AP helping religious right again--this time in Arkansas
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Sun Feb 22, 2009 at 10:14:56 AM EST
I'm starting to wonder if the American Family Association has a moleat the Associated Press. That's the only plausible explanation for an AP story about a possible referendum about removing constitutional restrictions on atheists and agnostics' political rights.

An Arkansas legislator has proposed letting voters decide whether to lift the state's constitutional restrictions on atheists.

Amendment 19 of the Arkansas Constitution says "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this state, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court."


Some quick digging indicates that this is actually referring to article 19, section 1 of the state constitution. But to my mind, that's not as egregious an error as leaving out something anyone with a ninth-grade education should know-- under the 1st and 14th Amendments to the federal constitution, these provisions are almost certainly unenforceable.
Some quick digging indicates that there are no instances of anyone attempting to enforce this provision in modern times. And with good reason--there is no way, no how, this provision would ever stand up in court. However, provisions like this are in the same category as provisions in some Southern state constitutions that were used to restrict blacks from voting--even though they're unenforceable, their continued presence makes them look backwoods.

Clearly, the AFA must think we're stupid--why else would it feature such an obviously inaccurate story? After all, as I write this, this article is one of the feature stories on the Website of OneNewsNow, the AFA's wire service--an obvious attempt to push buttons among the AFA's base. About the only other plausible reason is that there must be an awfully large homeschool/Christian school base in Arkansas that believes the religious right's "Christian nation" myth.

The guy who proposed this is Richard Carroll, who represents part of Little Rock in the state house. Send him some love at carrollr at arkleg dot ar dot state dot us.



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well one of the main themes of the bible is this thing called imagery, for the most part christians have no clue about this topic, and yet it is directed at them. most of the bible is addressing issues that concern the religious crowd, for instance when the bible says that the love of many will cool in the end times it is talking about christians or the religious in general. its been said that christ was god come down in overalls, in other words this was god himself in a fleshly body, with that in mind lets look at what christ himself has said about christianity, (many will come in my name even doing miracles but I will say I know them not) and so we have this powerful insight into this religion called christianity, after all we don't have any church out there that calls itself jesusanity. any way lets get back to this thing called imagery (a most powerful drug) and the bible speaks of drugs quite litteraly it is known as pharmacopia in the greek well we have to assume that most likely christians of that time period were not using drugs, and so we can see what really being said here is this that being driven by imagery is the same as being on drugs. this is why they cannot understand what really being said. heres a good example, they are contiually moving towards a new temple in israel, but what kind of temple could you have without an ark to put in it, and heres the final word on the ark of the covanent, in the book of jerimiah it says and the ark will not be reconstructed, and yet there are people still actively searching for it. and so this is how strong imagery really is. this is why they can not figure out a lot of other things in the bible, the great prostitute easy to understand, 666 easy to understand, 616 easy to understand. so ask those who want a new temple about the ark and I am sure you will get the greatest well but answer you have ever heard.  

by keyknow on Mon Mar 30, 2009 at 05:20:13 PM EST


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