"New Iowa Pumpkin Tax Puts Damper on Growers' Halloween Spirit

Wednesday, October 31, 2007


DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa Department of Revenue is taxing jack-o'-lanterns this Halloween.

The new department policy was implemented after officials decided that pumpkins are used primarily for Halloween decorations, not food, and should be taxed, said Renee Mulvey, the department's spokeswoman.

"We made the change because we wanted the sales tax law to match what we thought the predominant use was," Mulvey said. "We thought the predominant use was for decorations or jack-o'-lanterns."

Previously, pumpkins had been considered an edible squash and exempted from the tax. The department ruled this year that pumpkins are taxable — with some exceptions — if they are advertised for use as jack-'o-lanterns or decorations.

Iowans planning to eat pumpkins can still get a tax exemption if they fill out a form.

The new policy, published in the department's September newsletter, has some pumpkin farmers feeling tricked this Halloween.

"I don't mind paying taxes, but let's get real here, people," said Bob Kautz, owner of the Buffalo Pumpkin Patch in Buffalo, about eight miles west of Davenport.

Kautz, who has owned his farm for seven years, was particularly dismayed with the notion of requiring customers to fill out a form verifying that they planned to eat the pumpkins they were buying.

"It's another crazy, crazy, stupid thing," he said.

Kautz said he will estimate how many pumpkins were bought for non-food purposes, and then will send the tax on that amount to the revenue department.

"It gets unfeasible for people to have small businesses," he said.

Danny Carroll, who owns Carroll's Pumpkin Farm in Grinnell with his wife, said he will have to pay the sales tax out of profits.

"Essentially, they just reduced our income by 6 percent," he said. "It's too bad, but it's not surprising."

Other Iowa pumpkin sellers also expressed confusion about the new policy. Some, like Carroll, said they were unaware of it. A few said they have been charging the tax this Halloween season and few customers have complained. None said they are asking customers to fill out the tax-exemption certificate.

Mulvey said department officials don't know how much extra revenue to expect from the pumpkin tax."

An Evangelical Rethink on Divorce?

By DAVID VAN BIEMA Tue Nov 6, 12:30 AM ET

On questions relating to the Bible's treatment of family and morals, one might expect assurance, if not rigidity, from Evangelical Christianity. So, it may surprise many to learn how "live" the topic of divorce remains in Evangelical circles. Last month, the cover story of the monthly Christianity Today was titled "When to Separate What God has Joined: A Closer Reading on the Bible on Divorce." The heated controversy provoked by the story showed how Biblically flexible some Evangelicals can be - especially when God's word seems at odds not just with modern American behavior, but also with simple human kindness.

As the article's author, the British Evangelical scholar David Instone-Brewer, points out, for most of 2,000 years Christians have viewed divorce through two scriptural citations. In Matthew, the pharisees ask Christ, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?" Jesus refers to the Old Testament and then replies, "Whoever divorces a wife, except for sexual indecency, commits adultery." The apostle Paul adds in the book First Corinthians that a Christian is "not bound" to a non-Christian spouse who abandons him. Simple, right?

Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn't always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it. Instone-Brewer, an expert in Jewish thought during Jesus's era, writes that Christ's interlocutors were not asking him whether there was any cause at all for divorce, but whether he supported something called "any-cause" divorce, a term a little bit like "no-fault" that allowed husbands to divorce wives for any reason at all. Instone-Brewer claims Jesus's "no" was a response to this idea, and that his "except for sexual indecency" condition was not a statement of the sole exemption from God's blanket prohibition, but merely Christ's reiteration of one of several divorce permissions in the Old Testament - one he felt the "any-time" advocates had exaggerated. Finally, Instone-Brewer tallies four grounds for divorce he finds affirmed in both Old and New Testaments: adultery, emotional and sexual neglect, abandonment (by anyone) and abuse.

Christianity Today has written previously on divorce, often bemoaning how easy it is in today's America. However, the Instone-Brewer essay appeared to be its editors' attempt to offer Evangelicals an escape from a classic dilemma. The "plain sense" of Jesus's words without quotes seems clear enough, but also inhumane: how could a loving God forbid divorce, even by omission, in cases of wife-beating, or of abandonment by a Christian spouse?

