Well THAT happened. Secularist comments on the recent election.
by Don Lacey on Nov. 07, 2012, under Abortion, Arizona Families, Atheism, AZ Politics, Campaign 2012, Christian Self-Righteous Arrogance, Christianity, Critical Thinking, Education, Ethics, Faith, Freethought, Fundamentalism, God & Bible, Government, Logic, Reason, Religion, Responsible Government, Separation of Church & State
FreeThought Arizona is a 501c3 charity, as such, we are not allowed to take a position on individual candidates but now the election is over. Mitt Romney is no longer a candidate and Barack Obama has been green lighted for another four years in office. Given the choice between the two from a Secularist’s point of view, neither candidate was ideal. Atheists including Agnostics and other FreeThinking Americans are famously independent and leading them is often compared to herding cats. Some say that it’s more like herding butterflies but one thing that we all agree on is that there should be a separation of the church and the state. We universally agree that laws and public policies should be based on science, empirical evidence, verifiable experiences, independent historical accounts, and sound logic—not religious dogma. Given that one concern, President Obama was clearly the better choice.
Here in Arizona, we need to do a better job of keeping church and state separate. We’ve allowed the Center for Arizona Policy to have way too much power in our legislature. With the election behind us, it is time now to begin to work to roll back the power of Cathi Herrod. Her 501c3 organization is in flagrant violation of IRS rules for non-profit charitable organizations and has been active in partisan politics since 1995. She brags about over 100 laws that she has supported that have been enacted into law. We didn’t vote for her but she in effect tells everyone in the state who they should marry. She has decided that gambling is wrong, not just for herself, but for everyone in the state. She’s been instrumental in siphoning off money from the public education system into private institutions that don’t answer to the citizenry and are able to accept and reject students based on arbitrary criteria. She has supported a law that delays divorces by instilling a waiting period and unfunded mandatory counseling which in some cases extends the time women must endure in abusive situations. One of the laws she pushed through made it more difficult for children to be adopted by those that would remove them from state care. However, her most egregious violation of human dignity was her part in killing the Anti-Bullying law. The bill was killed by her because it protected gay kids from bullying. Never mind that it also protected all other kids as well.
The country has rejected Mitt Romney, the homophobic bully. Perhaps it’s time we started rejecting our own homophobic lobbying organization and Cathi Herrod. The best way to make that happen is to support the Secular Coalition for Arizona. The Secular Coalition for Arizona operates on a total budget that is less than the yearly compensation of Cathi Herrod. It is legally organized as a lobbying organization and represents many liaised non-theistic organizations in Arizona. Go to their website (http://www.secularaz.org/) and sign up for Email notification and find out about some of the liaised organizations make up the coalition.
