Intentional deceit from ucctruths.com
On my previous post, I used to have a comment from someone named ‘drew’ containing text which I eventually realized was quoted from www.ucctruths.com , an ex-UCC-member website that purports to be exposing the dark side of the church.
Not surprisingly, the e-mail address ‘drew’ supplied was false, so I could not contact him to confront the fact that his exact words appeared on at least a dozen different websites. So, I deleted his post as spam.
Now, there’s a new post on ucctruths.com, where ‘drew’ often gets in the first comments on several posts (almost certainly the poster himself on another account):
Fair minded but boring
The Hartford Courant has another columnist piping in on the IRS investigation of the United Church of Christ and this site gets mentioned. I think this is a compliment, but I’m not sure:
Actually, the complaint was most likely filed by the guy who runs “UCC Truths,” an organization and website for lapsed UCCers, heretics who dissent from the church’s leadership and publish items such as “UCC Hierarchy Uses Neurosurgically Altered Monkeys to Make Cheap Sensible Shoes.” Actually, no, they don’t. UCC Truths is easily the most fair-minded and polite and boring apostate group in the history of religious dissent. It says on the website: “Any employee of the UCC national office or leaders of any of the UCC Conferences are welcome to submit their own commentary which will be posted, unedited, at the top of the site, at any time.” If Martin Luther had been a Congregationalist, he would have nailed the “95 Other Possible Ways of Looking at Things” to the church door in Wittenberg.
That’s actually pretty funny. Boring? Yes, but I really don’t know how I could make this stuff any more exciting.
And before anyone gets carried away, I didn’t file the complaint but this site has certainly been the most visable on raising the issue.
posted by UCCtruths, Sunday, March 02, 2008
Here’s the interesting part: Those little remarks at the end? False. According to a WHOIS:Domain Name: UCCTRUTHS.COM
Administrative Contact:
Hutchins, James w924c3ba58m@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
ATTN: UCCTRUTHS.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780
And according to this news story:
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State — a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. — shares the concern of the IRS and said it has filed 11 complaints with the agency about electioneering by religious organizations since January 2007 — including one against a Las Vegas pastor who endorsed Obama from the pulpit.
It did not file the complaint against the UCC, however, Lynn said, because it didn’t find any violations when it looked into the matter last summer at the urging of James Hutchins, who runs the “UCCtruths” website that is critical of the UCC.
…
Hutchins posted news of the investigation on his website Wednesday and said he had received an anonymous copy of the complaint to the IRS with information redacted that identified the person who filed it.
Right. So the guy who initially pushed for an investigation “received an anonymous copy” of the complaint and posted news about it on his website.
Sorry, Jimmy boy. It’s pretty obvious that you filed the complaint, and the fact that you removed the name of the filer is pretty good evidence of that.
If not, why not post it again with the filer’s name intact?
5 Responses to “Intentional deceit from ucctruths.com”
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
First of all, any body who has anything to do with the UCC truths will tell you that I am not shy about my opinions or laying claim to the activities I participate in. Whether it was working with the largest Jewish groups in the country to oppose the UCC’s divestment from Israel or going on site at the UCC’s national office to video tape a FALN terrorist that is supported by the UCC, I’ve always done it straight forward as myself. Barry Lynn’s comments came because I met with Barry in person and discussed how I felt AU should investigate the UCC. I also commented on the AU blog about he need for an investigation and you’ll see numerous comments from about it – there’s no secret in this. So… it makes no sense at all that I would dodge a complaint to the IRS if I crafted it – there would be no reason to dodge it. Unlike your blog, my name is all over UCCtruths. The fact that the domain is registered in my name should not be a surprise – it’s my web site.
Secondly, I am not a former UCCer – I am currently a UCC member and have been since birth. My family goes back multiple generations with our predecessor denominations. As hard as it is for some to believe, you can be a UCC member and also dissent from the leadership – many people have.
Lastly, I have no idea who wrote the letter or who “drew” is. If you look around the blogs and on the UCC’s own forums, you’ll see all kinds of comments from many people in favor and against UCCtruths.
Again, unlike you, I do not hide behind anonimity – I don’t need to.
