January 28, 2011
Support Melissa Montoya for the California State Senate in the 17th District
EnlightenTheVote supports the write-in candidacy of Melissa Montoya for the California State Senate in the 17th District. (High Desert, Antelope Valley, Castaic, Fillmore, Palmdale, Lancaster, Quartz Hill, Lake Elizabeth, Lake LA, Llano, Little Rock, Three Points, From the Ocean to Hesperia.)
Ms. Montoya is a political Independent and outspoken Atheist.
For more information please click here to send donations to Ms. Montoya and help get her elected to office.
To help us elect more rational candidates like Ms. Montoya please donate to EnlightenTheVote.com.
January 24, 2011
Tomfoolery: Ayn Rand’s Relevance Today
Tomfollery has an excellent posting on Ayn Rand and her influence on Tea Baggers such as Sen. Paul Ryan who states that her novels are the reason he is in pubilc service. He is trying to create Rand’s “Objectivism” world where money is good and altruism is evil.
Of course, this can mean only one thing. If anyone buys her philosophy, then by definition, they have to also accept her religious views. And her religious views is that there is no god.
This is a real conflict in the Atheist community. There are numerous Atheists, mostly from the past who were anti-religious pro-secular humanist but were primarily socially progressive. The Sen. Ryan’s in the Tea Baggers realm call them the Socialists and Communists, while others call them Trade Unionists.
The other group in the Atheist community are the Libertarian Conservatives. This IS the Sen. Ryan’s in the Tea Baggers world. The Social Security Administration and Medicare are altruistic endeavors and should be dismantled. The Department of Education and public education are altruistic benefits of an enlightented society that desires an educated population. Is has no place in the Tea Baggers Godless America.
I strongly urge you to read the article below, you’ll see.
via Tomfoolery
April 30, 2010
Virginia’s Catholic Governor Declares Entire State Is Christian
Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia today went against the Jewish Federation communities of the Commonwealth, his own legislature, and State Police Superintendent and declared that Virginia was an officially Christian state and that the police should be mandated to pray to Jesus. Attached article relates how Jewish residents object to the Governor’s actions.
- “It leads us toward unnecessary religious clashes, demeans our Commonwealth’s Jeffersonian principles and creates an unwelcoming environment for the Commonwealth’s Jewish citizens and other religious minorities,” six representatives of the groups wrote. “A final concern is the likelihood that revisiting this guidance would ultimately lead to litigation costly to our Commonwealth.”
- Reverend Clark Lobenstein told the Governor: “… we can think of no better way to live together peacefully and respectfully in our pluralistic society than to ensure that all religious faiths have the right to flourish without government-sponsored interference or preferential treatment.”
So much for that pro-job creating, moderate elected by Virginia last year.
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“We are obviously thrilled that Governor McDonnell has fulfilled his campaign promise to restore the religious liberty rights of state police chaplains,” said Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia. “His action reverses the discriminatory policy of the previous administration and ensures that chaplains can remain true to their faith at public events.” as reported by the Washington Post.
It is obvious that if Gov. McDonnell made these campaign promises to the Family Foundation of Virginia and the Virginia Christian Alliance, then he was lying when he told the rest of the state in interviews and debates that what he wrote while seeking degrees from Pat Robertson’s Regent University was not his current thinking or how he would run the state if elected. It is exactly how he is running the state, i.e., as a homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynist, religious extremists.
April 28, 2010
Update on that devil in the red dress
One of those devils in a red dress is calling on all secular women to join her in a scientific experiment to see if Pat Robertson and our Iranian cleric are correct about the devil causing natural disasters. Jen McCreight today is showing off her cleavage and is asking all women to make the earth move by dressing provocatively. So devils, get that hot little red dress out today.
April 20, 2010
Earthquakes caused by the Devil with a Red Dress On
Pat Robertson can now take comfort in the fact that his brothers in Iran officially agree with him on the fact that their Lord and Creator takes vengence on those who sin as defined by Pat Robertson and Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi. [and still people ask why we do not believe and I gotta ask why they do?]
Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future. I am so happy Christians and Moslems got together to decide that Earthquakes aren’t created by faults in the earth’s mantel.
Minister of Welfare and Social Security Sadeq Mahsooli said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best “formulas to repel earthquakes.”
March 16, 2010
Christian Legal Society v. Martinez
The so-called Christian Legal Society once again is promoting discrimination against non-Christians and gays and wanting those being discriminated against to actually pay them for the priviledge of being discriminated against. That’s right. They want to have state recognition and be allowed the funding and privileges that go with state recognition in a public university. Then say only those who practice their faith may actively participate in the organization. All others may come in and watch as they spend the dispossessed funds.
All students must pay tuition that goes toward providing funding for resident student organizations (RSOs). The Christian Legal Society, joined by 22 other evangelical groups, the Boys Scouts, and several state Attorneys General, then want to spend that public funding that the schools says is reserved for only those groups that do not discriminate.
September 25, 2009
A great article on how to talk to idiots, i.e., Don’t.
How to talk to idiots by Mark Morford in the SFGate is truly worth your time. In the article he links to the discussion between Rachel Maddow and Frank Schaeffer. Schaeffer was part of the fundamentalists, born and raised into it. His best line is: “You cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot.”
This is a lesson we all should try to emulate.
September 17, 2009
“How I Learned to Accept ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance and Stop Losing Elections”
“Sometimes people who favor separation of church and state resist this kind of candor and say that some Constitutional violations are “merely symbolic” or not worth fighting about. But if a ban on government-sponsored religious language is required by the Constitution, these are not minor violations, but go to the heart of the wall of separation. These violations, if such they are, must be fought. And, if they cannot be fought because of the political fallout, then maybe the underlying Constitutional interpretation is wrong.”
