government

Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC

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…and god told them to be ironic.

Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC

Bothwell’s detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state’s antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

“The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it’s certainly not relevant to public office,” the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city’s core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn’t require officials to swear on a Bible or reference “Almighty God.”

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina’s Constitution that disqualifies officeholders “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn’t revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell’s appointment.

“My father was a Baptist minister. I’m a Christian man. I have problems with people who don’t believe in God,” said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners.

The head of a conservative weekly newspaper says city officials shirked their duty to uphold the state’s laws by swearing in Bothwell. David Morgan, editor of the Asheville Tribune, said he’s tired of seeing his state Constitution “trashed.”

Bothwell can’t be forced out of office over his atheist views because the North Carolina provision is unenforceable, according to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. Six other states, Arkansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, have similar provisions barring atheist officeholders.

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that federal law prohibits states from requiring any kind of religious test to serve in office when it ruled in favor of a Maryland atheist seeking appointment as a notary public.

But the federal protections don’t necessarily spare atheist public officials from spending years defending themselves in court. Avowed atheist Herb Silverman won an eight-year court battle in 1997 when South Carolina’s highest court granted him the right to be appointed as a notary despite the state’s law.

Bothwell said a legal challenge to his appointment would be “fun,” but believes his opponents’ efforts have more to do with politics than religious beliefs.

“It’s local political opponents seeking to change the outcome of an election they lost,” said Bothwell, who’s lived in Asheville nearly three decades and wrote the city’s best-selling guide book.

Bothwell said his spiritual views don’t matter to most of his constituents. Bothwell is a registered Democrat but didn’t run on a party ticket in the nonpartisanCouncil election.

Even if he can’t force Bothwell out of office, Edgerton said he hopes a legal battle would ultimately force North Carolina’s Legislature to determine the legality of the article of the Constitution.

“If the law is wrong, it is the obligation of the Legislature to say it’s wrong,” he said.

Provisions like North Carolina’s tend to stay on the books because lawmakers would rather not spend time weeding out outdated laws, said Duke University Law School Professor Joseph Blocher.

“I mean there are state laws against spitting in the street,” he said. “Why spend the time?”

But the battle is important to Silverman, who says there are scores of other atheist politicians afraid to “come out of the closet.” He cited U.S.Rep. Pete Stark of California, the first and only congressman to publicly acknowledge he doesn’t believe in God.

“We’re trying to change our culture to the point where it’s not political suicide,” Silverman said.

Christian group’s billboards denounce separation of church, state

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Christian group’s billboards denounce separation of church, state

A Hillsborough public policy group whose Christian platform included a push for a state ban on gay marriage has embraced a new attack on an old target: the separation of church and state.

Ten billboard advertisements against what activist Terry Kemple called the separation “lie” are being put up across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Seven or eight of the billboard messages already are in place, and the rest will be by the end of this week, Kemple said.

For the next six months, they’ll be seen a million times a day, said retired businessman Gregg Smith, who rented the ad space for $50,000.

The message, as explained on www.noseparation.org, is that “America’s government was made only for people who are moral and religious.”

“The Judeo-Christian foundation that the Founding Fathers established when America began is the reason that this country has prospered for 200-plus years,” said Kemple, president and sole employee of the local Community Issues Council, which paid for the Web site.

“The fact is, for the last 40 years, as anti-God activists have incrementally removed the recognition of God’s place in the establishment of our country, we have gone downhill.”

Smith, 73, who spends half of the year at his Tampa home, brought the idea to Kemple’s attention as a “separate ministry” needing local support. For now, the initiative is just educational, though both men left open the opportunity for future work.

“Has the thought occurred that this may be the beginning of something bigger? Of course,” Kemple said. “There is no next step.

“We’ll just see what God ordains.”

The billboards showcase quotes from early American leaders like John Adams, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. Most of the quotes portray a national need for Christian governance.

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”

“I don’t believe there’s a document in Washington’s handwriting that has those words in that specific form,” Kemple said. “However, if you look at Washington’s quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there’s no question he could have said those exact words.”

Kemple, who was considered last year for the Republican nomination to replace a state representative, is not alone in fighting what Thomas Jefferson wrote was “a wall of separation” built by the “whole American people.”

