A group has been formed - centered at least on its face at Christopher Newport University ("CNU") in Newport News, Virginia - seeking to overturn Thomas Jefferson's wonderfully elegant and forceful Statute for Religious Freedom which is still the law in Virginia even though the Virginia Legislature has ignored its spirit by enacting anti-gay legislation and other legislation that discriminates against those who do not subscribe to a Christianist version of religious belief. The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom in fact is one of the three things for which Jefferson wanted to be remembered and appears on his tomb at Monticello. The pretense for the new statute is the alleged persecution of Christians by secularism because some self-centered Christians who care nothing for the religious freedoms of others are increasingly unable to force their religious beliefs upon the rest of society as a whole. By dishonestly describing the intent behind Jefferson's statute, they seek to change Virginia's long standing law in order to enable them to place their belief system above those of other Virginians.*
The reality is that Virginia has changed drastically over the last few decades and its population includes individuals of many diverse religions. In this area of Southeast Virginia alone one finds many Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Bhuddists, assorted Christian denominations and other faiths. Northern Virginia has an even more diverse range of religious traditions. The side effect is that certain Christian groups are upset that case law and court decisions have limited their ability to inflict their particular set of religious beliefs on other citizens and hence the disingenuous claim that they are being persecuted by secularism. The truth is that they are free to practice their version of religion without any impediment so long as they do not seek to inflict their beliefs on others in the public realm or otherwise. Unfortunately, this is not enough for these people self-center, self-absorbed people. I encourage you to contact them at New.Virginia@verizon.net and tell them what you think of their effort to subvert Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom. Better yet, contact the University President, Paul Trible (a former conservative U.S. Senator) at (757) 594-7000 and ask him WTF is going on with some of his staff. Virginia residents should contact their representatives in the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates and likewise ask them to investigate what the Hell is going on at CNU.
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In closing, here are highlights from what Jefferson had s to say about those who sought to force their religious beliefs on others:
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the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical;
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. . . . our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow-citizens he has a natural right
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