Actually, it is in violation of Federal law for someone other than a family member or an authorized representative of the US Postal Service to look through your mailbox and it is more illegal for them to leave something that has not been stamped and postmarked in any mailbox. If you want to make stink, you can take the items they left to the local Postmaster. He /She will make sure it doesn’t happen again. They can levy a really big fine for what was done.
I’d call the church and tell them about this, myself, and also tell them that even if I’d been inclined toward checking out their church, by doing that they have permanently driven me away.
Live and let live and all that, but if they’re going through mail, that’s going too far.
I reread the OP. I see that the Baptists left the literature in your door. That is not illegal, you can’t make stink. Sorry. Call them and tell the not to come back. By the way, if you get off on hellfire and damnation, a good Baptist minister can suit your needs.
I think you might be mistaken. I reread the OP and the thread title. No mention of poorly raised assholes.
This is like that gossip game they play in third grade. Peeking at her mailbox is now going through her mail. By page four, we should have these old men raping her cat and burning down her house.
[QUOTE=Libertarian]
I think you might be mistaken. I reread the OP and the thread title. No mention of poorly raised assholes.
[QUOTE]
Lib, what I was referring to with the ". . . " was: You said you could comment on it, and then didn’t.
Nah - weasels are overplayed. Baptists are in this spring!
Susan
Just like you’re game:
SanibelMan is a man. I believe he’s a college student that moved from Florida to Missouri for school and is married with a child.
Your your your your your Goddammit not you’re.
Well, I was reading without my glasses when I first saw the thread, and I thought it was Rapists looked through my mailbox today until I looked more closely.
Oh, for pity’s sake. :rolleyes:
Nobody’s saying that a Baptist can’t ever be a thief. However, by emphasizing their Baptist-ness, the title makes an unfair insinuation about Baptists and theft. It is the act of emphasizing their church membership which is in poor taste.
Again, I ask you to consider how people would have reacted if someone said “Atheists looked through my mailbox.” Do you not think that our resident atheists would be outraged by such a remark? What about “Puerto Ricans walked all over my lawn.” Is this not an unfair remark to make, unless their citizenship was somehow correlated with lawn-trampling?
Additionally, based on the details provided in the OP, it does not appear that these people actually “looked through” the mail. Rather, it seems that they merely peeked in the mailbox, which is an entirely different thing. Now, we could debate the ethics of peeking in the mailbox without perusing its contents, but the point remains – based on the details provided, it appears that they did not actually look through the mail, as the thread title states.
I bet this is it, actually. If someone who used to live at your house was a member and they haven’t seen him in a while, they were probably trying to talk to him. Churches will often seek out members who haven’t attended. Maybe they were checking the mailbox to see if his name was on the mail. I agree they shouldn’t have opened your mailbox, but it seems like this could be one explanation.
Actually, she doesn’t even know whether they were Baptists. After they left, she found a couple of tracts. And she didn’t say they looked through her mailbox either. She said they looked IN her mailbox. Of course, that was from a distance and inside the car with her head down pretending to be busy with something. Maybe they actually spit in the mailbox when she glanced away. She should check, just in case they really are Baptists.
No; in fact, should an unknown person have gone looking in SanibelMan’s mailbox and left an atheist track or advertisement, there’d be nothing wrong with him posting an OP which labels the people as atheists. I’m still not sure how you’re finding anything pejorative in the title.
One clue to bigotry is the arbitrary association of a group with something bad or sinister. What does being either an atheist or a Baptist have to do with peeking inside a mailbox? What would you think of a newspaper story with the headline, “Liberal vandalizes local grave”?
Well, I’m a resident atheist, and if you recreated my OP with “Atheist” instead of “Baptist” and “St. Louis Skeptical Inquiry Group” instead of “Rock Hill Baptist Church,” I’d say they were asshole atheists for looking in your mailbox. I wouldn’t be offended that you called them atheists when they were atheists.
And MrKnowItAll is right, mostly: I’m a male college student with a son, but I’m not married. If you’ll all pardon me for not wanting to confront two strange men when I’m carrying my 18-month-old son - I didn’t know who they were until they left. Maybe they’re nice Baptists. Maybe they’re axe murderers. The point is I didn’t know.
I’ll be calling the church today and letting them know, in polite terms, that I didn’t appreciate that at all and they had better not return. I’ll let you know what they say.
Let us know if they’re Southern, Independent, or Freewill, okay? We have mailboxes too, and we need to be armed with as much information as possible.
I’d think, “Oh that Fox News, now they’ve got Fair and Balanced newspapers.”
You mean other than the fact that they left Baptist literature wedged in his storm door?
Yes, I do mean other than that. Set aside that “fact” does not mean what you think it means. (She never saw them put the literature in her door.) I asked what being either Baptist or atheist has to do with peeking in her mailbox. They were also old. Is mailbox peeking something only old people do? They smiled at her. Is there therefore some connection between people who smile and people who peek at mailboxes?
Well, I think it is a great thread title but then I am a member of a non-Baptist church (Yes, there are other religions down here in the south besides Baptists).
I doubt Baptists are more likely to steal mail than any other denomination (I also doubt they are less likely) but then I haven’t seen any studies on this subject.
Spitting in the mailbox is what really concerns me.