The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a full-page ad in the New York Times expected to run today, Dec. 15, warning of the right-wing takeover of the federal judiciary.
The ad, in honor of the 229th anniversary of Bill of Rights Day, features an arresting graphic by award-winning cartoonist Steve Benson that depicts people hanging on for life to a bent clock hand approaching midnight. “Help roll back the clock on judicial Doomsday,” the headline reads.
“Although our nation and the Bill of Rights have dodged a bullet with this fall’s election,” the ad reads, “the Trump administration’s shameless packing of the courts with extremists threatens civil liberties and the First Amendment for generations.” Abortion, LGBTQ rights, our secular Constitution and our health are imperiled, the national state/church watchdog advises.
“Judges hand-selected by the Federalist Society for their Christian Nationalist or reactionary credentials now comprise a quarter-plus of our federal judiciary,” the ad reads. Noting that an ultraconservative majority on the Supreme Court just quashed a New York pandemic health policy limiting church gatherings during the COVID-19 spike, FFRF counsels that “political and judicial deference to religion over science is sabotating rational response to the pandemic.”
The ad concludes: “Help FFRF, a state/church watchdog and the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists and seculars), protect the First Amendment and its precious principle of separation between religion and government. Help FFRF ensure that reason and our secular Constitution will prevail. Join us today.”
The educational ad was made possible thanks to the generosity of FFRF members donating to FFRF’s Advertising Fund.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational charity, is the nation’s largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics), and has been working since 1978 to keep religion and government separate.
