NYT: Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics

[usregimechange]

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.

In December, an atheist organization and a group of state residents sued Kentucky over Mr. Riner’s most recent incursion: a 2006 law he sponsored requiring that the state’s homeland security office post a plaque recognizing God’s role in keeping the country safe.

“The church-state divide is not a line I see,” Mr. Riner, a Baptist minister, said of the lawsuit.

...

Since 2002, state and local officials have spent more than $160,000 in legal fees, having lost case after case to the American Civil Liberties Union for posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings, and they still owe $400,000 for a 2005 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that such displays should be removed. Still, Mr. Riner soldiers on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/us/04louisville.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink


Contact information:

Phone Number(s)
Home: [phone]
Annex: [phone] Ext. 606
Email Address(es)
Annex: [e-mail]
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/legislator/h041.htm

[saracat]

1. But hey, he;s a democrat and to some, that is all that counts!

[Idealism]

2. The GOP does not have a monopoly on people who deny the Constitution

[usregimechange]

3. Clearly.

[SoCalDem]

4. soldiers on?.. it's an illness, I fear.

I often wonder when I meet hyper-religious people...what event(s) led them to such extreme beliefs.. Most people can manage perfectly ordinary/happy lives with some balance, and yet some people seem to always have to operate at 195% ..It almost reminds me of a manic-state.

:shrug:

[usregimechange]

5. My e-mail to him...

I believe that each individual should be allowed to follow the dictates of his or her own conscience without influence, coercion, or direction from the State when it comes to matters of religion. I respect your wish to spread your beliefs and we would likely agree about a lot in that respect but I think that every time the government attempts to do so it hurts the very thing we wish to honor. Please consider the following:

"In 1800, some attacked, Mr. Jefferson, for his belief in church-state separation by, saying his election in 1800: 'The effects would be to destroy religion, introduce immorality and loosen all the bonds of society.' That was said about Mr. Jefferson over 200 years ago simply because he believed in the principle of church-state separation as a way to accomplish religious liberty." ~Rep. Chet Edwards before the U.S. SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS AND PROPERTY RIGHTS, June 8, 2004 Tuesday.

“But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises, which the Constitution has directly precluded them from… I do not believe it is in the best interests of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times of these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” ~Thomas Jefferson, just before the end of his second term, in a letter to Samuel Miller--a Presbyterian minister--on January 23, 1808 ; from Willson Whitman, arranger, Jefferson's Letters, Eau Claire , Wisconsin : E. M. Hale and Company, ND, pp. 241-242.

“The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church and the State.” ~James Madison, Father of the Constitution

Thank you,

[frebrd]

6. That's the direction the whole country's headed........

and I don't foresee the government's doing anything to prevent it.

Nauseating.

[usregimechange]

7. I disagree, I think Obama's judicial appointees will go a long way in stopping it

[saracat]

8. I agree. That is why Minister have such influence.And we are "pandering" to the evangelicals.

But heck, some think as long as we "win" it doesn't matter. OTOH, I question the cost of such "winning" and wonder if anyone realises the pandering will never stop.