A Miscellany 447
Petition supporting restoration of political rights of non-theists in the U.S.
by: Politically active
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Dear Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic team,
My name is Aray and I am writing on behalf of our 3 student-member team comprised in the Goethe University, Frankfurt, with a purpose of promoting political participation among the concerned citizens. We were primarily focused on the political rights of citizens of different countries, and as a part of our study, we took upon ourselves to create a petition addressing, what seemed to be, an outrageous injustice, intolerance and ignorance of basic human rights of religious freedom.
We created a petition on avaaz.org - one of the biggest platform for petitions worldwide - about the 7 states in U.S. that were delimiting political rights of non-theists to hold public office in the concerned states. 7 US state constitutions, namely that of Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, still have discriminatory laws in their articles that prohibit people that do not believe in God from holding public office, despite article VI of the constitution, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States".
We believe that these obsolete laws continue to exist although being unconstitutional and deny the freedom of religion not only to Atheists, but Agnostics, Humanists, Freethinkers and other Non-theists alike. So, we were hoping that you could help us promote this petition on-, as well as, off-line, by gathering more signs for the petition. Particularly, we were looking forward to working with you on promoting the issue on your Apathetic Agnostic website, if possible.
Although it is a part of our study, we are very invested in the subject matter with two of my other group-mates (Lilith and Kalina). We are aiming at calling upon these seven US states to abolish their religious restrictions for candidates for public office. Moreover, we have already mobilized some international platforms of the student body as well, as we think the issue could be later applied to more discriminatory legislations in other countries of the world.
We were particularly interested in US as it is the most exemplary case of contemporary democracy, so by solving the issue of such violation of citizen rights under democracy, we aim at restoring most fair and righteous political conduct of the country. Please help us to draw the attention that we believe this issue deserves and support diversity and fairness. Non-theists deserve their political rights!
Link to the petition: Restore the right of nonbelievers to hold office in the U.S.!
We are also using tweeter account of one of our team members to promote the issue with #FreeThinking #ReligiousFreedom #discrimination #humanism #equality #usa #politics #Equality2016 #beliefs #FreeThinking.
Hope you will join us in this cause.
Thank you and hope to hear back from you as soon as possible
Best regards
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