In this issue:
Encouraged by Governor Granholm’s recent comment on the PBS show, “Off the Record”, Representative Robert Gosselin presented House Resolution 24 last Tuesday, February 22.
During the PBS show, the Governor stated that the values represented in the Ten Commandments reflected “a universal desire to behave with dignity and honor God.” Although Granholm stood by her opinion the following Monday, due in part to the swift action of Michigan Atheists, she stopped short of supporting legislation concerning Ten Commandments displays, saying that she did not want to violate the Constitution.
Representative Gosselin remains encouraged by Granholm’s original statement, however, no doubt hopeful that the Supreme Court will either rule in favor of Ten Commandments displays, where the Decalogue is placed among historical documents representing the foundations of American law, or else make these displays an issue for states to decide. Without waiting for the ruling, Gosselin presented the following resolution:
House Resolution No. 24.
A resolution to urge the Michigan Capitol Committee to recommend that a display of the Ten Commandments be placed in the Capitol.
Whereas, The system of governance and the process of lawmaking that are symbolized by Michigan's Capitol have their roots in history and culture that have developed over the generations. Prominent among the landmarks of history that shape our society are the Ten Commandments. The fundamental values reflected in these laws are as relevant today as ever; and
Whereas, With principles of human behavior that cross all faiths, the Ten Commandments are often referred to by scholars as a building block of the legal system we know today. It is appropriate for us to take steps acknowledging this link; and
Whereas, The Michigan Capitol Committee was created by 1987 PA 123 to make recommendations to the leadership of the House, the Senate, and the Governor on the maintenance of the Capitol and its grounds. This committee, which is comprised of four members of the House of Representatives appointed by the Speaker, four members of the Senate appointed by the Majority Leader, and four members from the Executive Branch appointed by the Governor, may make recommendations to the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Governor regarding the implementation of all permanent physical changes to be made in or on the Capitol. Under the provisions of MCL § 4.1702, "Such recommendations shall take effect 15 days after the submission to the governor, senate majority leader and speaker of the house of representatives unless rejected in writing by the governor, senate majority leader or speaker of the house of representatives"; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives, That we urge the Michigan Capitol Committee to recommend to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Governor that a display of the Ten Commandments be placed in the Capitol; and be it further
Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the members of the Michigan Capitol Committee. The resolution was referred to the Committee on Government Operations.
Subscribers to this newsletter may remember that Gosselin was one of the top offenders of mingling state and church with proposed legislation during his last term in office. It is imperative that we educate him on this and other issues regarding the separation of state and church. Representative Gosselin’s contact information may be found at the following address: http://house.michigan.gov/rep.asp?DIST=041
Governor Granholm’s contact information may be found at the following address: http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-21995---,00.html
Anyone who wants to find their own representative may go to: http://www.michiganatheists.org/legislative_alerts Go to the bottom of the page and click on the appropriate link. Let your own representatives know what you think of this resolution.
Thanks to everyone who wrote Governor Granholm and their local newspapers about the Governor’s recent statements. Hopefully, we have educated her about how the Ten Commandments are not universal.
TopArlene-Marie, American Atheists State Director for Michigan, issued the following press release regarding the March 2 event:
PRESS RELEASE, February 24, 2005
DEMONSTRATION TO DEFEND SEPARATION OF STATE AND CHURCH
FROM: The office of Arlene-Marie, Michigan Atheists State Director, American Atheists
WHEN: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2005
WHERE: MICHIGAN STATE CAPITOL, EAST LAWN AND STEPS LANSING, MICHIGAN
TIME: 11:00AM - 1:00PM
For the first time in 25 years the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments involving Ten Commandments displays on March 2, 2005 in Washington DC. In support of this important occasion, Michigan's Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists and concerned believers will gather to defend separation of state and church and voice our objections to the posting of the Ten Commandments in the public square.
Arlene-Marie, Demonstration Chairperson and Michigan Atheists State Director said, "In a concerted effort to violate the First Amendment separation of government and religion 36 Michigan State Representatives introduce House Resolution 0024 to display the Ten Commandments in the Capitol."
Please join us in defending separation of state and church on this historic occasion. Let Michigan’s legislators and our Governor know that no matter what the Supreme Court rules, we do not want state and church intertwined in Michigan. No matter what Representative Gosselin and Governor Granholm say, the Ten Commandments are not universal to all faiths—and certainly do not represent people of no faith at all. They have no part in the foundation of American law and government, and they do not belong in a misleading display containing the actual foundations of this country. The only way to protect both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment is to keep government secular, and therefore neutral toward religion.
Do you have vacation days left? Personal days? Are you retired? Do you have time between college classes? Do you work in the evening?
