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Pastor Ken Pagano #fundie courier-journal.com

A Valley Station Road church (in Louisville, Kentucky) is sponsoring an "Open Carry Church Service" in late June, encouraging people to wear unloaded guns in their holsters, enter a raffle to win a free handgun, hear patriotic music and listen to talks by operators of gun stores and firing ranges.

Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church said the first-time event is "basically trying to think a little bit outside the box" to promote "responsible gun ownership and Second Amendment rights."

The event, slated for Saturday afternoon, June 27, is being promoted with online posters, including one using a red font resembling splattered blood with the words: "Open Carry Church Service."

Pagano said the poster wasn't intended to glorify bloodshed and the lettering was just "a font that somebody developed." He said he didn't want the event to be confused with regular Sunday worship at the Assemblies of God congregation.

Aubrey Williams #fundie courier-journal.com

In a bench conference during Louisville Metro Councilwoman Barbara Shanklin’s fiery misconduct trial, her lawyer said the prosecutor couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth because he “does not believe in God” or in “heaven or hell.”

“What guides him morally?” defense lawyer Aubrey William, who is an ordained minister, asked about attorney David Tachau. “What compels him to tell the truth?

“He will say anything,” Williams said, according to a transcript of the bench conference Wednesday before Council Court Chairman Jim King that was obtained by The Courier-Journal.

Various #fundie courier-journal.com

Regarding a debate over Kentucky's science education standards.

...the majority of comments during the two-hour hearing came from critics who questioned the validity of evolution and climate change and railed against the standards as a threat to religious liberty, at times drawing comparisons to Soviet-style communism.

One parent, Valerie O’Rear, said the standards promote an “atheistic world view” and a political agenda that pushes government control.

Matt Singleton, a Baptist minister in Louisville who runs an Internet talk-radio program, called teachings on evolution a lie that has led to drug abuse, suicide and other social afflictions.

“Outsiders are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man’s elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have what the Kentucky Constitution says is the right to worship almighty God,” Singleton said. “Instead, this fascist method teaches that our children are the property of the state.”

At one point, opponent Dena Stewart-Gore of Louisville also suggested that the standards will marginalize students with religious beliefs, leading to ridicule and physiological harm in the classroom, and create difficulties for students with learning disabilities.

“The way socialism works is it takes anybody that doesn’t fit the mold and discards them,” she said, adding that “we are even talking genocide and murder here, folks.”