Yesterday, Sean Faircloth, executive director of the Secular Coalition of America spoke to the Center for Inquiry group in Tampa about the possibility of creating a Secular Coalition of Florida. Sean has been in Florida for the past week speaking to different groups about the work of the Secular Coalition of America and the need to create state level counterparts to the work being done nationally.
The Secular Coalition of America is a 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to lobby Washington on behalf of secular Americans. The coalition is made up of 10 member organizations including American Atheists, American Ethical Union, American Humanist Association, Atheist Alliance International, Camp Quest, Council for Secular Humanism, Institute for Humanist Studies, Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, Secular Student Alliance and Society for Humanistic Judaism. All of these organizations have active membership in Florida.
Some of the key legislative issues of the Secular Coalition of America, in addition to making sure that our government remains secular as the necessary condition to ensure the interdependent rights of religious freedom and religious dissent” include ending religious discrimination in the military and ending religiously based child abuse.
A Secular Coalition of Florida would be a subsidiary of the Secular Coalition of America and would include all the same organizations. It would just be organized at the state level. It’s objective would be to provide grassroots support to the legislative objectives of the Secular Coalition of America by providing traing and local networking to make sure that local constituents meet with their elected officials. Because Florida is also fighting several of these same battles at the state level, including a push to eliminate the Blaine Amendment, which prohibits the State of Florida from spending money on churches.
During his speech, Sean made some excellent points about the secular constituency noting that younger people are almost three times as likely to be secular in outlook then their older counterparts. This means we have demographics on our side. He also noted how far our country has moved toward abolishing the separation of church and state envisioned by our founders, quoting Jefferson, Madison and Abraham Lincolns openly hostile views about religion and noted that if they ran today, they wouldn’t be elected. However, on a bright note, he did say that while only one member of Congress is open about his Atheism, they are aware of about 20 more who are, but who have not made their views about religion clear. Sean said this was because they don’t perceive secular concerns about religious encroachment in our government to be a big issue. He said the more we get out and communicate with our elected officials, the more they will pay attention to the issues we care about, again emphasizing how important a Secular Coalition of Florida will be in this process.
Right now, Arizona is the only state to host a state level Secular Coalition for the purpose of lobbying. However, Florida already has a Coalition of Reason established and the basic work of intergroup collaboration has been established in the state of Florida. All that would be required is an individual or group to take on the task of organizing the Secular Coalition of Florida to get the ball rolling. The goal of the Secular Coalition of America is to have a state coalitions established in every state in the next ten years.
For more information and to sign up for Secular Coalition of America action alerts, visit their website at: http://www.secular.org/
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