Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC (trying to boot him on the grounds that he's an

[cali]

atheist)

RALEIGH, N.C. – Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

"My father was a Baptist minister. I'm a Christian man. I have problems with people who don't believe in God," said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners.

<snip>

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091211/ap_on_re_us/us_godless_politician

[Tesha]

1. (Duplicate -- this was discussed here yesterday.) (NT)

[dmallind]

2. And we STILL get "fundie atheists are just as bad".

So perhaps we can easily come up with a law suit filed by atheists to stop a Christian getting a position solely on the grounds of their beliefs? Anybody?

[hayu_lol]

3. Much of the reason for the lawsuit...

lies in the photo ops and posturing possibilities for the people behind the suit. They can tell their ignorant constituents that they went to bat for them.

U.S. Constitution trumps the state Constitution. Settled law.

Lots of people in that part of the world who are just plain 'dumb' and 'dumber.'

[pleah]

5. I like to say willfully ignorant. n/t

[struggle4progress]

12. Lawsuit? What lawsuit? A couple of neo-confederate nutjobs calling for a lawsuit isn't

the same as a lawsuit

[starroute]

4. Can we start referring to "the theory of God"?

I've really had it with this "theory" business from the right. It started with the whole "evolution is only a theory, not a fact" thing -- as though theories weren't simply the models science offers as the best current way to explain a large body of facts.

Lately I've seen RW ads referring to "global warming theory" as a way of saying "it's only a theory and therefore it doesn't have to be taken seriously."

But it just occurred to me that "God" is also a theory. Back 50,000 years ago or whenever, the best scientific thinkers of the time decided that the simplest way to describe why the word exists and has plants and animals and people on it and why the sun rises and sets in a regular way was that there was a "God" behind the scenes keeping it all going.

It was a nice theory for the time -- simple, elegant, and it enabled people to stop worrying about what would happen if the sun didn't come up one morning and just get on with their lives.

But it was only a theory -- and one that has given way to any number of other theories with far more explanatory power. It's still a useful way for some people to remind themselves that we don't have answers to the ultimate questions, like why the universe exists at all -- but as a scientific theory with the ability to explain ordinary, everyday events it's flat busted.

So I think I'm going to refer to "the God theory" from now on whenever there's an opportunity. It really puts the issue in context.

[struggle4progress]

6. Previous GD thread Wed: Atheists are not allowed to hold office ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7186321

[struggle4progress]

7. Previous GD thread Wed: Religious foes try to nullify election of atheist in North Carolina

struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Thu Dec-10-09 06:06 AM
Response to Reply #4
60. The news story quotes only H. K. Edgerton, who was thrown out of the NAACP a decade ago

and promptly joined the ranks of the neo-confederates. He's an attention hound: he once walked from here to Texas dressed in a gray uniform and carrying a confederate flag, in order to prove something or other -- nobody really knows what. The white supremacists, of course, eventually got tired of toying with him and started making accusations, so a few years back he decided to stop waving the confederate flag. Bless his pointy little head: he's managed to get himself quoted in the paper again, but he's not going to have any effect on anybody

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7187469

[struggle4progress]

8. Previous R/T thread Wed: Foes try to nullify election of atheist in N. Carolina

struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Wed Dec-09-09 06:06 PM
Response to Original message
15. Kirk Lyons and Suspended NAACP Officer Collaborate (December 23, 1998)

Kirk Lyons wrote a December 16, 1998 letter to various organizations in the Asheville, NC area (including WNCCEIB) asking them to join with him and "Chairman" H.K. Edgerton in forming the "Asheville Fair Housing Alliance" ... The Asheville Citizen-Times reported on December 19 that Edgerton, who describes himself as President of the local NAACP Branch, is working with Lyons because he does not have money to challenge the City of Asheville's housing practices ... The legitimacy of Edgerton using the title of President is questionable since WNCCEIB has learned that the fall election that should have taken place has not been held and members may be withholding payment of dues. Moreover, according to the State office, the officers of the Asheville NAACP Branch are suspended "until further notice" for non-payment of branch dues ... Edgerton and Lyons created controversy on March 28, 1998 when the Asheville Citizen-Times printed a picture of Lyons, Lyons' assistant Neil Payne and Edgerton wearing hood-mimicking napkins on their heads and joking about the KKK. The Citizen-Times editorialized that Edgerton was discrediting himself, the NAACP, and everyone who had been a victim of the KKK ... UPDATE: In January 1999, the State Office of the NAACP held a re-organization meeting of the Asheville Branch. New elections resulted in H.K. Edgerton being defeated for President ... http://www.main.nc.us/wncceib/98LyonsNAACP.htm

