Posts Tagged ‘First Amendment’

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Maddow on North Carolina versus Atheists

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

I’m glad that this issue has finally been elevated to the level of evening political news with Rachel Maddow. North Carolina is one of a handful of other states with active constitutional prohibitions that prohibit atheists from holding public office. This blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution (Article 6 and the First Amendment)1 by creating a religious test for public office has not been the focus of the news, probably because prior holders of public office in those states either lie about their beliefs (pandering to the heavy religious pressure of the Bible Belt) or are religious themselves. However, recently, critics of a new Asheville city council member Cecil Bothwell have threatened to try to remove him from office because he’s an atheist.

Here’s Maddow’s inquiry and discussion with ACLU North Carolina Legal Director Katherine Parker:

  1. Article 6 prohibits religious tests for public office and the First Amendment prohibits establishment (and it can be argued that by requiring state officials to be of a particular religion, the state is establishing a religious preference [<]

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Posted in Activism, Atheism, Law, Religion | 2 Comments »

Virginia Referendum to Reject Suffrage

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Bob_McDonnellVirginia Governor elect Bob McDonnell issued a statement today that once in office he would pursue a referendum in Virginia to reject the constitutional amendment that lets women vote.1

McDonnell was attacked for his 1989 thesis for Regent University, in which he described working women and feminists as ‘detrimental’ to the family. Despite his campaign promise that his views have matured, McDonnell is apparently using the gubernatorial platform and the trend of states passing similar initiatives regarding civil rights to manifest his idealism in a state that has a long history of conservatism.

When asked about the implications of the Tenth Amendment, McDonnell’s spokesperson indicated that “the Constitution as ratified explicitly excluded women,2 and even if state sovereignty in this matter does not trump federal law, it is firmly established that the federal government cannot force participation in the administration of any of its programs.3 In addition, the federal government is prohibited from trying to prevent the Commonwealth’s free exercise of religion, which is a substantive part of the referendum — to affirm religious freedom.”4

  1. No, he didn’t. But it certainly looks like he could. How can we stand by idly while we let the masses vote on whether minorities can exercise equal civil rights? It’s quite likely that for years after Brown v. Board (and maybe even up through today), if we had put integration up to a popular vote, we’d still be segregated. Look at our rich history of civil rights, and you can easily see how we require iconic heroes to make headway, not majorities. How does it feel to see the finish line of equality and intellectual honesty and then suddenly and relentlessly be pulled backwards, back toward the dark ages full of human inequality and cruelty? Feels like shit. [<]
  2. See NOW [<]
  3. See Printz v United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) [<]
  4. See First Amendment [<]

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Posted in Activism, Government, Religion, Satire | 4 Comments »

Kids Forced to Swear to God to Obtain US Citizenship

Friday, September 4th, 2009

What’s wrong with this picture?

vernon

This is a photo taken at a Children’s U.S. Citizenship Ceremony in Mount Vernon yesterday. Fifty-eight children from 26 different countries all recited the “children’s oath of allegiance” after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.1

I might be missing something, but why the FUCK are these kids swearing allegiance to God in order to obtain their U.S. citizenship?

According to the CNS article, “The ceremony was marked by references to the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, the freedoms guaranteed citizens by the Constitution, and acknowledgment of God’s role in the nation’s traditions.”2

The countries represented at the ceremony included Iran, China, Bolivia, Cambodia, Canada, Columbia, Cuba, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Korea, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.

Good thing these kids all come from God-fearing Christian countries, eh? Wouldn’t want them to be sneaking in any cultural or religious diversity, let alone, God forbid, non-religion.

This is child abuse.

  1. Mount Vernon Press Room; and see Washington Post article [<]
  2. CNS News. Correction: I mistakenly cited this as “CBS” news in the article. It has been corrected. More sources include ABC 7 News, Washington Post [<]

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Posted in Activism, Atheism, Government, Religion | 31 Comments »

Blacks and Women should Relinquish their Right to Vote

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

That’s my appeal to “traditional values.”

In this morning’s Washington Examiner, Jonetta Rose Barras complains that the DC Superior Court ruling by Judge Judith Retchen against a referendum to overturn the mandate for DC to recognize legal same-sex marriages performed in other states is one of two “dual downers for traditional values.” The other is the push for legalization of Marijuana for medical treatment.

Barras blames the lack of voting representation as a prime culprit in allowing such violations of “traditional values” to occur unhindered. It’s not clear how Barras defines “traditional values,” but anyone claiming that the medicinal use of marijuana and the acceptance of same-sex marriage violates traditional values either lacks or ignores basic knowledge of the history of marijuana and the accepted “traditional” forms of marriage in the states.

“Make the most you can of the Indian hemp seed. Sow it everywhere.” Said Columbian drug cartel leader Edward Gonzalez. No, wait, it was George Washington who said it. Prior to 1900, marijuana wasn’t even regulated in the U.S., let alone criminalized. It’s been well-documented that Thomas Jefferson cultivated hemp: “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.” Even Lincoln and Carter had very strong opinions about it:

“Prohibition… goes beyond the bound of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded” -Abraham Lincoln

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marihuana in private for personal use… Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marihuana.” – Jimmy Carter1

It wasn’t until the 1930s that regulation had become nationalized.2 Should we infer, then, that Barras thinks that tradition prior to the 1930s doesn’t count? What exactly is a “traditional value” when referring to marijuana? If the arguments put forth regard health and welfare, then why aren’t those arguments applied across the board, to alcohol and tobacco, and why limit the scope to the past 80 years? If the arguments are religious, then we encounter another handful of problems.