Former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, while campaigning for the Senate in 2006, called separation of church and state a “lie we have been told,” adding that “God is the one who chooses our rulers.”

More recently, Christian separation critics have scoffed at President Barack Obama’s assertion in April that Americans “do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.”

At the time, Kemple and Smith were beginning to plan for the billboards.

“I don’t think it’s coincidental,” Kemple said. “I think God had his hand in it.”

Drew Harwell can be reached at dharwell@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4170.

CORRECTION: Retired businessman Gregg Smith rented ad space for $50,000. Earlier versions of this story used in print and online incorrectly stated his role in the transaction.

When Atheists Attack

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When Atheists Attack By Sam Harris

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin‘s performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin’s speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones “God and country.” If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

Then came Palin’s first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin’s luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady’s misfortune—and, above all, upon the “liberal elites” with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth’s surface (she didn’t have a passport until last year), or that she’s never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska’s geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin’s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter’s microphone, saying things like, “I’m voting for Sarah because she’s a mom. She knows what it’s like to be a mom.” Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Palin’s most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn’t much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase “Bush doctrine.” And I am quite sure that her supporters didn’t care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain’s advisers. What doesn’t she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin’s ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

Abortion foes in healthcare to get federal protection

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Abortion foes in healthcare to get federal protection

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration Thursday announced plans to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect antiabortion healthcare workers from being required to deliver services against their personal beliefs.

The rule empowers federal health officials to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, doctors’ offices and other entities that do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds.

“People should not be forced to say or do things they believe are morally wrong,” Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said. “Healthcare workers should not be forced to provide services that violate their own conscience.”

The proposed regulation, which could go into effect after a 30-day comment period, was welcomed by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others, who said the measure was necessary to safeguard workers from being penalized.

Critics including women’s health advocates, family planning advocates and abortion rights activists said that the regulation could create sweeping obstacles to family planning, end-of-life care and possibly a wide range of scientific research as well as to abortion.
“It’s breathtaking,” said Robyn Shapiro, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “The impact could be enormous.”

The regulation drops a draft version’s most controversial language, which would have explicitly defined an abortion for the first time in a federal law or regulation as anything that interfered with a fertilized egg after conception.

But both supporters and critics said the proposed regulation remained broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from having to provide birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception. And both groups said the regulation would explicitly allow workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.

Leavitt said he requested the new regulation after becoming alarmed by reports that healthcare workers were being pressured to take actions they considered immoral. He cited moves by two doctor organizations that he said might require antiabortion doctors to refer patients to abortion providers.

An early draft of the regulation that leaked in July triggered criticism from women’s health activists, family planning advocates, members of Congress and others who feared that the definition of abortion could be interpreted to include many common forms of contraception.

“Words in that draft led some to misconstrue the department’s intent,” Leavitt said in a telephone news conference Thursday. “This regulation . . . is consistent with my intent to focus squarely on the issue of conscience rights. This specifically goes to the issue of abortion and conscience.”

When pressed about whether the regulation would protect workers who considered birth control pills, Plan B and other forms of contraception to be abortion, Leavitt said: “This regulation does not seek to resolve any ambiguity in that area. It focuses on abortion and focuses on physicians’ conscience in relation to that.”

David Stevens of the Catholic Medical Assn. said: “I think this provides broad application not just to abortion and sterilization but any other type of morally objectionable procedure and research activity. We think it’s badly needed. Our members are facing discrimination every day, and as we get into human cloning and all sorts of possibilities it’s going to become even more important.”

The regulation, which would cost more than $44 million to implement, is aimed at enforcing several federal laws that have been on the books since the 1970s, aimed primarily at protecting doctors and nurses who did not want to perform abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, Leavitt said.

But critics said they remained alarmed at the scope of the regulation, which could apply to a wide range of healthcare workers — even those who, for example, were responsible for cleaning instruments used in an abortion.

The Swedish government is making it illegal for schools to teach religious doctrine as if it were true

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The Swedish government is making it illegal for schools to teach religious doctrine as if it were true. Britain should follow suit.

The Swedish government has announced plans to clamp down hard on religious education. It will soon become illegal even for private faith schools to teach religious doctrines as if they were true. In an interesting twist on the American experience, prayer will remain legal in schools – after all, it has no truth value. But everything that takes place on the curriculum’s time will have to be secular. “Pupils must be protected from every sort of fundamentalism,” said the minister for schools, Jan Björklund.

