http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/02/AR2008120202210.html?hpid=sec-religion
There was a lawsuit filed Tuesday by American Atheists Inc. to remove part of the Kentucky anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can’t keep the state safe without God’s help. “Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state ‘cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God’ and to stress that fact through training and educational materials.” Even though this is Kentucky, I still can not believe that the legislature passed this through. This law, the clause in particular, clearly violates the Establishment Clause. That aside, how is this in the best interest of the state?
The state is not only allowing the Office of Homeland Security to display this plaque, but they are the ones who are requiring it. They are also forcing them to stress this through training and educational materials, which clearly establishes religion over non-religion as well as preferences one religion over others without any secular purpose. The state moved beyond excessive entanglement into extreme simplicity by clearly imposing their beliefs on all Kentuckians (may or may not be a word). If you are not convinced that this law violates the Establishment Clause, hopefully you will agree that the clause does not benefit the state in anyway, so it should not have been created in the first place.
Scott C. Idleman’s, “Why the State Must Subordinate Religion” claims that it is in the best interest of the state to diminish the importance of religion in state matters. He claims it is necessary in order to preserve the supremacy of civil law and government. Religion can be a competing sovereign against the state because some people of religious faith refuse to see the government’s sovereignty as ultimate. The state does not want its power questioned and this Kentucky clause basically undermines the state’s police power, ability to protect its people, by explicitly stating they can not do it alone and God is necessary. They are pointing out their own inadequacies and opening possibilities for, if not encouraging, people to ignore the state in all matters that conflict with their own religious beliefs.
The only reason I can come up with for why this law was passed is to fight the battle against secularism. If that is the case, how effective is this law and at what risk? This law clearly violates Constitutional rights as well as undermines the state of Kentucky’s own ability to protect its citizens.
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6 comments:
"Even though this is Kentucky, I still can not believe that the legislature passed this"
:-)
Rock on Francisco.
I guess it's comforting to know the US still has people in its basement-states using outlandish logic to support unreasonable legislature, insofar as it serves to remind emerging democracies that they can retain their crazy ideas while building peaceful conflict resolution.
I agree with Francisco. The state completely undermines their authority here. By passing this legislation - which was a blatant and empty political move - they are saying that through God's grace they are saved from terrorism. This is like telling the terrorists that the state has faulty or no intelligence or anti-terrorism techniques. Way to keep your people safe. In regards to the constitutionality of this move by Kentucky, I think this is as unconstitutional as keeping "In God We Trust" on court room walls or praying to God before a session of Congress. The state is clearly endorsing the belief in one god. This is inappropriate and should be overturned. Tisk, tisk... another purely political move to keep God in politics, as Francisco said.
Unfortunately, if the minority isn't properly represented in our government, this kind of thing will happen. I'm going to assume that a majority of Kentuckians claim to be Christians and that therefor their government. And if no one vocalizes their issues, or doesn't have money or time for court appearances, this will likely go unfought. We the same thing in schools where we've been reading about prayer cases coming up over and over again because unless there is a suit brought against it, the majority will have rule. That's kind of the nature of a democratic society, there aren't inherently protections for minorities. Thankfully, America at least has some kind of system in place [the Constitution, courts, etc] to do that job, even though if that job isn't always done.
What about love, though. God is love, and we cannot protect our citizens and country without love for them... I agree, though, Kentucky did a bad job here considering the consequences of such a statement. What's important is that we consider why the agency might be motivated to erect a plaque with such a statement. I think it preludes to two distinct lines of terrorism. One line is the Muslim line of extremist looking to kill all Christians and Jews and all Americans. The second line is that of the secular fundamentalist who want to take faith out of all government dealings. We might look to Conkle's article where he suggest fundamentalist are mainly concerned with violence, an aspect of fundamentalism that homeland security should be concerned with, I think. However, that being said, there are other ways to achieve the ends to which they were trying to get to, other than God.
I agree with all of the other commentors on this blogpost. Kentucky is definitly undermining their state authority in saying that they need the help of God to be safe. But more than that its definitly just another way to keep God in politics and preference monotheistic religions that believe in God.
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