to send in the $10 to see what he'd get, but he used it for beer instead.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Mar 07 - 08:54 PM

I think it actually says...'You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth'

Exodus 20:4. In context it refers to Gods...as in don't worship them. This is also the 'jealous God' text but like anything in the Bible, it is easily taken out of context.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Bert
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:14 PM

I guess they are scared of suicide buggy bombers!

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:50 PM

Graven images I thought referred to attempting to make a picture of god.

Silly doctrine none the less.
__________________________________



"'You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth'

Oh my God!
I just did a 16 sq. ft under sea painting AND a 3D picture of a distant nebula and galaxy.
pleeeeeeeeze forgive me.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 12:58 PM

Government bureaucracy clashing with the people. Nothing new there.

People who have done no harm, and obviously are not going to do any harm, should be left alone to live as they choose.

To theorize that a terrorist will become a Mennonite in order to have a driver's licence with no photo in order to evade detection is about the most laughable thing I've heard in a long time. Terrorists, who are usually well funded and set up by their organizations, have no problems in getting legitimate looking I.D. It's ordinary law-abiding citizens who are inconvenienced by the bureacratic BS that's going on these days, not terrorists and professional criminals.

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:14 PM

Nutters

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:37 PM

Official German position: completely unacceptable demand; the only compromise is for those who have to wear a head cover for religious reasons: they may do so (unlike we others) but the face has to be visible from chin to forehead.

Some followers of religions really should arrive in our century.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:48 PM

Jeesh - I wouldn't wish our century on anybody!

Subject: RE: BS: No pictures, please
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Mar 07 - 01:49 PM

Here in Indiana, You not only have to be registered to vote but you now must show a photo id. Ok no big deal to me, I drive, even got a
license. However I have alot of Amish friends who now can't vote,even if they are already registered. Before anyone jumps in and says Amish don't vote, Yeah some do. I asked a friend and she told me not all do but yes some do vote. Not anymore . I understand the need for security, but seriously who's gonna protect us from the idiots in charge. Yeah I know , Vote and make sure you you do your homework on who your voting for.

      mmm1a(who's in a pissy mood)