Category Archives: Separation of Church and State

HYPOCRITIC CHRISTIAN PEDOPHILIA PROJECTION: “Anti-Gay Pastor Arrested for Child Porn” / The Young Turks / Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Katie Halper, and Jimmy Dore ☮

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An anti-gay pastor in Arkansas is in a lot of trouble. He has been arrested on 70 counts of child porn.

“Meet Dave Reynolds. He’s the recently fired pastor of the Cornerstone Bible Fellowship in Sherwood, Arkansas currently facing 70 counts of distributing, possessing or viewing child pornography.

He’s also vehemently anti-gay.

The 40-year-old pastor, who has preached that marriage is between a man and a woman and that all homosexual activity is a sin, was arrested this week after police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a social media account in Sherwood was storing pages and pages (and pages and pages) of images of kiddy porn.

The account allegedly belonged to Reynolds.

In March, Reynolds informed elders at Cornerstone Bible Fellowship that he was under investigation for child porn possession. When they asked if he had engaged in viewing the material, Reynolds told them he had “not knowingly done so.”

BIGOTED CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE: “Obama’s Two Faces on ‘Religious Liberty'” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮

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The Obama administration has roundly criticized states such as North Carolina and Mississippi for passing laws that allow discrimination in the name of religious freedom. But at the same time, the administration has left in place a 2007 memo from the Bush White House that allows religious charities with federal contracts to discriminate in hiring for federally funded programs.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: “Taxpayers Pay Over $1,600 per Prayer to Congressional Chaplains” / The Young Turks / John Iadarola, and Ana Kasparian ☮

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We’re used to seeing big price tags on government spending, but how much could congressional chaplains really cost? Actually, a lot.

“According to Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who did the math to determine what taxpayers are being charged for prayers in Washington, the total annual bill comes to more than $800,000.

Both the U.S. House and Senate employ a chaplain whose singular duty is to administer prayer. The budget for the House Chaplain’s office is $345,000, while the Senate Chaplain’s office receives $436,886.

Seidel reports that both the House and Senate chaplains earn executive level salaries which are equal to those of high-ranking government officials, such as “general counsels of the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; the chief financial officers of NASA and the EPA; the Chief Information Officers of almost every major federal department and agency; and the Army’s Director of Civil Defense.”

The two chaplains earn three-figure salaries for presiding over opening prayers in the house and senate, which only convene about 135 days out of the year.”

POLITICAL COMMENTARY: “Satanic Material Forces School to Stop Giving Bibles” / The Young Turks / Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Jimmy Dore, and Jaime Camil ☮

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ATHEISM: “Put an Atheist on the Supreme Court” / The New Yorker / Lawrence M. Krauss ☮

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The Supreme CourtWho should replace Antonin Scalia? On Monday, the Times reported that the Justice himself had weighed in on the question: last June, in his dissenting opinion in the same-sex marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges, Scalia wrote that the Court was “strikingly unrepresentative” of America as a whole and ought to be diversified. He pointed out that four of the Justices are natives of New York City, that none are from the Southwest (or are “genuine” Westerners), and that all of them attended law school at Harvard or Yale. Moreover, Scalia wrote, there is “not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination” on the Court. (All nine Justices are, to varying degrees, Catholic or Jewish.)

Scalia’s remarks imply that an evangelical Christian should be appointed to the Court. That’s a strange idea: surely, the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution strongly suggests that court decisions shouldn’t be based on religious preference, or even on religious arguments. The Ten Commandments are reserved for houses of worship; the laws of the land are, or should be, secular. Still, I’m inclined, in my own way, to agree with Scalia’s idea about diversity. My suggestion is that the next Supreme Court Justice be a declared atheist.

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