Religious persecution, or overbearing regulations?

Richard said
Why would you think they were being uncooperative? If I am having around 15 people over to my house weekly for dinner and a Bible study and a code enforcement officer asks me what religion I belong to or what we are doing, I would reply by questioning the relevance of his questions. Again, if the report is accurate as to the questions asked, how could those questions be relevant in any code enforcement context?

According to reports, this group met in that home for five years without complaint. You are likely correct and this warning would never had been given had there not been a complaint.

Why are her assumptions any more ridiculous than the assumptions made by others on this thread? You know, I don't know any "poor me Christians" and I don't know that I have ever met one. They must exist because I see people post about them and there must be a lot of them because, according to some, Christians are playing the victim all of the time. It must really be huge somewhere.

There are gaping chasms in the information about this case. What's omitted would likely shed a lot of light upon what happened, one way or the other. But she (primadox and others, and perhaps unintentionally) has filled in the gaps with assumptions that would assume some sort of persecution. The facts aren't there.

The original point I tried to make on this thread was that the dramatic, sensationalized nature of the story almost immediately discredits it, in my book. 99.99999% of the time I hear such outrageous accusations (orphans being tortured, nuns being dressed up like clowns, politicians eating puppies alive, whatever), well they're almost always false stories.

Could they have been "persecuted"? It's possible. But the pastor's story is just a little too neat and innocent and perfect for me. He certainly could be right, but I find the righteous indignation awfully premature, when there are so many facts missing.

If you want to play Columbo on this case, you don't really even need that many facts. What would the county's motivation be for shutting them down? Why would they bother? The theory being proposed is that the county is evil and hates Christians. Except that San Diego county is already and extremely conservative area, and there are no shortage of Christians in the community and the government. So that premise is pretty unbelievable. Add in the general inertia of government, the fact that they are overworked, the fact that they are going to be averse to cases which bring bad publicity, etc, etc), and I just can't buy into it.