Anti-Atheist Discrimination?

[redem]

I was wondering if anyone knew of any links to sites detailing actual examples of anti-atheist discrimination in the US?
Most especially those relating to the government.
My debating opponent has asked for some, and my checks have thusfar drew a blank, except for the boy scouts thing.

[Face]

The most obvious that I am aware of is the standing law in Texas that states that atheists cannot hold public office.

Try this (http://www.nebraskaatheists.org/article1.htm) for a reference.

[iridium]

Church-state separation... what a joke :banghead:

[redem]

The most obvious that I am aware of is the standing law in Texas that states that atheists cannot hold public office.

Try this for a reference.


My opponent was responding to that. She wants specific instances where those laws were used to discriminate against atheists, though I'd settle for non-Christians.

[Face]

Originally posted by redem
My opponent was responding to that. She wants specific instances where those laws were used to discriminate against atheists, though I'd settle for non-Christians.
I see. I would have to have access to varied legal records. I can think of instances where people are punished for having non-Christian beliefs, but not specifically for being atheists.

I think that, while the nation is heavily Christian, that most if not all major employers and such would rather stick tacks in their eyes than cause a scandal involving discrimination based on religion - every hiring form I've ever seen says things about being 'equal opportunity' and such.

For documented cases of religious discrimiation, I always look to the schools where kids are bullied because of lack of faith, and to family life, where families are separated because of religious tenets. But that's hardly a major discrimnation scandal like with the Boy Scouts. I don't think a major political Texas candidate, for example, has ever been an atheist (and being politicians, they would have feigned religion to get sympathy votes from the Christian right - it's a time-honoured tactic and I don't see the law impeding someone's political career even if they have to lead a double life).

[AspenMama]

You might get a better response here.

-- AspenMama, SL Moderator

[tracer]

Hmmm ... I wonder if a Texan has ever announced his candidacy for public office (maybe something small, like City Council or Dog Catcher), and openly declared his atheism in an attempt to challenge the validity of this particular Texas law.

[James Madison]

The Texas law, if it truly prohibits atheists from holding public office, is most likely unconstitutional via Torasco v. Watkins.

Discrimination against the non-religious by the government is typically prohibited.

[BruceWane]

Here (http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/pat_quotes/atheist_fired.htm) is a case that was recently settled out of court.

Here (http://atheism.miningco.com/cs/atheismdiscrimin/) is a site that lists quite a bit of information on the subject. Especially interesting is McCarthy's State Department speech.

Specic instances where laws were used to discriminate against atheists are not going to be found in very recent history. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed basically all discrimination based on race, creed, religion, sex, or national origin.

Current examples of discrimination in the US are pretty hard to document. It's pretty much all illegal, so it's a much more subtle and unspoken thing. Actual proven legal cases of racial discrimination are pretty rare, but it'd take a fool to argue that racial discrimination itself is rare. Likewise with all discrimination. It's not obvious, it's underground, hidden. It's things like a manager hiring a white guy instead of a black guy of equal qualification, or giving a promotion to the guy that goes to his baptist church instead of the guy who goes to a synagogue. Or looking for any possible reason to fire a person whose religious or political views differ from their own. The atheist that gets fired for being 3 minutes late late one day, while christian co-workers come and go at will.

Myself.....I was once told by a manager that "things just weren't working out" shortly after he started holding prayer meetings before work, and I never attended. Yeah, it was discrimination, but I was already looking for work elsewhere because I couldn't stand all the bible thumping. I was only 19 or 20 at the time, and a lawsuit never really crossed my mind. The place was fairly normal when I first started working there, but over time the manager hired a few pals from his church and it started getting really uncomfortable. He didn't want trouble, so he was more than happy to give a good reference, and I ended up in a better job anyway.

[Malachi151]

Well, for one thing it has been institutional to a degree and thus, like many things, the laws often don't have to be invoked.

Blacks couldn't hold office after they were freed from slavery, but that didn't mean that the laws had to be invoked to prevent hundreds of blacks from becoming public officials, they never even tried because of the obvious bias of the system.