Each branch of Christianity deals with divorce in its own way: Catholicism bans it entirely, but many divorced and remarried couples nonetheless find that their conscience permits them to take Communion. Liberal Protestantism accepted divorce some decades ago without much engagement of the scriptural issue. Evangelicals define themselves as being tightly bound by scripture. But besides the humanitarian problem, there are some uncomfortable facts on the ground: The divorce rate among Evangelicals, which first became news after polls released by the Barna Research Group in 2001, has been as high or higher than the national average.

The Evangelical movement has actually made tremendous accommodations given the strictures it lives under. Ministries for the newly divorced are common at megachurches; and on the historically less-rigid Pentecostal side of the spectrum, celebrity preachers Juanita Bynum and Paula White both recently announced their intention to divorce. Most experts interviewed for this story attested that whereas 30 years ago, a pastor might well order a battered woman home to return her husband, that is rare today.

More conservative Evangelicals remain uneasy about divorce. If a split itself is inescapable, notes Christianity Today editor Andy Crouch, "remarriage is where the rubber meets the road," and many remarried couples find themselves denied church membership. Says Russel Moore, dean of the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention's influential Southern Seminary, "We teach our future pastors that marriage is a lifelong, one-flesh union." Any woman in an abusive marriage should "leave that situation," he acknowledges, and a "majority" probably accept remarriage. Asked if he does, Moore demurred: "Let me think about that for a little bit. I could answer in a way that would be very easily misunderstood."

Evangelical conflict on the topic was obvious in reader response to the Instone Brewer essay. Initially the mail was heavily negative. The most stinging broadside sas a column by John Piper, a respected theological conservative, that called the essay not just weak but "tragic." The magazine's editor in chief, David Neff, felt the need to explain online that "Instone-Brewer's article did not... give people carte blanche on divorce." The mail eventually leveled off at 60% negative to 40% positive.

Still, the controversy suggests that even the country's most rule-bound Christians will search for a fresh understanding of scripture when it seems unjust to them. The implications? Flexibility on divorce may mean that evangelicals could also rethink their position on such things as gay marriage, as a generation of Christians far more accepting of homosexuality begins to move into power. (The ever-active Barna folks have found that 57% of "born-again" Christians age 16-29 criticize their own church for being "anti-homosexual.") It could also give heart to a certain twice-divorced former New York mayor who is running for President and seeking the conservative vote. But that may be pushing things a bit.

Mother says Student Disciplined for Hugging

Posted: Nov 6, 2007 07:32 PM

Updated: Nov 6, 2007 07:32 PM
Prattville Junior High School
Prattville Junior High School
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The debate of public displays of affection in school is hitting home in Alabama. The mother of a student in Autauga County says her daughter was disciplined for simply hugging a friend.

"When I went through school, I hugged my friends," said Lea Muir. Her daughter was given detention Monday at Prattville Junior High School. She called it an overreaction.

"It's a little bit extreme, I think."

But according the Autauga County School System's code of conduct, "inappropriate public displays of affection, including but not limited to embracing and kissing" are not allowed.

And Autauga County isn't the only one. Just last week, a school in Illinois disciplined a student for the very same thing. And a South Dakota student got in trouble for holding hands with a friend.

"It was made to be something ugly and it wasn't," Muir said.

She says the hug wasn't meant to be sexual. She says her daughter was consoling a male friend who recently lost a parent.

"What's it going to come to next?," she asked. "You can't high five or touch anybody? You can't brush by someone in the hallway?"

Muir says her daughter served out her punishment and she doesn't plan to take any legal action. But she encourages the school system to reevaluate its policy.

WSFA 12 News checked with other local school systems and found a more leeway in their codes of conduct. In Montgomery and Elmore counties, for example, touching must be of a sexual nature to be considered inappropriate.

Autauga County school officials didn't agree to an on-camera interview, but told WSFA 12 News, they were simply following the rules.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled schools could be held liable by ignoring claims of sexual harassment. Some say the ruling puts schools between a rock and a hard place. By not identifying all suspect behavior, they risk liability.  But when they do, they often hear complaints from parents.