The Secular Coalition for America is speeding up the process of creating offices in all 50 states to lobby on issues of concern to the secular community in state legislatures. This is an important step, I think, since many of the issues that we should be working on are at the state and local level.
In response to what it says is a growing number of proposed state laws that infringe on the separation of church and state, the Secular Coalition for America is working to organize state chapters in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
SCA originally planned to launch the state chapters in several years, but is speeding up the expansion with hopes that the chapters will be up and running by the end of the year.
“Some of the most egregious violations of church state separation are being promoted and passed at the state level, and we absolutely must act to stop it,” executive director Edwina Rogers said in a statement. “There are 40 million Americans who don’t identify with any religion, but our political influence has been limited because we have not been organized. This year, that changes.”
At this point, the state offices will be staffed with volunteers, but I hope they give them the resources they need to be effective.
3 comments
EricJ
June 4, 2012 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hopefully the process will go off smoother in most states than it’s facing in Kentucky, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t repeated elsewhere:
http://secular.org/news/fundamentalist-minister-attempts-stifle-secular-voices-kentucky
And we sure need a branch here in Florida sooner rather than later, what with Amendment 8 on the upcoming ballot. Yes it’s the Orwellian-named “Religious Freedom Amendment”
http://www.au.org/content/florida-amendment-8
cottonnero
June 4, 2012 at 5:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Good thing. Although I still think “Society for Creative Anachronism” when I see SCA. Northwest Airlines had the same problem.
Kamaka
June 4, 2012 at 6:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ EricJ
North Dakota has one of these, Amendment 3, coming up for vote, too.
It’s being touted as a vote for “religious freedom”. Yah, freedom to deny service.
This mostly worries me because the mullas can then infiltrate various professions as a means to impose their religious rules on others.
The last sentence of the *Constitutional Amendment* I find ominous, even Orwellian.