FFRF Action Fund Regional Government Affairs Manager Mickey Dollens has an op-ed in a New Hampshire newspaper warning about a proposed constitutional amendment that privileges evangelicals.
“CACR 28, assigned to the Education Policy Administration Committee and sponsored by Reps. Julius Soti, Matt Sabourin dit Choiniere, John Sellers and Kelley Potenza, would rewrite Article 6 of New Hampshire’s Bill of Rights to declare that morality must be ‘rightly grounded on evangelical principles,’” Dollens writes in the Laconia Daily Sun. “It would also empower towns to fund ‘public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality.’”
The proposed amendment carries the very real danger of prioritizing Christians over minority religions and nonbelief. The piece details this new attack on the Constitution:
The amendment goes even further by granting constitutional protections specifically to “every denomination of Christians.” This means that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those who hold no religious beliefs would receive fewer protections under the state Constitution than their Christian neighbors.
The bill’s own legislative analysis makes this explicit, stating that Christians would receive “additional religious protections under the constitution beyond those granted to other religions.”
Beyond the constitutional violations, CACR 28 is also impractical and fiscally irresponsible.
Towns would face costly lawsuits if they tried to implement CACR 28. The result would be confusion, court battles and an unconstitutional provision that exists on paper but cannot function in practice.
As the op-ed comes to a close, Dollens reminds readers of a progressive step New Hampshire implemented in the past: “There is also history here that the sponsors appear to have overlooked. In 1968, New Hampshire amended this very article to remove what lawmakers at the time called ‘obsolete sectarian references.’ CACR 28 would reverse that progress and pull the Granite State backward.”
You can read the full op-ed here.
This column is part of FFRF Action Fund’s initiative to engage with pertinent national and state issues and spread the messages of freethought and nontheism to a broader audience.
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.