Remove "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance

Devon Smith, a Spring Valley High School sophomore, said what he did Monday morning was no different from what he's done since the eighth grade -- he neither recited the Pledge of Allegiance with other students nor did he stand silently while classmates took part in the recitation. What was different, the 16-year-old said, was his teacher’s decision to kick him out of class. "I wasn't being disruptive…I don't believe we are 'one nation under God' as the Pledge says. I don't believe in God. So I was just sitting there. That is my right."

• "Under God" was only added to the pledge in 1954.
  
• The pledge as originally written by Francis Bellamy and first published in 1892 was "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." In the 1920s "my flag" was changed to "the flag of the United States of America."
• For many in Congress at the time, the addition of "under God" was a political move to emphasize the distinction between the United States and the officially atheist Soviet Union during the Cold War. This change turned what had been a patriotic exercise for all Americans into a statement of religiously-based division of Americans which used religion as a tool for political gain and theism as a litmus test for patriotism.
• Nontheists relegated to second-class citizenship.By inserting religion into government, Americans who do not believe in a god are relegated to a second-class citizenship (and, by implication during the Cold War, allied with the enemies of America).
  
• As stated by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton in 2005, "under God" in the pledge violates the rights of school children to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God." Currently, nontheistic children are forced to either hide their convictions and recite the pledge, or refrain form reciting that portion of the pledge and invite recrimination and hostility from their peers and teachers.
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette makes the Pledge optional. In the early 1940s, Barnette children refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance on the grounds that it was a "graven image" and pledging it amounted to worship. The lower courts found against them, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in their favor. Writing for the majority, Justice Jackson stated: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." The decision was handed down on Flag Day, June 14, 1943. No student can be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance although many teachers and school principals continue to believe that they must.

The Secular Coalition for America opposes government-coerced recitation of the religious Pledge of Allegiance by public school children. Our community is relegated to second-class citizenship when patriotic exercises require an affirmation of supernatural belief.