Same is true today, atheists don't even run for office, not because they don't want to, but because they know that they could never get elected just like blacks couldn't have gotten elected years ago.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/us_orgin.htm

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/rise_of_american_fascism.htm

[unregistered_user_1]

There's some stuff here (http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/ghwbush.htm) that's kind of peripheral to what you'd want, but it does show examples of gov't officials actively saying that they don't give a damn about atheists.

Warning: Depressing read -- at least that guy's out of office now.

[arcadia]

It's really an interesting and important question. I spend a fair amount of my time hanging around a well-funded fundamentalist Christian/political blog and have discovered that perhaps 25% of the posts deal with real or imagined incidents of Christian victimization.

Discrimination against Christians is sort of the ground beef and potatoes of the very well organized Republican effort to motivate and keep motivated their fundy base. Every so often they throw in some good red meat like gay marriage, but the basic effort is directed to a)trashing the culture and b)convincing them that they are victims of the vast left-wing media and legal system conspiracy.

Nobody seems to doing the same for atheism.

There's an irony here...

[Sarah Berel-Harrop]

Originally posted by redem
My debating opponent has asked for some, and my checks have thusfar drew a blank, except for the boy scouts thing.

The boy scouts thing is good, well documented. Try
www.bsa-discrimination.org. Particularly Paul Trout,
Darrell Lambert, Mark Welsh, the Randall Twins. Elliot
Welsh, the father of Mark Welsh, has recently joined
the UU-Scouting listserve. Recall that BSA has a federal
charter.

Another nice example in Texas is the politically motivated
rejection of the sales tax exemption for the Ethical Culture
society of Austin. See,

http://subscript.bna.com/SAMPLES/dtr.nsf/0/85256453007e2c8d85256ce600122f39

edited by Toto to fix URL

[Sarah Berel-Harrop]

Originally posted by arcadia
It's really an interesting and important question. I spend a fair amount of my time hanging around a well-funded fundamentalist Christian/political blog and have discovered that perhaps 25% of the posts deal with real or imagined incidents of Christian victimization.


I believe the word for it is "projection".

[Obey_Matthew_6_6]

Originally posted by redem
I was wondering if anyone knew of any links to sites detailing actual examples of anti-atheist discrimination in the US?
Most especially those relating to the government.
My debating opponent has asked for some, and my checks have thusfar drew a blank, except for the boy scouts thing. If you haven't checked yet, I suggest the newswire archive. http://www.infidels.org/wire/category_archives/attacks.shtml:)

[GaryP]

I submitted my story concerning threats I & my family received during a creche incident here in Lancaster back in '99 to a group who was planning on documenting such cases and giving the report to the UN.

I can't recall the chairperson's name, but there used to be a link to the organization on SecWeb's home page.

I did a cursory search and could not find it, but perhaps someone here can lead us in the right direction.

[redem]

Ok. Thanks to everyone for your responses.

[Toto]

I occasionally get an email from Margaret Downey of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia (http://xxx.infidels.org/~nap/bsa_FSGP_MDowney.html) asking for instances of discrimination against atheists. I believe that she has some sort of official status as a UN observer on the question of discrimination against non-believers.

[AtheistsAreUs]

Reporter to presidential candidate George Bush (Sr.) on August 27, 1987:

Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

AAU

[EverLastingGodStopper]

You may want to visit Margaret Downey's webpage at http://www.fsgp.org or read this article which was published in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 4.

"Discrimination Against Atheists: The Facts" by Margaret Downey (http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/downey_24_4.htm)

Another Boy Scouts discrimination website is:
http://www.scoutingforall.org/

[Gawen]

Hmmm ... I wonder if a Texan has ever announced his candidacy for public office (maybe something small, like City Council or Dog Catcher), and openly declared his atheism in an attempt to challenge the validity of this particular Texas law. None that I know of. If it was an elected position, that person would do well to keep their mouth shut until after elected. But that woun't work here either...because religion is central to the voting process from city counselor to mayor to Senate. But a dog catcher is a city job that anyone could apply for like any other typical job.

I work for a small city. I know of two pagans, a deist, and me, the resident atheist. Most of my workmates know, but I have no clue how far up the chain of command it's gone. If you're a everyday typical employee, it dosn't seem to matter as long as you do your job. But if it's an upper echelon elected leadership position, you better know God...esp the God of those who vote.

