Look for Keep Religion OUT of Politics Mobile Billboard in D.C. on Jan. 20
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is taking its message of keeping religion out of government to the Inauguration on Jan. 20.
The nation’s largest association of atheists and agnostics, also a state/church watchdog, is running a catchy quarter-page ad in The Washington Post on Jan. 20 addressed to the incoming president, urging “Mr. President, Rebuild That Wall!”
The ad will further urge the new president to “Dismantle Bush’s disastrous ‘faith-based initiative’ ” and “Restore the Jeffersonian ‘wall of separation between church and state.’ ” Government, the Foundation noted, “should run on facts, not faith.”
The Foundation’s red-white-and-blue message of “Keep Religion OUT of Politics” will also be circulating for ten hours in the Capitol Hill area on Tuesday. (The Foundation is eager to receive photographs of supporters next to the mobile billboard to post at its website.)
” ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ can’t put the faith-based initiative back together again, so let’s throw it out and go back to the simple First Amendment,” says Foundation co-president Dan Barker.
The Foundation and its co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, on behalf of its 13,600 members, are among the co-plaintiffs in Michael Newdow’s federal lawsuit, Newdow v. Roberts, challenging prayer to open and close the swearing-in and the addition of “In God We Trust” to the secular oath of office.
“The inauguration is not a religious event,” notes Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is not a coronation. It is a secular celebration for allof us. ‘We the people’ bow down to no sovereign, be it earthly or heavenly.”
Michael Newdow will be arguing for a temporary restraining order today at 2 p.m. in a district court in the District of Columbia.
The Foundation has launched more than 40 lawsuits to preserve the constitutional separation of church and state since it was founded in 1978, and has taken (and won) more challenges of the faith-based initiative than any other civil liberties group. Its members were spurned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision last year denying standing in FFRF’s challenge of Pres. Bush’s authority to create a “faith-based office” in the White House.
