Phoenix’s Dream City Church has scheduled a “Students for Trump Rally” in their facility, a political event that violates IRS rules for 501(c)3 organizations, federal law, and the Constitution. Read the response from Dianne Post, Legal Director of Secular Communities for Arizona, here.
Read this 5/19/20 op-ed by Dianne Post, Secular AZ’s Legal Director, published in the AZ Capitol Times.
“Once again, Center for Arizona Policy peddles its myths in an attempt to turn America from a democracy to a theocracy. The communications specialist miscommunicates in the April 24 editorial that the U.S. Constitution does not require the separation of church and state. That statement directly contradicts the Constitution…”
Read this 5/7/20 op-ed by Secular AZ’s Legal Director Dianne Post Democracy or Theocracy – Who Decides? on the Blog for Arizona.
‘“The only object, purpose, or use for taxation by law in this state must be exclusively secular. There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government would soon be destroyed. Let it once enter into our common schools, they would be destroyed.’ (State ex rel Weiss v. Dist. Bd. Of Sch. Dist. No. 8 of Edgerton, 44 N.W. 967, 981 (1890) (Orton, J., concurring).
With this case the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the Wisconsin Constitution prohibited bible readings in the public schools. They nailed it.
They were only 100 years out from a Constitution that was deliberately secular to avoid the religious wars and persecution the founders had themselves experienced. Here we are today, more than another 100 years out from that case and now the religious nationalists think they know better what the founders thought. They claim that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation when nothing could be further from the truth.”
Read our letter to Governor Ducey here:
Why is the Camp Verde School Board heading on biblical collision course? Read this April 7, 2020 op-ed by Secular AZ’s Dianne Post here.
**Update: Camp Verde USD has cancelled Bible course due to lack of interest.According to the Verde News, Principal Mark Showers of Camp Verde High School said that only two students said in a survey they would be interested in the elective class. Read more at the Friendly Atheist here.
Read our letter to Gov. Doug Ducey here:
“These cases are not about cakes and flowers any more than the sit-ins in the South in the 1960s were about getting a sandwich or a soda. They are about the Constitutional rules of equality and fairness.”
Can a lawyer decline a case based on religious beliefs? How are recent “religious liberty” cases harming our democracy? Attorney and Secular AZ Legal Committee Chair Dianne Post speaks to the AZ State Bar Conference about why lawyers cannot decline a case “because the bible tells them so.”
Click here to watch the presentation; Dianne’s portion begins at 24:05.
The Secular AZ legal team handled 25 church:state violation complaints in 2017 and 2018.