[Nectaris]

For a specific case you can check on Anonka's ordeal:

Here's the Michigan Atheist's newsletter with a lot of details:

Anonka MI Atheist newsletter (http://www.michiganatheists.org/newslet/062203.html)

Here's something that Anonka wrote about the ordeal (this may have also been a speech at one of the conventions, but I missed it)

What Christianity has done to me (http://www.michiganatheists.org/gamolim/spanonka.html)

And finally here's a blurb from pagan nation (Anonka runs a witch museum,which is why pagans are supporting her, I presume).

No Hate (http://www.pagannation.com/~dorothy/nohate.htm)

Hope this helps and it's not too late.

Dave

[whiteguyonabike]

I used to work for the Republican Party of MN :banghead: as a tele-fundraiser. The money was good, but I quit because the political dissonance was far too painfull.

I heard from my then-girlfriend (who also worked in the phone bank) that a woman we worked with, Larissa Presho, was running for the State House, District 58B. She said that Larissa was an atheist, and party officials advised her to keep that little factoid to herself. Of course, this is second- or third-hand information.

I plan on running for some office at the local level and to make it known (but not overpowering) that I am an atheist. There are examples of openly-atheist candidates:

Edwin F. Kagin (founder of CampQuest)
Kentucky Senate, 11th District, 2000, Democrat
Lost in Primary
Kentucky Supreme Court, 6th District, 1998
Lost

Larry Darby
Attorney General of Alabama, 2002, Libertarian
Lost

Herb Silverman
Governor of South Carolina, 1990
Lost

Warren Redlich (said to be atheist, but no good evidence)
New York Senate, 21st, 2004, Republican (not yet endorsed)

however

Robert Reich (apparently vehemently against religion)
Secretary of Labor, Clinton Adm.
Appointed

[EverLastingGodStopper]

In Illinois, Rob Sherman is running "to be on the ballot in the March, 2006, Democratic Primary for 53rd District State Representative."
http://www.robsherman.com/staterep/home.htm

[clark]

One of the candidates (http://www.lorilipmanbrown.com/) for Nevada Supreme Court this year is "a friend of ours". She served one term in the Nevada senate and refused to participate in prayers (one of the things that her opponent use to defeat her in re-election). She's a Jewish humanist.

Another agnostic Jew serves on the Clark County, Nevada Commission, but I'm not sure how open this comissioner is. Clark County has 3/4 of Nevada's population, including the Greater Las Vegas Area.

Eddie Tabash (http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=122) has run for California Assembly twice as an atheist, but was unsuccessful. He writes and speaks on getting atheists elected to public office.

California had an atheist governor a few decades ago, Culbert Olson.

THOUGHTfully Yours,
Clark

[David Mills]

In 1979 a television evangelist named Ernest Angley was visiting my hometown, Huntington, WV. Since he collected money from his flock under the pretense that he could heal terminally ill people (through Jesus' powers of course), I and a few like-minded friends made some placards and planned to demonstrate in front of his "Miracle Rally." I was concerned, however, that our protest not violate any technicality of the law, such as trespassing or blocking entrance to a public facility, for which the police might order us to disperse.

Because of these concerns, I did an incredibly stupid thing. I drove to the local police station beforehand to ask them for advice and for protection against possible retaliation by religious zealots. I was eventually referred to a Captain at the station who said, "I hope somebody bloodies you up good for trying to interfere with God's work. I'm going to the Rally myself and I plan to spit in your face when I pass."

We went ahead with our protest and nothing happened at all. Not even the police were unruly.

David Mills
Author of "Atheist Universe"

[xxthe_leewitxx]

California had an atheist governor a few decades ago, Culbert Olson.Well, that explains Gov. Arnold Schwartznegger's election pretty neatly. It musta really made God mad when they elected that atheist, and now he's getting back at them. :D

[DigitalChicken]

The boy scouts thing is good, well documented. Another nice example in Texas is the politically motivated
rejection of the sales tax exemption for the Ethical Culture
society of Austin. See,



Many groups have been denied for not worshipping a supreme being. THis includes the North Texas Church of Freethought (http://church.freethought.org) which is a church for non-believers.