WNCCEIB Letter to Franklin Press dated May 5, 2000
May 5, 2000
The Editor
The Franklin Press
PO Box 350
Franklin, North Carolina 28734
Re: H.K. Edgerton's Connections With White Supremacists Very Strange
To the Editor:
It doesn't get much stranger than the spectacle of an African-American former President of the Asheville Branch of the NAACP carrying a Confederate Flag in front of Franklin High School just as the KKK has done. Yet that is what Franklin residents have seen in recent weeks. For us in Asheville who have known H.K. Edgerton for years, that spectacle has moved beyond strange to a kind of pathetic side show. Two years ago Edgerton's hanging out with area white supremacists was the final straw for an NAACP chapter that had dwindled to almost nothing in response to Edgerton's ineffective leadership. Even the Asheville Citizen-Times called for him to step down. The State NAACP came in, suspended Edgerton, and reorganized the chapter into what is now one of the most active and vibrant in the State ... http://main.nc.us/wncceib/lyHKFranklin550.htm

Intelligence Report
Summer 2000
In the Lyons Den
Despite his extremism, Kirk Lyons, a white supremacist lawyer whose clients have been a 'Who's Who' of the radical right, is becoming the attorney for the neo-Confederate movement ... No matter that he has attended and spoken at a slew of white supremacist events around the nation. No matter that he has walked at the head of a Klan parade, lionized Adolf Hitler as "probably the most misunderstood man in German history," and reportedly proposed carving America up into racial mini-states ... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?...

Intelligence Report
Winter 2002
Neo-Confederates
... Since the late '90s, H.K. Edgerton has earned local notoriety by staging one-man protests of Confederate "heritage violations," such as attempts to remove the Confederate battle flag from public schools ... Edgerton has become a darling of the white-supremacist wing of the "heritage" movement ... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?...

Intelligence Report
Summer 2007
Neo-Confederates
Lonely Black Neo-Confederate Furls His Flag
The neo-Confederate movement isn't known for its racial diversity, but there long has been one dedicated black man willing to fight for the Southern cause: H.K. Edgerton. A constant fixture at protests in support of Confederate symbols, Edgerton at one point walked from his home in Asheville, N.C., to Austin, Texas, dressed all the while in Confederate gray and toting a battle flag. In March, after being accused by white neo-Confederate colleagues of financial improprieties, Edgerton quit the fight and furled his flag ... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?...

struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Wed Dec-09-09 06:30 PM
Response to Reply #15
17. Neo-Confederate Kirk Lyons on race, immigration and what could be his final flag case

12 AUG 2009 • by Dick J. Reavis
... Though also middle-aged, one of the men, known to everybody by the initials H.K., didn't fit the mold. Instead of a suit coat and tie—the attire judges require of adult males in federal courtrooms—H.K. was wearing a Confederate uniform. His stories weren't about soldiering days, either, but about his brushes with civilian law officers in 2002-03, when he marched from Asheville, N.C., to Austin, Texas, as a standard bearer for the Confederate battle flag. The trek had taken four months. Unlike the other men, H.K. is not a member of the Sons. He hasn't been able to satisfy its chief requirement that applicants cite one or more ancestors who wore the Confederate gray. H.K. Edgerton is the defrocked president of a western North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He is black. Sitting on the first-floor bench, Edgerton told the others that being barred from the courtroom because of his Confederate getup didn't sit well with him. He went upstairs to query the judge, who was not available. So Edgerton knocked on the door of a room for attorneys and their clients to ask the counsel of the fellow Life Member whose arguments the others had come to hear, Kirk D. Lyons of Black Mountain, a small town 15 miles east of Asheville. At Lyons' urging, Edgerton changed into a dark suit ... The matter at hand was a suit originally brought to enjoin the school district at Latta, a South Carolina town about 25 miles northeast of Florence, from banning items of clothing bearing Confederate symbols. The suit arose out of a 2004 incident in which a teacher at Latta Middle School ordered student Candice Hardwick to turn her Confederate-flag T-shirt inside out or don a T-shirt supplied by the school. The teacher's order was in keeping with school policies banning "disruptive" clothing, under which Malcolm X T-shirts had also been forbidden. When Hardwick refused to comply, the teacher sent her to a detention hall for the rest of the day ... http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A3993...

