Why We Need More “Out” Secularists

Politics is largely a power struggle, and when any one group or constituency amasses disproportionate power, democracy and liberty suffer. We tend to see the disproportion most clearly when money is involved–hence the current focus on the 1%–but checkbooks aren’t  the only way special interests gain control.

When I was growing up, unions were powerful (yes, I’m old). In my house, they were feared and despised. Union “thugs”were a periodic feature of the landscape in Anderson, Indiana, where Delco Remy, Guide Lamp and other large automotive manufacturers were the source of most employment, and where folks who lived in our little “suburb” of Edgewood tended to come from management.

One of the reasons unions lost power was that some of them abused their (short-lived) dominance. But–surprise!–by emasculating unions, rather than simply constraining them, we enabled equivalent abuses by management. The lesson was–and is–that a balance of power is what’s important. When power is concentrated, abuses are inevitable.

So what does any of this have to do with secularism?

I spent the last weekend with a coalition of secularist groups: humanists, atheists, defenders of science and reason, among others. Their common mission is to restore the necessary balance between secular and religious-right Americans.

Here’s the take-away: in a country founded on the premise that authentic belief must be personal and freely chosen, a country where freedom of conscience includes not only the right to worship but the right to question and/or reject religion, it is unhealthy–indeed, it is positively dangerous–when the balance of political power favors biblical literalists and would-be theocrats.

Don’t get me wrong: those who want to revise history to make ours a “Christian” nation are entitled to their beliefs. They are entitled to bring those beliefs into the public square and to argue for their adoption. But they are not entitled to use the power of the state to impose their beliefs on the rest of us, or to marginalize and demean those who do not share them, or to demand that American policies reflect them.

When the voices of self-righteous literalists threaten to drown out the voices of other citizens–be they Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, secularists or Rastifarians–America has a problem. When religion is used as a weapon against science, the whole world has a problem.

In the United States, the past decades have seen a rising dominance of those I can only call Christian thugs. Much like the union thugs of my youth, these folks are flexing their political muscles. They have completely taken over one of America’s two political parties, and they have twisted and distorted the meaning of religious liberty: suddenly, “liberty” is the right of an employer to dictate the reproductive choices of his female employees, the right of a merchant to discriminate against GLBT customers, the right of governing bodies to begin public meetings with exclusionary prayers, and the right of churches to ignore laws the rest of us must follow.

These folks absolutely have a right to a place at the civic table. But so do the rest of us.

Reasonable religious folks and secularists alike, all of us who understand that government must remain a secular institution, need to emulate the gay community.

We need to come out and demand our place at the civic table.

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How Are We Doing?

When Ed Koch was Mayor of New York, he was famous for stopping people on the street and asking them “How’m I doing?”

Very few mayors are interested in generating such face-to-face feedback; most, like Mayor Ballard, seem to resent efforts to grade their performance. And that raises a legitimate question: How do we citizens decide whether Indianapolis is being governed well or poorly? How do we decide that for any city?

Are all such evaluations hopelessly subjective and/or political?

Perhaps not. As Citiscope reported recently, the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization is trying to help. It has issued a new measurement standard for cities–a rubric to follow when collecting data. Cities that choose to participate will have a new, objective mechanism with which to compare themselves with peer cities around the globe.

Take a look at the 46 performance indicators that participating cities will need to track (or fudge), and then use to compare themselves to others.

Where are we doing well, and where are we falling short?

How are we doing?
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Giving God a Bad Name, Episode Ten Zillion

Oh Virginia! You are just so not for lovers.

An official of the state that just handed Eric Cantor his walking papers–a result partially attributed to the Jewish Cantor’s inability to “connect” with his Evangelical Christian base–has refused to marry two people who don’t believe in God.

Bud Roth is a court appointed officiant in Franklin County, Virginia. He performs wedding ceremonies for couples who go to the courthouse to get married. Atheists, however, have no right to get married as far as he’s concerned….

The couple contacted the county clerk, who was floored by their story. She suggested they contact the judge who appointed Roth in the first place. So they wrote a letter to Judge William Alexander who didn’t see any problem at all with a court officiant refusing to marry a couple simply because they don’t share his religious beliefs. The judge referred the couple to the other court appointed officiant who agreed to perform the civil ceremony this coming Monday.

Apparently, the officiant and judge are among the growing number of theocrats who believe that “religious liberty” is just for Christians. (You have the “liberty” to endorse the CORRECT beliefs, which are, of course, mine…)

I guess Virginia is just for CHRISTIAN lovers…..

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Yesterday’s Star had a front page story about state lawmakers who want to call a new Constitutional Convention. Last Sunday, the following Op Ed ran in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. I wrote it in response to a request from that paper’s editorial board, and I suggest several reasons why convening such a Convention would be a mistake.

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Periodically, lawmakers who are frustrated by their inability to change government policies of which they disapprove will propose a shortcut: they’ll reform the system itself, by convening a Constitutional Convention.