This is from Bruce Ledewitz’ report of a panel discussion held at the Netroots Convention in Pittsburgh. Click here to read his whole report and further the debate below.
September 12, 2009
To Endorse or Not To Endorse
Ellen Johnson with Congressman John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee
From the Executive Director:
A few years ago I attended a fundraiser for Senator Patrick Leahy. EnlightenTheVote.com was then called the GAMPAC and Peter Nuhn and I took our GAMPAC donation check to the Washington DC event. I spoke briefly with the Senator, and we took a photo and then Peter and I left.
A week later our donation check was returned to us. That was a shock to me. I didn’t think that would ever happen to us, but it did. The senator didn’t want people knowing about our donation, and that an Atheist political action committee (pac) was supporting him.
Are we really that poisonous to politicians? Are we really that powerful, even if in a negative way?
What should we do if a politician asks us NOT to endorse him/her at our site? Can we be an effective political action committee if those politicians who we want to support, don’t want it?
In 2002, we launched our pac with a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, and a reporter asked me what we would do if a politician did not want our endorsement? I told the reporter that if the politician didn’t want our endorsement then the politician would not get our votes or money. If we cannot endorse a candidate then we cannot drive votes and money their way.
It’s not that some politicians don’t want our support – it’s more that they don’t want the backlash from the religious. The religious are a better-organized and better-funded political machine than we are and that is what most politicians respond to. If we were better organized than the religious, then politicians would be actively pursuing our support. If we put a lot of money behind the candidates who we support, and if we work to elect them, then we will become the voting bloc that candidates will listen to.
So back to my original question. To support or not to support – that is the question. The answer is that we should support as long as we can make it beneficial to candidates and we can do that if you vote for the candidates we endorse and if you contribute to EnlightenTheVote.com. Our endorsement should benefit candidates. When you contribute to Enlightenthevote.com we donate to candidates’ campaigns and they know that enlightened Americans are organized to support them.
It is also important to donate your time to work on the campaigns of these candidates. This is what the religious do. In fact, there isn’t anything the religious won’t do to get their candidates elected to office.
Without your donations to Enlightenthevote.com and your work for the campaigns we support, some politicians may continue to be wary of our endorsement.
Atheists and other secular Americans are going political and we are going to be successful.
We are gearing up for the 2010 elections now. With your support we will elect politicians who support the separation of state and church and the noble words of the Establishment Clause, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Please donate to Enlightenthevote.com today. Please tell your friends about EV and help by spreading the word. Let’s not regret another election year.
What do you think? Leave us a comment.
Thank you,
Ellen Johnson, Executive Director
May 7, 2009
Hawaii Institutionalizes Respect for Islam
The Hawaiian Senate on Wednesday passed a well-meaning but Constitutionally daft bill by which that state officially recognizes a particular religion – Islam, in this case – as holding certain positive philosophical and spiritual attributes, even going so far as to call on the citizenry to respect and emulate these particular attributes. This development should be of concern to all Americans of every creed or none.
HCR 100 proclaims September 24th to be “Islam Day,” citing this as the date when “the Prophet Mohammad” arrived on the outskirts of Madinah, “thereby marking the birth of Islam.” Not content with having thereby given itself the authority to proclaim particular historical figures to be religious prophets, the Hawaiian Senate went on to make further theological judgment calls by citing the “common teachings” Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism as further evidence of the religion’s overall grandeur. Thus it is that this bill violates both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution by implicitly stating that a particular religion is worthy of praise simply by virtue of its similarity to two other religions that happen to be popular among a great number of people. Hawaii’s newly-encoded preference for a set of particular religious creeds is further made plain a bit later in the bill’s text when it is asserted that “Islam, along with its monotheistic counterparts, holds that peace is a divine quality and necessary for collective human happiness.” The State of Hawaii has thereby gotten into the messy and blatantly unconstitutional business of characterizing the philosophical nature of particular religions – and by doing so, it has inevitably insulted all of the others by omission.
In defense of Hawaii, its senate is not the first such body in the U.S. to step on the toes of the Constitution in an effort to recognize Islam’s contributions to the world; as HCR 100 notes, the U.S. Congress passed a similar measure in 1979, which is to say there is precedent for such nonsense. And, of course, there is yet another national bid in the works to codify respect for religion in general and the Judeo-Christianity in particular by way of H. Res. 397, which would establish “American Spiritual Heritage Week” in service to historical revisionism of the sort that seeks to remake our secular government as a Christian institution. Hawaii is simply falling prey to a misguided trend that we have seen before in many other states and on the national level as well.
Of course, HRC 100 and H. Res. 397 are driven by very different motivations. The latter is yet another attempt by Christian legislators to elevate religion in general and Christianity in particular to a status that they simply do not merit within the context of American jurisprudence, which explicitly forbids the government to elevate anything of the sort to any level at all; the former is merely intended to assure American Muslims that they are included within the American family, which is to say that it is an attempt to elevate Islam to the same level as Christianity and Judaism in the eyes of the state. But this, too, is misguided; in matters of religion, the state should be blind.
If Hawaiians or anyone else feel the need to reassure Muslims at home or abroad that they are not automatically enemies of the United States, there is a better way to go about this, and one that has the added bonus of promoting knowledge of our national history and secular origins – they can pass a bill in commemoration of the Treaty of Tripoli, which was passed unanimously by Congress in 1797 and signed into law by President John Adams in the same year, and which plainly states not only that our nation “has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Mussulmen [Muslims],” but also that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Incidentally, the sponsors of the pro-Christian “American Spiritual Heritage Week” might want to read over the Treaty of Tripoli as well.
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