The day after the SCOTUS ruling, I think the best headline I read was by Andy Borowitz. It read: "In landmark decision, Supreme Court strikes down main reason the country was started." Painfully on-point.
The decision took a lot of secularists by surprise, not because of the ruling per se, but because of the timeline. Advocates of church-state separation (AKA the constitution) weren't expecting a ruling until June.
Already we've had local and state regressives rejoicing that they can exercise their freedom of religion while attempting to contrive ways to deprive others of theirs.
I interviewed David Williamson, president of the Central Florida Freethought Community about the ruling and what can be done moving forward. Here's the interview.
In this video David talks about his own experience getting recognized as a secular clergy person as well as steps every one of us can take to make sure we retain the right to equal representation, or better, that we create an environment in which we can challenge the necessity of ANY type of official religious observance in a government setting.
Here's a graphical representation of the steps David outlined in the video. (I'm having a transcript created and will update as soon as it's available).
Bottom line:
This issue is going to be won or lost at the state and local levels, folks. Even though I'm sure many of you have seen this video - an abomination and embarrassment from 2012 in the U.S. Senate (ahem, the highest level legislative body in the country, mind you), I am going to exercise hope (stupidity?) that given this same situation again, this would not happen in the U.S. Senate.
Ok, who am I kidding? This 3rd-grade-level of idiocy would happen today in the Senate. No doubt about it. (Apologies to actual third graders. I know you're not this stupid). Which is why we have to be vigilant. There are no adults in the room.
But my point remains that the right, as they have always done, will slip this through at the local levels easiest. It's fucking scary if you ask me...because too few of us are paying attention to city commission and school board meetings. But it's time to rethink that. Not only are they creating legislation that is destroying our cities and states, they're also laying the foundation for a theocracy.
Let's get busy, folks.