DC

[WhyBeNormal]

Try this http://www.nonbeliever.org/index.atheism_antidiscrimination.html
Hope it can help

[Arizonaepu]

I was wondering if anyone knew of any links to sites detailing actual examples of anti-atheist discrimination in the US?
Most especially those relating to the government.
My debating opponent has asked for some, and my checks have thusfar drew a blank, except for the boy scouts thing.

Here are a couple items, related to the military, specifically the Army:

1.) Identification tags (commonly known as dog tags) have an entry for regligious prefences. Atheists have to settle for "NONE". I think some atheists have pressed the issue and got an "A" listed for their religious preference. Not sure if this is really grounds for discrimination, however.

2.) Atheists cannot be granted conscientious objector status. Conscientious objector status is only granted to theists with a compelling belief against war and killing. Ooops -- we all know that there aren't any atheists in foxholes. What was I thinking?

[whiteguyonabike]

2.) Atheists cannot be granted conscientious objector status. Conscientious objector status is only granted to theists with a compelling belief against war and killing. Ooops -- we all know that there aren't any atheists in foxholes. What was I thinking?

Are you sure of this? I was looking into conscientious objection when the Iraq War was young. A lot of people I talked to didn't seem to know the process very concretely, whether the objector be a theist or not.

I was going to either 1) show my membership to my atheist/humanist club (Campus Atheists and Secular Humanists) or 2) join a Unitarian-Universalist society in my area that happens to be largely atheistic. The problem with 1) is that CASH did not take a stance against the war, although close to 100% (if not 100%) of us thought it was bullshit. The problem with 2) is that you have to be a member of the organization for a while for them to take you seriously.

If it is true that atheists can not be conscientious objectors, well, changing that sounds like a good project.

[Dyrwen]

If it is true that atheists can not be conscientious objectors, well, changing that sounds like a good project.
Yeah, I've read a few essays on pacifism and the objector site pretty thoroughly. It becomes incredibly hard to get CO status if you don't have a religious affiliation.

You basically have to have some sort of declaration stating how long you've had this belief that war is wrong, not sure how they judge that, and that it wasn't just an overnight decision because you've got better things to do. If you want CO status, you basically would only have to show up and defend it if there was a draft, so that'd be difficult to test as far as getting results are concerned.

The whole system of getting CO is a bigger issue than just religion though, it is of the USA's inability to allow people to choose not to want to go to war if they don't want to, since well, the country wants to and therefore the government believes the people should follow. It's bullshit, but luckily without a draft we won't know how messed up it is.

[Ampoliros]

Reporter to presidential candidate George Bush (Sr.) on August 27, 1987:

Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?

Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

AAU

Just to let you know, I read an article while I was bored at the dentist's office interviewing Kerry and his wife in some family magazine - they were asked if an atheist could ever make a good President.

Kerry's response was basically "I dunno.", but Mrs. Kerry stated that she believed that if you're not a religious non-Xian or a Deist, you're a megalomaniac(and, therefore, not qualified to serve the people?).

Oh well. I'm sure in a few thousand years, if the US is still around, they might have an athiest president. Somehow.

<shrug>

[Mathew Goldstein]

I was wondering if anyone knew of any links to sites detailing actual examples of anti-atheist discrimination in the US?
Most especially those relating to the government.
My debating opponent has asked for some, and my checks have thusfar drew a blank, except for the boy scouts thing.

A good example of discrimination occurs during attempts to have an atheist give the invocation at the start of meetings of state and local legislature meetings. I think some legislatures do not provide atheists this opportunity because the written procedures or unwritten customs for qualifying to do the invocation are biased against atheists (and religous minorities such as pagans more generally). It is difficult for atheists to get invited by one of the elected officials in those locales where such a sponsor is required. Once invited, the atheist typically encounters objections and some elected officials usually walk out. They make it clear that they object in principle to an atheist giving the invocation http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=95843.

Not that there should be invocations in the first place. But when there are invocations, as is often the case, there should not be wriitten or unwritten obstacles for religious minorities or the non-religious as is sometimes the case.