First, the First Amendment prohibits such blatant violation of constitutional separation of church and state. Second, what’s the bible (assuming it’s the Judeo-Christian religion to which Barras and others appeal) got to say about marijuana? “Jesus inhaled, and God saw that it was good.” Oh, wait, the bible really didn’t talk all that much about drug prohibitions. As a matter of fact, didn’t the bible say something to effect of, “Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you,”" in Genesis 1:29? Oh, but that doesn’t count. Obviously. We’re not interpreting it to mean that. Jesus came along and changed all that. Nope, not buying the religious argument.

The “traditional values” of which Barras and others speak, regarding marijuana, are embodied in state and federal laws spanning all of 80 years. On this eve of the remembrance of our independence from imperial Britain’s tight grasp, perhaps we should do some simple math. Take 233 years of independence (plus more years, depending on how you like to define “tradition”), and subtract 80 years of progressively militant marijuana prohibition, and you get 153 years of non-prohibition. Are we just ignoring all of that tradition? It seems so. What’s the “value” in that? This is why we don’t appeal to tradition.

This nation had nearly 90 years of condoned slavery (plus all the years prior to independence), over 90 years of blacks not being able to vote, and, incredibly, embarrassingly, disgustingly, it took 144 years since our independence to give women the right to vote. It took 191 years for us to allow blacks to marry whites (and whites to marry blacks). Let’s do the math here and kill the double standards. If you want to appeal to traditional values, Ms. Barras, relinquish your right to vote, and advocate that women and minorities do the same.

The appeal to tradition is not just a formal logical fallacy, it’s also the method by which manipulative people create justification for their own actions while condemning actions they dislike. It’s also a devious double standard which should appeal to no rational person who appreciates our progress, especially regarding civil rights.

  1. Quotes from On Role Models and their Bongs [<]
  2. THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARIJUANA PROHIBITION [<]

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Posted in Activism, Government, Law, Morality, Religion | 1 Comment »

Sanford and Ensign Should be Put to Death

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

According to “God’s Law.”

During Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s teary apology to his state, his family, his mistress, and others, he repeatedly made reference to “God’s Law.” In this case, he craftily manipulated the definition to be about self-control rather than an actual serious punishment.

But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and dont’s, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.1

I wonder which of God’s laws Sanford was referencing here. Could it be one of the Ten Commandments? Could it be, depending on your denominational choice, Exodus 20:14? “You shall not commit adultery.” Know what’s excruciatingly difficult to find on Judeo-Christian websites? The prescribed consequences for violating “God’s Law.”

So addicted to the testament of the commandments are these hypocritical politicians that they’re willing to violate the First Amendment by signing bills to put them on display at public buildings, as Mark Sanford signed last year. But despite all the devotion to those laws, they ignore God’s prescribed consequences. Sanford says they’re designed to protect people from themselves, but I fear that Sanford must have missed that bible study lesson.

According to God’s law, the law that Sanford adopts so openly, Sanford should be put to death. So says Leviticus 20:10:

And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Or, is that open to interpretation? How dare we, as a society, as the governed, allow men like Sanford and Ensign, another hypocritical adulterer, to openly condemn homosexuality and other behavior they deem immoral based on God’s law if, when they are confronted with violations of that very same set of laws, we give them a round of applause?

Sanford, you want to display the Ten Commandments on public grounds? Fine. We’ll compromise. You can do that if, on those very same public grounds, you stand there, unprotected, surrounded by stones, allowing the public to choose whether you’re subject to God’s Law as you subject others to your interpretation of it.

—

Mark Sanford:2

-Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
-Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
-No civil unions; define one-man-one-woman marriage. (Nov 2002)
-Affirmative action in state contracts, but not colleges. (Nov 2002)
-Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
-Voted NO on ending preferential treatment by race in college admissions. (May 1998)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)

John Ensign:

-Voted YES on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
-Voted NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
-Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
-Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
-Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
-Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
-Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)
-Prohibit transporting minors across state lines for abortion. (Jan 2008)
-Voted YES on recommending Constitutional ban on flag desecration. (Jun 2006)
-Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
-Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
-Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
-Voted YES on ending the set-aside of 10% of highway funds for minorities. (Apr 1998)
-Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)
-Rated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
-Rated 11% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
-Rated 7% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
-Voted NO on reinstating $1.15 billion funding for the COPS Program. (Mar 2007)
-Voted NO on allowing Habeus Corpus appeals in capital cases. (Mar 1996)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More funding and stricter sentencing for hate crimes. (Apr 2001)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Permanent crime database for volunteers with kids. (Jul 2008)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)

In 1998, after President Bill Clinton admitted to having committed adultery with Monica Lewinsky, Ensign called on him to resign, saying, “He has no credibility left.”

In 2004, Ensign spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have barred states from recognizing same-sex marriage. Ensign said:

Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.

Ensign considers himself pro-life and both the National Right to Life Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America identify him as having a pro-life voting record.

Ensign authored the Child Custody Protection Act in 2003 that prohibits taking minors across State lines in circumvention of laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortion decisions.3

—

Note: I do not follow God’s law. Therefore, I do not think Sanford and Ensign should be put to death. I am not advocating in this article that they should be, and I’m not suggesting that anyone go about making it happen (unless Sanford and Ensign are volunteering to manifest God’s will). As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone should be put to death. I am merely trying to hold these men accountable for not only their actions, but also their stance with regard to their application of their set of beliefs upon the makings and enforcement of law in their position as representatives of the people.

  1. Transcript excerpt from WIS10. [<]
  2. From On the Issues [<]
  3. Wikipedia [<]

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Posted in Atheism, Government, Morality, Religion, Sexuality | 4 Comments »

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