Fortunately, these efforts rarely succeed.

Why do I say “fortunately”? Because—like poison gas—system change is only a great weapon until the wind shifts.

When activists clamor for wholesale changes or major revolutions in the status quo, they always assume that the changes that ultimately emerge will reflect their own preferences and worldviews.

History suggests that’s a dangerous assumption.

Indiana Senator David Long wants the states to convene a Constitutional Convention under provisions of Article V that authorize such actions. In response to people who warn that delegates could seize the opportunity to open the proverbial “can of worms” and drastically rewrite the national charter, he insists that the convention could be limited in scope. Even if he is correct in that assertion (and many constitutional scholars think otherwise) the “limited goal” he describes is anything but.

Long wants the convention to devise “a framework for reigning in overspending, overtaxing and over-regulating by the federal government and moving toward a less centralized federal government.” These are very general goals, susceptible to multiple interpretations and almost infinitely malleable.

Right now, for example, Wall Street bankers are protesting post-recession financial “overregulation” that seems eminently reasonable to most taxpayers, if polls are to be believed. Whose definition would prevail?

My definition of “overspending” might be the massive subsidies enjoyed by (very profitable) U.S. oil companies, while yours might be Medicare or Medicaid or farm subsidies. Many Americans think we spend too much on the military; others would target Pell grants or foreign aid.

“Less centralization” could justify virtually any limitation of federal government authority, from FDA regulation of food and drug quality to laws against discrimination.

In addition to genuine disagreements about such issues, well-financed special interests would undoubtedly see a Constitutional convention as a golden opportunity to influence the process.

But the risk isn’t simply that a Convention could rather easily be hijacked by people who disagree with the conveners about the nature and extent of needed changes. There is also a real danger in calling together a group of people and asking them to amend a document that few of them understand.

At the Center for Civic Literacy at IUPUI, we focus on the causes and consequences of what we’ve come to call America’s civic deficit. The data is depressing. Only 36 percent of Americans can even name the three branches of government. Only 21% of high school seniors can list two privileges that United States citizens have that noncitizens don’t. Fewer than a quarter of the nation’s 12th graders are proficient in civics. I could go on—and on.

I see evidence of our civic deficit in my Law and Policy classrooms. Even bright graduate students come with little or no knowledge of American history, episodic or intellectual. Most have never heard of the Enlightenment or John Locke. They certainly haven’t read Adam Smith.

A truly depressing percentage of undergraduates can’t explain what a government is, and they have no idea how ours operates. Separation of powers? Checks and balances? The counter-majoritarian purpose of the Bill of Rights? Blank stares.

To his credit, Senator Long is one of the few Indiana legislators who recognize the importance of civics education and who support efforts to remedy the deficit. His efforts in this area are truly praiseworthy, which is why I find his willingness to turn over the task of rewriting our Constitution to people who don’t understand the one we have so puzzling.

Actually, the existing Constitution provides We the People with a remedy for unsatisfactory governance: it’s called elections. If we aren’t angry enough to use the electoral process to throw the bums out, there’s little reason to believe we are ready or able to improve upon the Constitution—and many good reasons to refrain from trying.

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Let’s Talk Trash

No, not that kind.

Back in Hudnut Administration days, Indianapolis entered into an agreement that was ahead of its time: rather than sending trash and garbage to rapidly-filling and hard to site landfills, we’d use it to generate energy. The City has continued that arrangement ever since.

The problem is, that was then and now is now.

What was a forward-looking effort in the late 1970s is a dinosaur in 2014. In the intervening years, most of America has (grudgingly) recognized the importance of recycling and reuse. Evidently, as with so many other city functions, news of the changes in what constitutes “best practices” hasn’t reached the Mayor’s office. Instead, Ballard has just announced plans for a ten-year extension of its contract with Covanta, the company burning our trash.

The proposed contract would not require people to separate out recyclable items–the promise is that Covanta will handle that messy job by “sorting” at a new plant. As environmentalists have pointed out, the proposed facility is what is known as a “Dirty MRF” (Materials Recovery Facility). It’s called dirty because the quantity and quality of the recycled material is dramatically degraded in the process.

The proposed agreement would recycle a mere 23.5% of the material. Even Governor Pence–hardly an environmentalist–has called for a goal of 50%. Furthermore, the agreement excludes glass, one of the most “recyclable” materials there is. Covanta says there is no  market for it; experts say Indiana’s glass industry is desperate for it. Believe whom you will.

Dirty MRF’s are nearly extinct in the US. Clean ones–like the ones Republic and Ray’s operate locally–are proliferating.

Experts tell us that over 92% of what gets thrown away can be recycled or composted. But that requires a well-thought-out, free curbside recycling program, like those run by most other cities our size.

Doing things that made sense in the 1970s don’t always make sense 35+ years later, and “keeping on keeping on” isn’t public management.

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