FFRF Action Fund’s “Secularist of the Week” is Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., for challenging the notion that God-given rights serve as the foundation of the U.S. government.
At a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Kaine detailed the theocratic dangers of reducing all rights as being ordained from “our Creator,” completely disregarding governance, society and humanity. “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” asserted Kaine.
“It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities,” continued Kaine. “They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
Kaine underscored: “I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
Kaine was responding to remarks from Riley Barnes, a Trump nominee to serve as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. Barnes asserted the United States was founded on the principle “that all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator, not from our laws, not from our governments.” This is a common Christian nationalist misinterpretation of the Declaration of Independence, which states that “all men” are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Thomas Jefferson, who primarily penned the Declaration, wrote in his draft, later altered by others, that “all men are created equal & independent.” Even more so, fundamental rights are outlined in the U.S. Constitution, which only references religion when asserting its exclusion from government. Solely deriving human rights from a Creator puts the rights of all U.S. citizens in the hands of individual religious interpretations, ignoring the multitude of religions and nonreligion practiced in the United States. Kaine is correct that the notion of God-given rights takes away from the authority of our secular laws and government and privileges one religion over another or nonreligion, which the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits.
President Trump called out Kaine during his remarks at the Museum of the Bible this week, which marked the second meeting of Trump’s “Religious Liberty Commission.”
“We are one nation under God, and we always will be,” began Trump. “The need for this commission has never been more clear than it was last week when the ineffectual senator from Virginia, a man named Tim Kaine, stated that the notion our rights come from our Creator is, quote, ‘extremely troubling’ to him.”
“But as everyone in this room understands, it is tyrants who are denying our rights and the rights that come from God,” professed Trump. “The senator from Virginia should be ashamed of himself for many things. For many things, for things even beyond that. But in its own way, nothing is more important than those words. They were terrible words.”
Trump appealed to his Christian nationalist audience, proclaiming, “As president, I will always defend our nation’s glorious heritage, and we will protect the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding, and we will protect them with vigor. We have to bring back religion in America, bring it back stronger than ever before as our country grows stronger and stronger.”
Trump’s attack on Kaine only supports the senator’s argument that deriving rights from a Creator, and not laws and government, fuels theocratic control. FFRF Action Fund profusely thanks Kaine for fighting for the U.S. Constitution and true religious liberty, which does not permit the privileging of one religion over another or nonreligion.
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.