We have a blue candidate, Gayle Jordan, running in a very red district here in Tennessee. The 14th State Senate District. You can see the diaries she’s written on Daily Kos here.
Gayle is an atheist. In the bible belt. Running for office. As someone who was raised an atheist all I can say is “Oh, my God!” I figured an attack was coming and sure enough it did.
Here's what the Tennessee GOP posted about last night about Gayle and the upcoming Special Election (March 13th):
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden released the following statement calling on the Democratic candidates for Governor Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh to denounce the extremism of their party:
"Gayle Jordan, darling of the Tennessee Democratic Party and their nominee for State Senate District 14, is what she herself calls a “firebrand atheist.” She isn't simply non-religious, but actively works to lead people away from their faith. It’s her life’s work as the Executive Director of an organization called Recovering From Religion.
http://www.tngop.org/…
Atheism is extremism? For the most part we’re kind of quiet people who don’t care about religion, and wish others wouldn’t bug us about theirs. I looked at the Tennessee’s Republican website and under the banner:
Powered by people like you
is this picture:
You have to go to the website yourself, but that’s a guy pointing a gun at me and he’s powering the Republican party here in TN. WTF?
Gayle may indeed be a firebrand but I’m pretty sure she's not "leading people away from their faith" with a trail of bread crumbs or anything else. She runs one of the 100’s of Recovery from Religion chapters here in the US.
Recovering from Religion (RR) is an international non-profit organisation, that helps people who have left or are in the process of leaving religion[6] to deal with any impacts of leaving their faith...en.wikipedia.org/...
The biggest question for me is not what Gayle Jordan’s religion is or isn’t, my question is why is the TN GOP bringing it up? I don’t care and I don’t think our Founding Fathers did either. I think that’s why they wrote the 1st Amendment the way they did and Article 6 of the Constitution.
US Constitution Article 6:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. (my bold)
Gayle wrote about religious tests here. Frankly, I’ve been a little worried about backlash over religion. When I first moved to the bible belt, I was amazed at the amount of "church talk" I heard everywhere; in restaurants, at the movies, etc. The most common greeting for new folks here is “Nice to meet you, what church do you go to?”
There has been a pretty big reaction to the Republicans attack, but it may not be the reaction they were hoping for. While they may think the Constitution only has one Amendment, the 2nd, the people in Gayle's district (TN14th) seem to have read them all.
According to Gayle:
The GOP county chairs have all shared it. We can't COUNT the money fast enough that has begun rolling in. Lots of comments and drama, on FB and my inbox, with lots of pushback against Religious tests, etc.
That gave me such a huge smile and I bet Gayle is smiling too. I want to keep her smiling by adding to the donations. Wanna help smack the TN GOP down?
Tennessee 2018 - Gayle Jordan
Wednesday, Feb 14, 2018 · 1:17:16 AM +00:00
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ZenTrainer
Gayle Jordan smoked in the candidates forum, she gave thoughtful answers in a calm voice.
Her Republican opponent seemed to have rehearsed his answers and timed them, talking real fast, asking for prayers and ending with “God Bless.”
There was a standing ovation at the end and chants of:
Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle! Gayle!
Gayle seemed charmingly embarrassed and held both hands to her heart. (I love that gesture.) Go, Gayle!!