Weather: So so very cold
You might remember that a few years ago an atheist by the name of Michael Newdow succeeded in getting a federal appeals court to declare the words "under God" in the pledge unconstitutional, but that the Supreme Court threw out the case on a technicality. Well, he's back on the case, now joined by other atheists, so once again we might have a chance at getting the words removed. Predictably, the fundies are up in arms over this, which is just so stupid. Can you imagine how pissed they would be if our pledge mentioned Ganesha instead? But no, they just can't seem to see the world from someone else's perspective. A good example of that bias is this article (from Human Events Online, a conservative news site), which is titled "Newdow Sues on Behalf of 'Pantheist' 3rd Grader". "Pantheist" needs to be in quotations? Like it's not even a real religion, just something made up. Can you imagine anyone putting quotes around Christian, Muslim, or Hindu?
Anyway, I'm really hoping we win this time. It's a travesty that our country has so many promotions of the Judeo-Christian god everywhere, especially since it's a recent addition due to communist panic. This isn't just about atheists, either. Plenty of people in this country believe in gods other than Yahweh, and it's an obvious violation of the First Amendment for the government to force children to pledge to the Judeo-Christian god. Thankfully, this was never a problem for me; we only had to recite the pledge in elementary school, and I didn't become an atheist until I was 13. But when I became one, it started to bother me that they were still forcing kids to do it, and I was always complaining about the "In God We Trust" on dollar bills. Hmm, maybe if we win this one, we can fix that, too. You know, ever since Lawrence vs. Texas I've felt a new sort of hope about the court system. Even if the legislation from our now overwhelmingly right wing government gets completely out of hand, the courts can still throw it out, and they're at least a little more concerned about the constitution than Congress. When it comes right down to it, there's just no excuse for things like this, and I think enough of the Supreme Court recognizes that to take another step forward for civil liberties.
