It’s not enough that religious folks are always shoving their religion down our throats; they also now want to enforce the ‘crime’ of not believing in their invisible friend. If you can believe this (and trust me, I’m still in shock), the state of Kentucky has effectively declared war on non-believers, threatening jail time for anyone who fails to “recognize the primacy of the Christian God”:

In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God–or risk 12 months in prison.

So what exactly does this law entail? Well, every Homeland Security office is obliged to have a plaque clearly displaying their preference for a specific, state endorsed deity with the following words on it:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents. These include Abraham Lincoln’s historic March 30, 1863, presidential proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy’s November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: “For as was written long ago: ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

The specifics of this strange and pointless proclamation is this: all Homeland Security offices in Kentucky must display a plaque admitting the US needs God to protect it against scary terrorists. Anyone failing to display these monstrosities faces up to a year of jail time. It’s patently ridiculous.

The law was drafted by a state rep/Baptist minister named Tom Riner who takes his job as a pastor way more seriously than he does his civic one. He’s also found a way past the pesky problem of trying to pressure your state rep into enacting grossly unconstitutional laws that oblige everyone to acknowledge their insecure deity. The big problem is while the ACLU has been fighting this in the courts to have it declared unconstitutional – achieving some success in the Circuit Court – it’s currently sitting in limbo after the State Court of Appeals reversed it while they try to bring it before the Supreme court (so many courts, so little time).

Effectively, this ridiculous law makes it mandatory to ‘recognize’ the primacy of someone’s make believe friend. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting fed up with the fact that you can’t even pretend there’s a dividing line between religion in politics. Religion has been dipping its toe in the government pool for so long, it’s permanently wrinkled.