Rep. Monique Davis to atheist Rob Sherman: `It’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!'"You have no right to be here!"???
Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune
3 Apr 2008
The following exchange between atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove and Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) took place Wednesday afternoon in the General Assembly as Sherman testified before the House State Government Administration Committee....
[Ill. State Rep]Davis: This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--
...
And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!
... Get out of that seat!... You have no right to be here!
[emphasis added]
... and note the value-laden, pejorative verb: "spew"!
I first addressed the broad issue of the non-believer's place in America in response to Romney's faith-focused speech. There I expressed that as an agnostic,
I am disturbed by any implication that my non-belief in any way excludes me from civic life, or somehow makes me an inferior, even second-class citizen.I stressed that my country's founding document, the U.S. Constitution, makes it clear that
...no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.... and that a close reading of the Constitution found no justification for asserting that it establishes a "foundation of faith" upon which my country rests.
When public officials - whether appointed or elected - use their public positions to deny the non-believer a role in our participatory democracy, I am alarmed. When Rep. Davis asserts that the very idea of atheism is dangerous, and that by virtue of his non-belief, a U.S. citizen has no right to address a public forum, I am alarmed.
Given the degree to which the so-called "religious right" has directed political discourse in this country in recent years, I have little doubt that there are many other "Christian" public servants who share Rep. Davis's attitude, and who would impose their beliefs on the rest of us if given the chance.
[Note: I am not anti-religious. I just don't believe. For a more-or-less concise summary of my attitude toward religion in general and the Judeao-Christian tradition in particular, see my Apologia.]
The first step is to silence atheists, then cults, then any belief that's not specifically approved by the government. This is why many people of various faiths belong to American's United for Separation of Church and State. And why it is in everyone's interest in not allowing an establishment of Religion in this country.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the State Representative from Oklahoma, Sally Kern, who stated that homosexuals are more dangerous than terrorists. There are many elected officials who need to have their mouths washed out with soap and sent packing.
I suspect your phrasing is deliberate, to echo Pastor Martin Niemöller's: "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
ReplyDeleteAnd then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
Yes, that is what frightens me!