Our new governor here in Pennsylvania sent out an email today asking us to "show the world that Pennsylvania is the place William Penn envisioned: inclusive and open for all."
Governor Tom Wolf writes:
I simply don't understand what the Governor of Indiana was thinking when he signed a bill that allows discrimination against people based on who they love.
It's not only wrong on a human level, but also ill-advised for attracting businesses and creating jobs in today's global economy...
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania is the only state in the Northeast that doesn't prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression -- and that needs to end...
Governor Wolf invites Pennsylvanians to
sign his petition:
William Penn founded our Commonwealth on the values of fairness and tolerance, and he came here on a ship called the "Welcome" because he envisioned this new land to be open for everyone.
Without a non-discrimination law, LGBT Pennsylvanians and their families can be fired, denied a mortgage, or refused service at a hotel, library, or even a hospital.
That's not welcoming, and that's not right. Make a stand for fairness and equality here in Pennsylvania -- sign the petition and tell the legislature to pass a non-discrimination bill so Governor Wolf can sign it into law.
Way to go, Governor Wolf! So far so good with this "anyone is better than Corbett" Democrat leader. He's really proving his salt on a lot of issues, a true breath of fresh air for the Commonwealth after the fiasco of our previous
gas-bag gubna.
It's great to see our Governor coming at us with his own petitions instead of us having to thrust our petitions at him. Proud to be a Pennsylvanian.
Next stop: passing a non-discrimation law to overturn the archaic anti-atheist language in our Constitution, an intollerance only a handful of states still stomach.
When people or paperwork ask me my religion, I promptly reply, "None of your business."
I grew up in the Quaker State, William Penn's "Holy Experiment," a place where people founded weird utopian intentional communities like Ephrata Cloister and New Hope and Harmony, where they minded their own business glad to live in a place that welcomes freedom of religion. Living in rural Pennsylvania, history can almost seem alive today. You can't drive out 45 to Elk Creek without slowing down to 5mph behind an Amish cart, and if you stop at the Stolzfus farm where the English can hire a construction crew, they'll have your house torn down and thoroughly recycled by sunset. Here, the Amish and the English and the rednecks and the folks "up at the college" all get along if we mind our own business and be polite.
If we don't, all hell breaks loose.
In Pennsylvania, freedom of religion is a given. Heck, even football is a religion in this state.
Freedom of religion was truly the bedrock on which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded. Our Consitution unabashedly declares:
All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences; no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect or support any place of worship or to maintain any ministry against his consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishments or modes of worship.
There is some contention as to whether or not the above was written by William Penn himself. It likely was. There's no doubt that the first settlers in
Penn's Woods came here to escape religious persecution:
When William Penn issued his Declaration of Rights in 1682, the idea that individuals have a natural right to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience was a radical, even subversive notion. No nation in Europe embraced it. Indeed, most used the full force of the law to punish religious "separatists" who broke from established, or state-affiliated, churches. Fines, imprisonment, and execution, however, did not deter Christians who believed they were called by God to embrace different forms of worship and belief.
What was unique about Penn and his Christian "Society of Friends" is that religious tolerance was and remains at the core of their own religion. Penn envisioned a peaceful society where Native Americans and European settlers lived in harmony and respect. Few such open minds spoke so boldly of religious tolerance during his era as William Penn. Although
Penn's son would put an end to that Holy Experiment with the Delaware natives, the Commonwealth and its culture were and continue to be profoundly affected by the authenticity of our roots; by a respectful minding-of-one's-own-business and a penchant for "bearing witness," for saying what we mean to say.
Religious freedom is as radical a notion as democracy itself. In fact, the founding of America as a nation was a radical, new experiment in freedom of religion. The Divine Rights of Kings would no longer dictate the law through God's chosen representatives on earth, nor would justice be leveled by royal edict. The right of individuals to have a say in government by vote was absolutely revolutionary. It fundamentally took religious authority out of the state's hands and gave it to the people, a philosophical shift at the avant-garde of the Age of Enlightenment. The rights of the individual, as a private entity not a royal subject, were articulated in our nation's founding documents which quickly took their seminal place in the canon of international human rights law. They inspired independent thought and revolution around the world. People have lived and died for the cause of individual freedom; the right to direct the course of one's own life, the right to choose one's own way.
Irrespective of Pennsylvania's founding principles, it's not as though the state is some kind of bastion of religious freedom; no more so than other states, and in some ways, less so. In addition to the lack of protections for sexual orientation, the Commonwealth is one of a handful of states that still carries archaic language in its Constitution which in spirit, excludes atheists from holding public office:
Article 1, section 4: “No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth.”
Not that mandatory public declarations of faith might encourage disingenuous posturing, but, the state is also among the
top five most corrupt in America.
Words shape our laws; so much so we joke that law has its own language (legaleze). So let's look up the word religion, shall we?
religion ~ ri-ˈli-jən\ :
1) the belief in a god or in a group of gods
2) an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods
3) an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group
The above is from Merriam-Webster. The
Oxford dictionary likewise defines
religion by the same three options. Atheism is a religion. It's very important to those who adhere to it. So get over it, Pennsylvania. In America, we DO have "freedom from religion" -- freedom from the dictates of YOUR religion; freedom to choose our own.
A belief in God does not make you honest, or thoughtful of others, or free of greed. We all know that. People choose to have those qualities or not, by individual free will. I'm not even an atheist, but I believe in individual freedom like my life depends on it.
Not that that's any of your business...