Don't forget bankruptcy. Nobody can get in there and do the debtor/creditor thing like a Jew. Also entertainment law.

They can sue you for "bad faith" now? Jeesh, this really is a theocracy

The blogger at Parenthetical Statement seems a bit overwrought about this.

Nothing in their ad copy suggests that they are denying their services to anyone else. There is nothing wrong with advertising 'to' christians in a non-exclusionary manner. The mere fact that they are not also directly marketing to non-christians is hardly an unspeakable crime.

As an athiest I don't have any particular salvation chip on my shoulder; I don't even find this ad bothersome. Of course, since religion is nothing more than slick marketing itself, the irony of seeing religion used as marketing is sweet.

I'm no great fan of lawyers who advertise, given our society's glut of lawsuits, but this particular ad isn't nearly as bad as the shrieks about it at the Parenthetical Statement blog post:

http://web.mac.com/washingtonydc/iWeb/parenthetical%20statement/blog/19133AB0-0A7C-4390-9B28-49F1CE6B325C.html

particularly the "shocked and horrified by either such bigotry or such blatant pandering to the Focus on the Family geared residents of the Springs."

Nor do a see the relevance of that ad to an unblblical Jesus who "shunned the prostitute and snubbed the tax collector." As his critics often noted, Jesus had both sorts among his followers, so this ad, had it been run circa 32 A.D., would have no doubt appealed to them.

Lawyers--despite their best efforts to convince us otherwise--are people and, as such, have every right to direct their advertising as they choose. I once knew a Chinese real estate agent who directed most of her attention at selling homes to fellow Chinese, (i.e. ads with her picture in Asian newspapers), since she understood them best. This is precisely the same thing.

The real issue behind the criticism is that, no longer able to look down their noses at blacks and Catholic immigrants, the dominant bigotry of the chattering classes shifted to conservative/orthodox Christians (Catholic and Protestant) in the 1970s due to their opposition to legalized abortion and sexual debauchery and, more recently (post 9/11), to Jews who want to keep their Jewish identity, particularly by living in or supporting Israel. The reasoning for the latter and now politically correct bigotry apparently being that that Israel, by simply existing, is making the threat of terrorism greater.

On top of that, Parenthetical Statement seems clueless about "the values this nations was founded on." Many of those who first settled this country did so because Europe, with its established state churches, only allowed one religious point of view in the public arena. English noncomformists (meaning all non-Anglicans) had severe restrictions on what they could do and say quite similar to those that blogger is suggesting when he claims that this ad was somehow less legal or ethical than any other attorney's targeted advertisement (i.e. an ad directed at blacks or Hispanics). For such people, Catholics, Evangelicals and now Jews are non-persons and, in the context of this New Bigotry, can only exist if they remain invisible, not advertising their POV professionally, not voting their convictions, not supporting Israel politically, and so forth--exactly and precisely like nonconformists, including Jews, were treated in Old England. Sadly, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

I should add that, while anyone is free to hold that POV, any effort to make it a part of law or public policy, is blatently unconstitutional. The First Amendment, we should never forget, exists because the rural Baptists of Virginia, fearful their state's Anglicans would import religiously repressive English laws, demanded that Madison add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

And anyone who's not totally clueless about religion in America would know that ad would appeal to "Focus on the Family geared residents" for a quite practical reason--because the lawyers are implictly promising to display the sort of niceness and willingness to forgive that Evangelicals value so highly. That attitude is not common in law and needs to be encouraged in every way possible.

I don't have a problem with any part of this except Mike Perry's comment about "niceness and willingness to forgive that Evangelicals value so highly."

I guess Pat Robertson and Billy Graham aren't Evangelicals anymore? Fred Phelps? WTF?

MAybe the whole comment was tongue-in-cheek, but if so, it went over my head.

Religious Right = Conservative = Republican = pro-Tort Reform.

Hmmm...are these people betraying their principles?