Month: June 2014

Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant

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Deer Hunting With Jesus book coverJuly 2014

A raucous, truth-telling look at the white working poor-and why they hate liberalism.

Deer Hunting with Jesus is web columnist Joe Bageant’s report on what he learned when he moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, which-like countless American small towns-is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of “the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.”

-amazon.com

Joe’s book on Congressman’s six best list

Joe Bageant is in good company this week (January 2014) as his book Deer Hunting with Jesus was chosen as one of six “Best books” by U.S. Representative Keith Ellison, D-Minn. The recognition was in THE WEEK, a weekly British news magazine which also publishes a US edition.

The other five books and their authors are:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.

Who Stole the American Dream? by Hedrick Smith.

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

— Ken Smith

Indiana Court Upholds Ban on Secular Wedding Officiants

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A federal court in Indiana has rejected atheists’ requests to preside at wedding ceremonies, saying only clergy or public officials are licensed to solemnize marriages.

A lawsuit filed by the Indiana chapter of the Center for Inquiry argued that an Indiana law that requires marriages to be “solemnized” — made official by signing a marriage license — only by clergy, judges, mayors or local government clerks — violates the Constitution.

But Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled on Friday (Nov. 30) that marriage has religious roots. Therefore, government regulation of marriage is an act of religious accommodation — not endorsement — and protected by the Constitution.

She also noted that Indiana’s law does not limit who may marry the plaintiffs, but only who may sign their license.

“We in no way intend to question or disparage plaintiff’s opinions regarding the institution of marriage,” Barker wrote in her ruling. “But we must gently remind plaintiffs that the free exercise clause (of the Constitution) is not a guarantee against inconvenience.”

CFI, a 24,000-member secular humanist organization based in New York, had argued that barring “secular celebrants” from solemnizing marriages provides preferential treatment to religious celebrants. CFI began certifying celebrants to perform marriages and other ceremonies in 2009.

CFI’s lawsuit was filed last October on behalf of John Kiel and Michelle Landrum, two Kentucky residents who wished to be married in Indiana by Reba Boyd Wooden, a CFI-certified secular celebrant. All three were co-plaintiffs in the suit.

Ron Lindsay, CFI’s president, promised an appeal of Barker’s ruling.

“It would be difficult to imagine a clearer way to classify nonbelievers as second-class citizens,” Lindsay said in a statement. “A wedding is one of the most important ceremonies in a person’s life, and it is just as meaningful to atheists as it is to theists. It’s disappointing that a 21st-century court refused to recognize this reality.”

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller described the current law as a “very reasonable requirement.”