Church and State
If you voted last week the chances are decent you did so in the basement of a local church. In my area, this was largely due to the security concerns of allowing voting in public schools while school is in session.
Did the ACLU speak out against this? I could find nothing on their website complaning about voters having to go to churches to conduct state business.
So let me get this straight:
An atheist who stumbles across a religious symbol in a public park has the right to be outraged and demand the symbol's removal, on the grounds that the state is sponsoring religion and offending him.
An atheist who, in order to participate in a national election, is forced to vote in a church basement, with all sorts of religious symbols prevalent, does not get offended, because the state is not sponsoring religion.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not pushing the theory there's anything wrong with voting in a church basement. It's multiculturalism at its best. If I had to go vote in a mosque or synagogue, I don't feel that the government is shoving that religion down my throat. But I would have to SEE all sorts of symbols of a culture to which I do not belong. Most Americans see no problem with this, so long as there is no pressure to join a different religion in order to cast a vote.
So why is "seeing" offending symbols so horribly offensive in one case and not the other? It seems to me that few actually do take offense to these sorts of things, but organizations such as the ACLU will take any shot they can at the existing Judeo-Christian norms upon which our society has been built. And right now they can't knock down our churches, so they figure they might as well use them to accommodate more voters (remember, high turnout = good for Democrats).
Defending our civil liberties from government encroachment is a very important task. Using an organization chartered to do this for mere partisan leftist purposes is reprehensible. The Democrats should have taken from the election that a change in leadership and direction needs to be made. I suppose it would be too much to hope that such a wake-up call occurs in the ACLU, so they can get back to their jobs of watchdogging the government, rather than protecting us from religion.
Did the ACLU speak out against this? I could find nothing on their website complaning about voters having to go to churches to conduct state business.
So let me get this straight:
An atheist who stumbles across a religious symbol in a public park has the right to be outraged and demand the symbol's removal, on the grounds that the state is sponsoring religion and offending him.
An atheist who, in order to participate in a national election, is forced to vote in a church basement, with all sorts of religious symbols prevalent, does not get offended, because the state is not sponsoring religion.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not pushing the theory there's anything wrong with voting in a church basement. It's multiculturalism at its best. If I had to go vote in a mosque or synagogue, I don't feel that the government is shoving that religion down my throat. But I would have to SEE all sorts of symbols of a culture to which I do not belong. Most Americans see no problem with this, so long as there is no pressure to join a different religion in order to cast a vote.
So why is "seeing" offending symbols so horribly offensive in one case and not the other? It seems to me that few actually do take offense to these sorts of things, but organizations such as the ACLU will take any shot they can at the existing Judeo-Christian norms upon which our society has been built. And right now they can't knock down our churches, so they figure they might as well use them to accommodate more voters (remember, high turnout = good for Democrats).
Defending our civil liberties from government encroachment is a very important task. Using an organization chartered to do this for mere partisan leftist purposes is reprehensible. The Democrats should have taken from the election that a change in leadership and direction needs to be made. I suppose it would be too much to hope that such a wake-up call occurs in the ACLU, so they can get back to their jobs of watchdogging the government, rather than protecting us from religion.
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