Kentucky: A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God?

[Lakhota]

By Laura Gottesdiener

In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God--or risk 12 months in prison.

The law and its sponsor, state representative Tom Riner, have been the subject of controversy since the law first surfaced in 2006, yet the Kentucky state Supreme Court has refused to review its constitutionality, despite clearly violating the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

"This is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I've ever seen," said Edwin Kagin, the legal director of American Atheists', a national organization focused defending the civil rights of atheists. American Atheists’ launched a lawsuit against the law in 2008, which won at the Circuit Court level, but was then overturned by the state Court of Appeals.

More: A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God? How Kentucky is Persecuting Atheists | Alternet

American Atheists vs. KY Homeland Security

Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics - The New York Times

 

[Lakhota]

Scary. Sounds as crazy as Sharia law to me.

 

[g5000]

What exactly do you have to do to violate the law and earn 12 months in jail?

The article is totally unclear on this point.

.

 

[g5000]

It appears the sponsor of the law is a Democrat.

How 'bout them apples?

But this unrelenting mission has also frequently taken Mr. Riner and the Kentucky legislature, where he has been a Democratic representative for 26 years, across the constitutional barrier between church and state.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/us/04louisville.html

.

 

[Lakhota]

Yes, the sponsor is a Democrat Baptist minister, but religious nuts come in all political types.

 

[rdean]

I find this hard to believe.

 

[Lakhota]

I find this hard to believe.

So do I, but you can Google several other articles about it from various sources.

 

[OKTexas]

IF they law is as portrayed only a person convicted under it would have standing to challenge it's constitutionallity, in which case it would probably be overturned. In any case the establishment clause wouldn't apply, it would be the free exercise clause that would get it overturned.

 

[Politico]

I find this hard to believe.

Good because it's not true.

 

[Lakhota]

American Atheists vs. KY Homeland Security

 

[Lakhota]

“The church-state divide is not a line I see,” Riner told The New York Times shortly after the law was first challenged in court. “What I do see is an attempt to separate America from its history of perceiving itself as a nation under God.”

From the OP.

 

[Lakhota]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Tom Riner looks for God everywhere, and in places he does not find him, he tries to put him there.

For more than 30 years, Mr. Riner’s singular devotion has been to inject God into the public arena. It has guided him as he preached the Bible in the countryside of Nicaragua and Jamaica. And it steers him as he proselytizes the formerly homeless and drug-addicted people who live with him at his ramshackle church in one of the poorest sections of this city.

But this unrelenting mission has also frequently taken Mr. Riner and the Kentucky legislature, where he has been a Democratic representative for 26 years, across the constitutional barrier between church and state.

More: Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics - The New York Times

 

[koshergrl]

*yawn*

More craziness from the craziest on the site.

 

[rdean]

I find this hard to believe.

So do I, but you can Google several other articles about it from various sources.

I believe Republicans are capable of such odious behavior. I just don't believe they will get very far with it. Not anymore. Americans are wising up.

 

[Political Junky]

Scary. Sounds as crazy as Sharia law to me.

They're one and the same.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Yes, the sponsor is a Democrat Baptist minister, but religious nuts come in all political types.

funny how you never say that when it is about Republicans ......

 

[Harry Dresden]

I find this hard to believe.

that's because your a close minded person.....you find it hard to believe that a Democrat can fuck up or be a dumb-ass.....i think we have talked about this before.....do you have a new dance to show us?....

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I find this hard to believe.

So do I, but you can Google several other articles about it from various sources.

I believe Republicans are capable of such odious behavior. I just don't believe they will get very far with it. Not anymore. Americans are wising up.

The sponsor of the law is a DEMOCRAT dumb ass.

 

[Political Junky]

So do I, but you can Google several other articles about it from various sources.

I believe Republicans are capable of such odious behavior. I just don't believe they will get very far with it. Not anymore. Americans are wising up.

The sponsor of the law is a DEMOCRAT dumb ass.

I grew up in the South, as a Democrat. That was before the Civil Rights Act. I have a cousin who lives there and is still a registered Democrat, but she votes Republican.
This preacher is apparently a Conservative Democrat, too.

 

[koshergrl]

Southerners are in a difficult position..their party leaders deserted them in the 60s, when they had to hide out...and Southerners, who suddenly found out what it was to be a despised minority, have slowly awakened to the reality that the Republican Party is the party that is most friendly to minorities in terms of policy.

So you have southerners who are by tradition Democrat, who vote Republican because they recognize the soundness of the doctrine.