Sanity in Kentucky? Oh. My. God.
Judge: Ky. can’t legislate dependence on God
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – It is one thing to trust in God, but quite another to be ordered to rely on protection from above during national emergencies, a judge has ruled.
Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate said in Wednesday’s decision that references to a dependence on “Almighty God” in the law that created the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security is akin to establishing a religion, which the government is prohibited from doing in the U.S. and Kentucky constitutions. Ten Kentucky residents and a national atheist group sued to have the reference stricken.
“It is breathtakingly unconstitutional,” said Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists Inc. in Union, “and Judge Wingate goes to great detail as to why it is.”
The judge wrote in the 18-page ruling: “The statute pronounces very plainly that current citizens of the Commonwealth cannot be safe, neither now, nor in the future, without the aid of Almighty God. Even assuming that most of this nation’s citizens have historically depended upon God, by choice, for their protection, this does not give the General Assembly the right to force citizens to do so now.”
The language in the 2006 legislation had been inserted by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a pastor of Christ is King Baptist Church in Louisville.
Riner said he planned to ask Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to seek a reconsideration of the order. Conway has 10 days to do that, and 30 days to appeal.
“They make the argument … that it has to do with a religion,” Riner said, “and promoting a religion. God is not a religion. God is God.”</em>
What is truly frightening is that Riner probably believes that statement and would most likely be confused as to how anyone else would not.
Replace the word “god” with “toaster”.