If any of the above applies to you, please come to Lansing on March 2 between 11:00 AM and 1:00 PM.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an Atheist or not. Being an Atheist is a requirement for membership in American Atheists, but it is not a requirement for defending the Constitution. If you’re not an Atheist, stand with us anyway. This fight is not ours alone.
I know that this newsletter is forwarded. I know that some of you reading it are people of faith, perhaps Christians, perhaps Pagans, maybe something else. It doesn’t matter. The only way to protect your way of life from government interference is to keep state and church separate.
When politicians support the display of “In God We Trust” or the Ten Commandments, or if they want mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, do you think they’re being inclusive of your religion, Muslims? Wiccans? Buddhists? Hindus? When they want Bible study in our public schools, which Bible do they desire to present? Is it yours, Catholics? Baptists? Jehovah’s Witnesses? I never hear anyone in Michigan trying to have students study the Book of Mormon.
The same groups supporting the displays and recitations are the groups who are trying to get evolution out of biology classrooms—even though it is based on sound science, and is the unifying theory of biology. They try to replace it with creationism. These groups want faith in decisions regarding sex education in your local schools, but they specify only that two clergy members are to be represented—do the clergy members on your sex education board represent you? These groups want to give your tax dollars to faith-based social programs, whether or not there is solid evidence to support how effective they are. Qualified psychologists and mental health professionals are replaced with people whose only state-mandated qualification is that they are members of a faith-based social program. They are not required to know anything about mental health, drug rehabilitation methods, or anything else proven through studies. Recently, Michigan enacted a law where citizens seeking divorce must seek counseling. On the list of people who can perform such counseling are clergy members—whose only state-mandated qualification is that they are ordained. People who do not turn to clergy when they have problems must pay higher-priced, qualified professionals in order to obtain a divorce. Is this practice fait?
Every time the subjects of displays of religious slogans and documents, recitations containing religious language, and singing of religious songs as part of state functions arise, some people inevitably say, “So what? How does it affect me? They’re not forcing me to believe in a certain way. Ignore them!” To these people, I suggest that you sit in on arguments regarding the items I’ve mentioned—and others I haven’t—to see what arguments they use to pass legislation that causes the mingling of state and church. “It’s on our money.” “Everyone has a god.” (But they don’t mean yours, unless you are a Christian. Some could argue that the god is Judeo-Christian, but that would be intellectually dishonest, given that the groups who lobby for such legislation are always Christian) “Our country was founded on the Bible.” “Our founders came to this country for religious freedom.”
The last statement gets to me most of all. Labeling the Puritans as our “founders” is not only wrong, but disgraceful. In no way were Puritans seeking religious freedom for anyone but themselves. They wanted to practice their strict form of Christianity, where sparrows could go on trial for defending their nests from hawks, where women were executed for merely being accused of witchcraft, where daily life included hours spent in church, and where anyone who disagreed with this religion was banished, executed, put in stocks, or punished in some other way. Women who became pregnant out of wedlock wore a scarlet “A” (that’s not just a novel!)—with no punishment for men. The list goes on, but to add to the horror and disgrace of the history of the Puritans, they made it a practice to slaughter the native people who lived on the land before them. On one occasion, the native people built a wooden fortress to keep these foreigners out. The Puritans surrounded the structure, set it on fire, and shot anyone who ran out of the burning fortress.
This nation’s actual founders were true intellectuals from the Enlightenment. Yes, some were Christians, but, having seen the trouble the colonies had with official religions, wanting one country that united all people in all of the colonies, our founders deemed it necessary to prohibit religious tests for people elected to Congress. They created no requirement for Supreme Court justices or the President to have a religion, either. Furthermore, they approved the First Amendment, which protected the right of people to worship or not worship as they chose, while prohibiting Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion. It is clear that they wanted religion to remain a matter for individual choice, where government remained neutral and secular.
For nearly eighty years, the people of the United States kept religion out of the federal government. The National Reform Association, whose purpose was to make the United States a Christian nation, tried several times to amend the Constitution to fit their views, but failed. They had to sneak religious expression into government. It started with our currency. Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, plotted with another former member of the National Reform Association, who happened to be the Director of the Treasury, to get Congress to pass a law that made all inscriptions on coins the domain of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Treasury. When Teddy Roosevelt tried to remove the religious language from coins, which he considered blasphemous, Christian lobbyists spun it as an attack on Christianity, causing emotional Christians to pressure members of Congress to make the slogan, “In God We Trust”, mandatory on coins.
During the beginnings of the Cold War, communism and Atheism were artificially joined at the hip. Cold War propaganda fostered the fear that the rise of communism in the world was a threat to religious freedom, so one’s religiosity became a litmus test for determining whether or not one was a communist sympathizer. This fear had been fostered before—by the Nazi party. Nazi propaganda presented communism as an imminent threat to religion, as well, and many people who fought on the Nazi side of the war in Europe still believe today that the whole purpose of communism was to erase religious belief—Christian belief, specifically—from the planet. It’s a myth, though. Stalin used the Russian Orthodox Church as a political tool to prevent civil war, and churches survived throughout the rise, period of rule, and fall of the Soviet Union. Why foster the fear, then? Religion is a great motivator. It’s an emotional issue, and it’s taboo among the faithful to question one’s belief system. Fostering the fear is an effective way to get people to prioritize emotion over intellect.
