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National Org for Reform of Marijuana Laws | Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Others: Progressive Portal | Wellstone Action Network | True Majority | Citizen Works |
Progressive Majority | MoveOn.org | Act For Change
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Sunday, February 29, 2004Susan Jacoby's forthcoming Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism will be published in April by Metropolitan Books. The author is also director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York.
In 1773, the Rev. Isaac Backus, the most prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."
Today's Religious Right is completely out of touch with the thinking of our esteemed "Founding Fathers" and with the nature of our Constitution, which "was written and ratified by a coalition of Enlightenment rationalists and evangelical Christians equally fearful of entanglements between religion and government... the men of faith who helped frame the Constitution were confident enough of the strength of their religion that they did not feel obliged to enlist the aid of government to promote their personal beliefs." [Apparently today's evangelical Christians are less confident in the strength of their religion to hold its own without the benefit of unconstitutional government support!]
My comments: The RR always likes to believe that the Founding Fathers were a group of pious traditional Christians, which is so much bull-dookey: they included Deists, Unitarians, and other "unorthodox" types. Most importantly they were not interested in creating a theocracy: far from it! They were products of the Enlightenment, and they were champions of the separation of Church and State.
8:37:22 PM | This is Post #155 | Permanent URL:
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"President Bush's endorsement of this mean-spirited amendment shows that he is neither compassionate nor concerned with the rights of all Americans," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "Gays and lesbians are our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends. They serve as firefighters, police, doctors and professional athletes. They laugh at the same jokes and worry about car payments and credit card debt. Amending the constitution to deny them the same rights we all take for granted just isn't very American."
Learn More about the Proposed Amendment
Some good news from the ACLU: "In response to a public outcry, the Justice Department has decided to quash a series of grand jury subpoenas issued to anti-war protestors in Des Moines, Iowa. However, the ACLU still has serious concerns about why the subpoenas were issued in the first place and the broad scope of the Justice Department's inquiry."
Read More about this Investigation
It's definitely time to renew my ACLU membership, because Bush and his facist buddies sure have been keeping it busy trying to safeguard our civil rights!!
7:47:42 PM | This is Post #154 | Permanent URL:
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Copyright 2004 Madeline Althoff
