Kentucky atheists sue to separate God and homeland security
flockwoodFRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A group of atheists has filed a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to remove God from the state’s homeland security detail.
American Atheists Inc. filed the lawsuit in Frankfort on Tuesday, claiming Kentucky violated the Constitution by enacting a law in 2006 that stresses God’s role in protecting the state.
Attorney Edwin F. Kagin called the law “one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions” that he has ever seen.
Kentucky Homeland Security Director Thomas Preston declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Of particular concern to American Atheists is a clause that requires the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety of the state “cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”
The group seeks unspecified financial damages and legal fees.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
This complaint is almost as crazy as the law it attacks: The atheists begin by saying that what the government has done is unconstitutional, which is correct. The problem is that “fundamentalist” atheists are just as bad as fundamentalist Christians or Moslems. They are not satisfied by just having the whole thing declared unconstitutional, they have to claim to have suffered mental and physical pain and suffering because of it.
This is silly, and undermines the intellectual content of the rest of it. They feel “excluded.” Well, duh. They’re atheists; they should know they’d feel excluded from Christian society, just as a Muslim or a Hindu might feel excluded. I’m a socialist, and you don’t think I feel excluded? But I don’t whine and sue about it.
And the part about fearing that their safety is in the hands of governmental officials who are “fanatics, traitors, or fools,” well, who did they expect to run the government? Every minor government official is either a fanatic, a traitor, or a fool, or he or she wouldn’t have a government job. Well, not entirely true; some of them are just lazy.
If the ACLU had jumped in, they wouldn’t have been quite as silly in their lawsuit. Just goes to show that fundamentalists are still bad even when they’re right.
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:26 am
I agree with you Caleb, they sound as bad as Phelps.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
You know, Peach, people don’t seem to understand that overreaching is the worst thing you can do in politics, law, and PR. If they’d filed a sensible complaint, limiting themselves to the constitutional issue, they’d have been fine, and everyone would have said that they were quite correct in filing it. But with all this silly stuff in it, it just looks like they want to call the government officials names.