Politicians today use religion to get votes. They support faith-based social programs in hopes that religious supporters will perceive that the government shares their values and supports their churches. However, we are seeing a lopsided distribution of funds, favoring certain churches and their social programs over others. We are seeing qualified social workers losing their jobs to faith-based programs of questionable success. We are seeing programs where faith is presented as the answer to problems. Never mind if it’s not your faith, or if you do not live your life by faith. Of course, none of the money is going to secular social programs with qualified personnel, private or not.
Defending the separation of state and church is not an attack on religion. Keeping government and religion separate is actually a way of defending the right of private individuals to choose to worship or not worship. Think about it: with lopsided funding of certain faith-based programs, is your church being left out? The churches who have programs with the most support are the ones that can more easily market their belief systems to the most vulnerable among us.
Churches that cannot fill their pews on a weekly basis are receiving money for reconstruction and remodeling, in hopes of making them more marketable. This money—which amounts to billions—could be going toward one of any number of proven social programs, rather than going to churches where congregations are on the decline. Why should your tax dollars support a church that you do not attend?
If you’re thinking that religion in public schools is a good idea, think again: whose religion would it be? With an overwhelming diversity of religions in this country—as well as non-religious philosophical identities, there is no one-size-fits-all program that can be housed in public schools. Indoctrination through prayer and Bible recitation takes away the private, subjective decision to have a particular faith or not.
I haven’t forgotten my fellow Atheists, the Freethinkers, the Agnostics, the Secular Humanists, the Objectivists, the Brights, and all of the other people who prioritize reason above faith in their lives—most leaving faith out altogether. I’m one of you. I know that we feel the consequences of the erosion of the wall of separation of state and church more than anyone. Anytime one of our children is told to say the Pledge of Allegiance, which includes the phrase, “under God”, we feel it. Anytime one of our children is ostracized for opting out of such a recitation, we feel it. When our children want to join organizations like the Boy Scouts, and we’re told that it’s a private organization, but it often receives government endorsement, including having the President of the United States as its honorary head, and we’re excluded as leaders and our children are excluded as members because we refuse to subscribe to its obligation to a particular god, we feel it. When the government promotes religion, giving our peers, our family members, or total strangers the ammunition to ostracize, belittle, or otherwise harass us, we feel it. We have to fight to create a culture where the private decision to have faith or not is respected. Part of that fight is rebuilding the wall of separation of state and church that has eroded so much, especially in the last century.
If you’ve stayed with me through this editorial, thank you. You may or may not agree with all my points. You may have reasons I have not mentioned for wanting to rebuild the wall of separation between state and church. Whatever your reasons, go to Lansing. Let your voices be heard. Educate our legislators, our governor, and the rest of the citizens of Michigan. Act now, because if you ignore your rights, they will go away.
TopOn Sunday, March 6, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, Michigan Atheists will be having our monthly Sunday Brunch. The event is for both socializing and for business. Arlene-Marie, American Atheists State Director for Michigan, keeps us up to date on the current events regarding separation of state and church and civil rights for Atheists.
Denny’s is located at 7725 N. Wayne Rd, between Warren Road and Joy Road, near the Westland mall. The telephone number is 734-427-2711.
Order from the menu and enjoy the company of your Atheist friends in the banquet room. Both Arlene and Denny’s appreciate knowing how many people are coming, so please e-mail Arlene at amarie@atheists.org to let her know you’re coming. You may also reach her by phone at 313-388-9594.
TopOn Sunday, March 20, from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM, Michigan Atheists will be having their annual Spring Equinox dinner at the China Star Palace in Westland.
The price of the buffet is $13, payable at the door. Dinner will be served around 4:00 PM, followed by Michigan Atheists business and a speaker. The speaker will be Frederique Roux, who is from France. Mademoiselle Roux will speak on United Nations security law.
China Star Palace is located at 270 S. Wayne Rd. The phone number is 734-356-1410. Please park in the bank lot next door to the restaurant.
Reservations are appreciated. Please let Arlene-Marie know you’re coming by e-mailing her at amarie@atheists.org, or by phone at 313-388-9594.
TopThe Michigan Atheists Newsletter is an electronic publication containing news about separation of state and church, the events of Michigan Atheists, and the civil rights of Michigan's godless citizens. All content of the newsletter is the intellectual property of Greg Reich and Michigan Atheists, unless otherwise credited.
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