Secular Values Voters and the 2010 Elections

What's a Secular Values Voter?

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.” -- President John F. Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy articulated the same values as the Founding Fathers. America's founders intentionally designed a Constitution that protects government from religion and religion from government. 

Yet in the past three decades our constitutional separation of church and state has been seriously eroded. See the “Issues” link on the Secular Coalition for America website for numerous examples. Thus, we Secular Americans have an urgent mission: We must return America to its constitutional heritage.

Secular Americans are united by common values that must be addressed in our political system, whether we are atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers or religious Americans who take the First Amendment seriously.

To promote these values and protect our community and system of government, we must be active and vocal participants in the political process.

Secular Values Voters share a commitment to:  

Protect our community and our secular government. Our Constitution, the source of our civil rights, establishes a secular government - a unique and intentional construction of our founders.  The Constitution provides for a strict separation of church and state, prohibits religious tests for public office, and guarantees equal protection for all Americans under the law. We must challenge claims that our "rights are derived from God," we are a "Christian nation" and other theocratic fallacies that subvert our system of government.

An end to “faith-based initiatives” and “charitable choice” provisions. Government funding of religious organizations in the Bush and Obama administration has enabled tax-supported proselytizing and hiring discrimination within social service programs run by religious organizations. Click here to see Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Sean Faircloth call on President Obama to keep his promise to end religious discrimination within taxpayer-funded programs. 

A secular military that both defends and reflects our diversity of belief. A growing culture of religious intolerance and proselytizing is developing within our military -- jeopardizing the freedoms and safety of non-religious service members, tolerance of the beliefs of non-evangelical Christians, and our standing in the international community. Officers, chaplains, and all members of the military must not be permitted to place religious bias above their duty to our secular government. 

Public policy based on reason and science. Evidence, rather than religious bias, must be the driver of public policy decisions. Currently, in policies involving health, education, social services and the environment, religious beliefs are too often allowed to trump reason and science. Only with a politically active, vocal, and organized movement of Secular Americans can this dangerous trend be reversed, and our constitutional heritage be protected.

This is just a sample of the issues that are of concern to Secular Values Voters. See our “Issues” section for a complete list of what we're working on.