Homeland Sodality

First mistake: a belated five years after the events of September 11, 2001, some genius thought it would be a great idea to start a separate State Department of Homeland Security just for Kentucky. Never mind that the Federal one already covers Kentucky's less-than-urgent counter-terrorism needs just fine already.

Second mistake: Two amendments to the statute that created this unnecessary branch of an already unnecessary organization were worded by state Rep. Tom Riner (pictured below), a Democrat representing Louisville. Rep. Riner is also reportedly a pastor at Kings Baptist Church in Taylorsville. Riner inserted language that required all training materials to stress "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth", and to require a plaque be erected at the Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort that reads, in part, "the safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God".

Unlike the whole Ten Commandments in Jackson County squabble, at least Riner's religious meddling only referred to "God" in general, and didn't specify any particular God of any particular faith. But something tells me he wasn't thinking of Ishtar or Buddha or Isis or Allah or Jah or J.R. "Bob" Dobbs or Tengri or Marduk or Vishnu or Wotan or Minerva or Baal or Choronzon or the 8th Dynamic or The Four Heavenly Kings or Sai Baba or Hannahannah or Aurvandil or Krampus or Saraswati or Ra or John Frum or The Servers of All (sort of the "Super Friends" of spirituality). And I'm 95 percent positive he wasn't thinking of the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Furthermore, there are millions of people, especially in Judaic traditions, who find it to some degree improper to spell out the word "God" itself on a publicly mounted plaque such as Riner's mandated one. For many, "G-d" is the preferred nomenclature for committing the creator's name into permanent form. (And I beg their indulgence for my relative misusage here, although recent rabbinical decisions have approved the typing of the word into computers.)


Anyway. Ten Kentucky citizens, joined by the American Atheists, have won their lawsuit over the religious terminology that was bullied in by Riner. Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate stated in his decision: "The statute pronounces very plainly that current citizens of the Commonwealth cannot be safe, neither now, nor in the future, without the aid of Almighty God. Even assuming that most of this nation’s citizens have historically depended upon God, by choice, for their protection, this does not give the General Assembly the right to force citizens to do so now".

As I've already commented here, I have a very low opinion of atheists, and I find Wingate's ruling to be a victory for freedom and common sense, not for atheism. And this still doesn't make me a member of the Judge Wingate fan club: he's the one who tried to push Gov. Beshear's kook scheme to seize non-Kentucky casino websites for breaking Kentucky laws, which is a little like trying to prosecute British people for driving on the wrong side of the road.

Read more about all this silliness here and here and here.

Berea College v. Kentucky

It never fails to weird me out just how different a world this was, not so long ago. The story of Berea College v. Kentucky is a reality-check we all need occasionally.

In July 1904, the state of Kentucky passed the mind-bogglingly unconstitutional "Day Law", which prohibited any person, any group of people, or any corporation from teaching black and white students in the same school. Further, it forbade a school running "separate but equal" black and white branches within 25 miles of each other.

The law was specifically cooked up to put a stop to Madison County's Berea College, which was the only racially integrated school in Kentucky. Berea College fought back hard, and took their case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. They lost. The Court asserted that "the purity of racial blood" was "deeper and more important than the matter of choice".

Then Berea appealed it further, to the U.S. Supreme Court. And that's the really weird part... they lost.

The vast majority of the Supreme Court ruled against Berea College, with only John Marshall Harlan and William R. Day dissenting.

Thanks to this ruling, the door became wide open for all states to forbid integrated schooling in all public and even private institutions. It wasn't until 1950 that Kentucky amended the Day Law to allow integration. 19-freakin'-fifty. Unbelievable. And in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education put an end to Government-enforced racial segregation - at least officially, since many refused to accept it for years to come.

And that's precisely when the whole country turned upside down.


In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black children from entering the Little Rock High School building. President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Arkansas to force the National Guard to stand down, essentially creating a momentary literal civil war.

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace stated in his inaugural address, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" to great applause. He then personally went to the University of Alabama and stopped two black students from enrolling. (Wallace considered Happy Chandler, Governor of Kentucky, as his running mate in his 1968 Presidential campaign, but dropped him when it was realized Chandler had been an ardent supporter of Jackie Robinson.)

Subsequently, civil rights crusaders Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy were all shot and killed. Wallace himself was also shot in 1972, though he survived confined to a wheelchair until 1998.

And to think the whole mess began because State Representative Carl Day of Breathitt County proposed the Day Law, which passed 73 to 5 in Kentucky's House of Representatives and 28 to 5 in Kentucky's Senate.


Photo above: George Wallace with NASA head James Webb and Operation Paperclip ex-Nazi Wernher Von Braun.