Creationism and ID are explicitly banned but so is proselytising even in religious education classes. The Qur’an may not be taught as if it is true even in Muslim independent schools, nor may the Bible in Christian schools. The decision looks like a really startling attack on the right of parents to have their children taught what they would like. Of course it does not go so far as the Dawkins policy of prohibiting parents from trying to pass on their doctrines even in their own families – and, if it did, it would certainly run foul of the European convention on human rights. It does not even go as far as Nyamko Sabuni, the minister for integration – herself born in Burundi – would like: she wanted to ban all religious schools altogether. But it is still a pretty drastic measure from an English perspective.

The law is being presented in Sweden as if it mostly concerned fundamentalist Christian sects in the backwoods; but the Christian Democratic party, which represents such people if anyone does, is perfectly happy with the new regulation. There is little doubt that combating Islamic fundamentalism is the underlying aim, especially in conjunction with another new requirement that all independent schools declare all their funding sources. This would allow the inspectors – whose budget is being doubled – to concentrate their efforts on those schools most likely to be paid to break the rules.

In the background to these announcements comes the release of a frightening documentary film on Swedish jihadis, which follows young men over a period of two years on their slow conversion to homicidal lunacy.

The question is whether we in Britain will come to see this as a necessary move in the struggle to contain Islamist ideologies. Can a defence of freedom convincingly be mounted by a state that takes such a firm view of what is or is not true? Or can freedom not be preserved without such measures? The dilemma makes no sense from a completely liberal position, where it is assumed that the truth will always win out in fair competition, and that the state is almost always to be distrusted. But Swedes have never really been liberal in that sense, notwithstanding the fact that the two ministers involved here are members of the Liberal party.

Italian government near collapse after Vatican ‘plot’

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 Isn’t it great when religion and politics mix?

Italian government near collapse after Vatican ‘plot’

The Vatican has been accused of trying to bring down the Italian government after a Catholic minister abandoned Romano Prodi’s coalition government, leaving it facing collapse.

The prime minister was forced to call a vote of confidence after Clemente Mastella, the former justice minister, withdrew his support on Monday.

Mr Mastella’s Udeur Christian Democrat party has three crucial seats in the Senate, where Mr Prodi had a majority of two, at best.

New elections could be called, or a caretaker government could be appointed to reform the complicated electoral law if Mr Prodi loses the vote of confidence in both chambers.

Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition, said yesterday that he wants “elections in the spring”.

Mr Mastella resigned from the government last week, after he and his wife were implicated in a cash-for-favours scandal.

He promised that his party would vote with the government, but changed his mind over the weekend. Now he has said Mr Prodi’s coalition was “dead, dead, dead”.

The impetus for his change of heart appears to have come from the Vatican, which has voiced its disapproval at Mr Prodi’s stance on gay rights and abortion.

The Vatican also shook the government last year, when Mr Prodi lost a vote on his foreign policy on the same day that a gay marriage bill entered parliament.

Christian evangelicals are plotting to remake America in their own image

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 It gets better every day. Sigh.

The Crusaders

Meet the Dominionists — biblical literalists who believe God has called them to take over the U.S. government. As the far-right wing of the evangelical movement, Dominionists are pressing an agenda that makes Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America look like the Communist Manifesto. They want to rewrite schoolbooks to reflect a Christian version of American history, pack the nation’s courts with judges who follow Old Testament law, post the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and make it a felony for gay men to have sex and women to have abortions. In Florida, when the courts ordered Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube removed, it was the Dominionists who organized round-the-clock protests and issued a fiery call for Gov. Jeb Bush to defy the law and take Schiavo into state custody. Their ultimate goal is to plant the seeds of a “faith-based” government that will endure far longer than Bush’s presidency — all the way until Jesus comes back.

“Most people hear them talk about a ‘Christian nation’ and think, ‘Well, that sounds like a good, moral thing,’ says the Rev. Mel White, who ghostwrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography before breaking with the evangelical movement. “What they don’t know — what even most conservative Christians who voted for Bush don’t know — is that ‘Christian nation’ means something else entirely to these Dominionist leaders. This movement is no more about following the example of Christ than Bush’s Clean Water Act is about clean water.”