Help defeat the Public Expression of Religion Act

The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on a bill that makes a stealth attack on the First Amendment. The Public Expression of Religion Act [H.R. 2679], introduced by Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN) would prevent plaintiffs who sue over First Amendment Establishment Clause issues from recovering their litigation fees. This is brazenly designed to make it next to impossible for private citizens to sue to protect their First Amendment rights as federal court litigation and lawyers' fees are prohibitively expensive. Marci Hamilton at Findlaw writes:

"Obviously, the religion Hostettler and the other PERA supporters intend to establish is Christianity. Once again, a majority wants to water down disestablishment principles to squelch a minority. (As of 2001, about 80% of Americans identified as Christian, though that encompasses many denominations, while only a little more than 5% identified themselves as believers in other religions. About 15% identified themselves as atheist, agnostic, or having no religion.)

In other words, these Representatives want to cement the establishment of their own religion - already commanding the belief of a supermajority of Americans — as dominant via the force of the government, and the force of law. This is an old story, and it puts these representatives in a light that makes them look very much like the Puritans at the time of the Constitution's Framing who expelled dissenting religious believers (like Baptists and Quakers), because they did not believe what the established church required.

To be blunt, this is yet another bill pandering to the Christian religious right, who persistently but misguidedly insist that the separation of church and state is anti-Christian. That, of course, is historical revisionism at its worst. As I explained in a previous column, the disestablishment principles embodied in modern Establishment Clause cases were derived from the principles of a variety of Christian organizations. So to argue that the separation of church and state is hostile to Christianity is to say Christianity is hostile to itself - an argument ad absurdum, to say the least."

If you want your fellow Americans to be able to continue to vigorously defend their rights to practice the religion of their own choice, or to practice no religion at all, then write to your Congressional Representatives today. Our friends at the Council For Secular Humanism have made it easy to e-mail them, but I suggest you call as well. If you don't know who your Representative is, you can quickly find out by using this page at the U.S. House of Representatives website.

Source