[click to embiggen]
There is a segment of American Christianity (the segment that we seem to fight against for our own rights) that really, truly does not understand what country they live in, and really, truly has no respect for the ideals of the United States.
In North Carolina, a resolution is making its way through the House to establish Christianity as North Carolina’s official religion:
A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.
The legislation grew out of a dispute between the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.
Overtly Christian prayers at government meetings are not rare in North Carolina. Since the Republican takeover in 2011, the state Senate chaplain has offered an explicitly Christian invocation virtually every day of session, despite the fact that some senators are not Christian.
[…]
House Bill 494, a resolution filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:
“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states.
“Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion,” it states.
Joe provides some of the text of the bill:
SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.
Now, of course, it’s just a resolution, and it would lose, lose, lose if it was taken to court, but this is a pretty good indicator of the types of things our lovely opponents would do if they really held the reins of power in this country. It would basically be the fundamentalist Christian version of Iran, and that’s terrifying.
[comic, which is awesome, by Ed Stein]