-James
Since I doubt you will actually puplish my comments, I added them to my response to you on UCCtruths in the comments section.
“I doubt you will actually puplish my comments”
Little paranoid, aren’t we?
“I have no idea who wrote the letter or who “drew” is. If you look around the blogs and on the UCC’s own forums, you’ll see all kinds of comments from many people in favor and against UCCtruths.”
And yet NONE of them made their way to my blog, except dear old “Drew”.
It’s a common tactic (and a bit of an obvious one) for bloggers to spread their own opinion onto other blogs by copy/pasting pieces of their blogs onto those of opposing viewpoints under false names.
I find it rather telling that Drew *always* rushes to your defense, is often the first response to your posts, and is copying bits of your posts *verbatim* onto dozens of other blogs, including mine, with a false e-mail address.
Saying that you were not the one who submitted the IRS complaint is intentionally dishonest. You were the first one to raise the issue with the IRS. Your statement was intended to convince people that you have nothing to do with the current investigation, when the fact of the matter is that the issue likely would never have been raised had you never said anything.
I’m willing to come out and state that your claim that you’re a current UCC member is a bald-faced lie, since you seem to take so much GLEE in seeing the church squirm. The amount of cognitive dissonance required to lambaste an organization of which you are an ongoing member is simply staggering. Dissenting from the leadership is one thing; you’re mocking the church’s troubles on the whole.
To support my claim that you’re lying is this comment from someone who has obviously spoken with you much more frequently than I, regarding your site:
“a waggish, negative website operated by a disgruntled former United Church of Christ member named James Hutchins. Hutchins has long been a regular poster under his own name and various pseudonyms at the discussion boards at UCC.org. A few years ago he began to blog incessantly on his own website.”
I also see several posts from ‘anglian’ on Free Republic, pushing your website and again quoting it verbatim. Hi, James Pseudonym #2!
Over on Topix.com, there’s a post from David in Cleveland, Ohio quoting your page again… Oh, wait, YOU live in Cleveland! You honestly expect me to think that this IS NOT you?
Also, if you bothered to Google my nickname, you’d see that I’m hardly anonymous. My name is ANONYMOUS. WE ARE LEGION. Happy now?
Are you REALLY so desperate to push your agenda that you’ll try to make yourself sound good on a blog that has maybe four or five readers? Don’t you have bigger fish to fry?
Finally, I’m still waiting on that name! Who filed the complaint this time, if not you?
You think I’m the only one that disagrees with the UCC leadership? You need to look around… maybe even sign on to the UCCtruths message board and see the varying opinions.
Please, post a link where I claim that I’m a former UCCer. I’d love to see that. I have no idea who wrote “a waggish, negative website operated by a disgruntled former United Church of Christ member named James Hutchins.” Probably a critic, like yourself, who can’t really argue on the facts of the issues so they make claims like that.
I have no idea who “drew” or “david” or “anglian” are but you seem to assume that anyone that links to my site are all me. I have critics all over different message boards that criticize me but then link to the site. I guess that could be me too, huh? The fact is, I am very visable and out front on these issues. That’s proven. I have no need to hide behind names.
So really, you don’t have anything. You made a big deal out of the URL registration being in my name but what did that prove? That I own the URL? ***SHOCKING*** Wouldn’t you be more surprised if it was in someone else’s name? That fact means nothing but you seem to think it does which speaks more to your logic than mine.
I don’t have anything to prove as far readership goes – the UCCtruths message board has more participants and message posts than any other blog on the UCC out there with nearly 500 members and 24,000 messages posted. Again, your dig is just a cheap attempt to discredit me without dealing with the issues. You can keep kidding yourself but the facts speak for themselves.
I made a big deal out of the fact that you, James Hutchins, are the person who tried making this an issue in the first place.
You discredit yourself by continuing to lie, “Drew/David/Anglian.” You’re not even good at hiding your lies.
The fact that every blog I’ve found commenting on this story has a post from one of your clones quoting YOUR posts is pretty pathetic. You’re not fooling anyone here. You’re just a bad troll.
Go ahead and post my response on your spiteful little blog; unlike you, I post because I have an honest opinion, as opposed to an agenda.