I saw the TV ads for a new film called ‘Last Ounce Of Courage‘ the other day and noticed Jennifer O’Neill and Fred Williamson were in it so I decided to check out the trailer and information on the film. I was actually shocked. The message of the film seems to be equating military death in war with being able to subvert the 1st Amendment that keeps church and state separate.
On August 15th a man with a gun walked into the building where the conservative hate group Family Research Council (FRC) is headquartered and shot a security guard before being subdued. It was a tragic event that was allegedly politically motivated because allegedly the shooter, who supports LGBT rights, told the victim that he didn’t like his politics and the FRC has been working hard to limit LGBT rights. The shooting was condemned by various LGBT groups as well as supporters for religious freedom. But FRC decided to use the shooting to fundraise for the group claiming it was proof of a “war on religion”. The truth is the Family Research Council earns its hate group status.
As Lauren Youngblood of the Secular Coalition for America notes, the FRC released a slanted report, this week, on religious hostility in the country and claimed there have been more than 600 cases of religious hostility toward Christians:
I gave an e-mail interview to the website Progress Planet that was posted last night. Progress Planet takes a more liberal stance on religious issues and is a site Secular Left could work with on church and state issues. Check out the interview and their website.
Both Mitt Romney and President Obama gave lengthy interviews to the National Cathedral’s magazine, “Cathedral Age”. I believe that we live in a secular republic where the government ought to be religiously neutral. There is no religious test to hold office but this interview did gives us a case study in Christian privilege that some like Mitt Romney believe they deserve. While he tore into the wall between church and state, in another interview he tried to use his religion as an excuse not to reveal his tax returns.
The Catholic church and other religious conservatives are suing the government to invalidate the new health care regulation that forces them to provide insurance coverage for birth control for non-clergy workers. This follows the recent history of legal religious accommodation like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But these attempts to knock down the wall of separation of church and state leads down a road I don’t think most people have thought about in trying to roll back religious neutrality.
This November, Florida voters will be deciding if they want to gut the state’s Blaine amendment language so it can give money directly to churches. The main benefit would be to allow school vouchers. In the run up to the vote Jon East, writing on the pro-voucher website redefinED had to bring in the evil secular humanists to make a false argument in support for passage of Amendment 8.
A Blaine Amendment refers to Maine Republican Congressman James G. Blaine (1830-1893) who took on the idea, expressed by President Grant in 1875, to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit the use of tax dollars to pay for any religious school. The idea was mainly anti-catholic since Catholics were the only religious sect at the time to have their own separate schools.
