{"id":190313,"date":"2009-12-10T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-11T04:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/10\/if-southerners-do-not-want-to-be-cast-as-ignorant-bigots\/"},"modified":"2009-12-10T23:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-11T04:59:00","slug":"if-southerners-do-not-want-to-be-cast-as-ignorant-bigots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/10\/if-southerners-do-not-want-to-be-cast-as-ignorant-bigots\/","title":{"rendered":"If Southerners Do Not Want To Be Cast As Ignorant Bigots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Then when people try to ban atheists from sitting on the city council<\/a>, the response should be a question along the lines of, “Are you on drugs?”:<\/p>\n

North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office.<\/p>\n

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he’s an atheist, he’s not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,\u201d said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It should be noted that H.K Edgerton flipped out some time ago, and can now can be found at Civil War reenactments wearing a Confederate<\/span> uniform and waving a Confederate<\/span> flag.<\/p>\n

There is a point where you treat “Gums, the village idiot”*<\/sup> as “Gums, the village idiot,” or, by taking him seriously, you become a village of idiots.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Virtual Kewpie doll for anyone who gets the reference.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Then when people try to ban atheists from sitting on the city council, the response should be a question along the lines of, “Are you on drugs?”: North Carolina’s constitution is clear: politicians who deny the existence of God are barred from holding office. Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[962,967,1104,1021,1015],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40yrs","category-bigotry","category-psychology","category-religion","category-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}