Rep. Paul Gosar is getting called out by the FFRF Action Fund as its “Theocrat of the Week” for insisting “God” and “faith” belong in our federal drug control strategy.
The Action Fund couldn’t rebuke Gosar better than Congressional Freethought Caucus Co-Chair Jamie Raskin, who commented during a recent hearing: “The gentleman is somehow looking for some kind of religious test, which is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution [for] people for public office, in the drug control strategy. Surely, [faith] can make a difference in terms of people’s individual lives and individual paths to recovery. People will derive sources of strength from many different places, including religious faith, including their friends and their family, including psychology and so on. But the idea that our drug strategy is flawed because it doesn’t put religion in the center seems to me to be preposterous.”
Gosar, R-Ariz., is a Roman Catholic who boycotted Pope Francis’ address to Congress because he considered the pope’s views on economics too liberal. Notably, Gosar was identified by Ali Alexander as one of three lawmakers involved in planning the attempted coup on Jan. 6. Afterward, six of his siblings have urged voters not to reelect him to Congress and at least two urged an investigation into his conduct. “I consider him a traitor to this country,” says brother Dave Gosar, an attorney in Wyoming.
The FFRF Action Fund is pleased to name as its “Secularist of the Week” attorney Kristen Browde, a former correspondent for “CBS News,” who’s attracted over 380,000 TikTok followers by defending the LGBTQ-plus community. Among her regular posts are weekly reports aggregating from local media reports details of sexual predators abusing children.
“In the six months since she created her first TikTok video,” reports the Them news portal, “she has noticed a continuing trend: that very few of the perpetrators who are being arrested for preying on kids are drag queens or trans people, the targets du jour of the right. Instead, Browde found that the individuals who are responsible for the vast majority of reported incidents hail from the very groups pointing the finger at the LGBTQ-plus community, from religious leaders to Republican politicians.”
This week, Browde announced, “This has been another rough week for those in the religion business. Welcome to Week 23 of ‘Who’s Making News for Sex Crimes Involving Children.’” She summarized how the Archdiocese of Syracuse, N.Y., settled 411 claims of child sex abuse for $100 million, and the Mormon Church sued its insurance companies for not paying out sex abuse claims. Sexual predators making news included 10 Christian pastors, one Mormon leader and five church employees. “The religion industry is hanging in at just under 15 percent of the 1,579 cases in the 23 weeks in our database,” she reported.
Browde, a 73-year-old trans woman, recently moved to Miami specifically to counter attacks on LGBTQ-plus equality led by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues. FFRF Action Fund serves as the advocacy arm of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has more than 40,000 members and works to keep religion out of government and educate the public about nontheism.