Federal judge sides with S.C. district in Confederate-flag case
By The Associated Press
09.17.09
COLUMBIA, S.C. — ... Hardwick's attorneys argued that the teen — who was forced to change clothes, turn shirts inside-out and was suspended twice for Confederate-themed clothing in middle school — felt that a ban on wearing the Confederate emblem violated her right to free speech ... In his 33-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten wrote that district officials, fearing possible disruptions if Confederate-themed clothing were allowed in the racially diverse schools, acted reasonably in banning such items ... http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=22077
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed
Dwight Eisenhower
16 April 1953
Alert | Add to my Journal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=228443

[struggle4progress]

9. Previous GD thread Fri: NC: asinine, irrelevant law cited in attempt to keep atheist off of the Ashe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7202015

[struggle4progress]

10. Previous R/T thread Fri: Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC AP

struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Sat Dec-12-09 01:44 AM
Response to Original message
4. Hill Street Baptist Church bans Confederate-style funeral (David Morgan's Asheville Tribune)

Edited on Sat Dec-12-09 02:25 AM by struggle4progress
<2005> Anna Bell Edgerton, age 80, .. mother of seven, passed away Jan. 16 ... Numbered among Mrs. Edgerton’s children are Southern Heritage activists H.K. Edgerton .. a former president of the Asheville Chapter of the NAACP ... Mrs. Edgerton’s life was to have been celebrated at a Confederate funeral at Hill St. Baptist ... Hart Funeral Home received a call from the church stating that the funeral could not be held there ... Southern rights activist attorney Kirk Lyons spoke on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans ... Mrs. Edgerton’s coffin was carried on a horse-drawn wagon with her son, H.K. following along carrying the Southern Cross of St. Andrew flag ... H.K. was highly complimentary of funeral director Darryl Hart ... “Also, the Sons of Confederate Veterans were so gracious and kind. My Mom had a Confederate honor guard who stood watch over her all the time she was at the funeral home ... I was proud accompany my Mom to the cemetery, carrying the flag. It is our flag, the flag of our Southern heritage.” http://www.ashevilletribune.com/archives/Hil_%20Street....

Intelligence Report
Spring 2006
Into The Wild
Leaner and meaner under a new leader, the Sons of Confederate Veterans heads into more and more radical territory.
by Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok
... "The slackers and the grannies have been purged from our ranks," Kirk Lyons, a radical who first floated the idea of taking over the SCV in a 2000 meeting of neo-Nazis and former Klansmen, exulted in December. Now, Lyons added, the SCV needs to become "a modern, 21st century Christian war machine capable of uniting the Confederate community and leading it to ultimate victory" ... The first evidence of an attempt to take over the SCV came in early 2002, when it emerged that Lyons -- a white supremacist attorney married on the grounds of the Aryan Nations by its neo-Nazi leader, Richard Butler -- was running for a regional leadership position within the SCV ... Since his 2004 election, Sweeney has moved to consolidate power by appointing to key leadership positions men who have belonged to hate groups or have histories of racism ... As chief of staff, Sweeney selected Ronald Casteel, who has been a member of the neo-secessionist League of the South (LOS), a racist hate group that opposes interracial marriage and whose leaders have defended both segregation and slavery (Casteel's license plate holder reads "SCV-LOS"). Sweeney's appointed historian in chief is Charles Kelley Barrow, who also has been a member of the LOS. As chaplain in chief, Sweeney named H. Rondel Rumberg, who has been a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The CCC, descended from the infamous White Citizens Councils, has called blacks "a retrograde species of humanity" and lamented that non-white immigration is turning the U.S. population into a "slimy brown mass of glop" ... In November, matters came to a head when Sweeney traveled to San Diego to address the annual convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) ... In January, H.K. Edgerton, a black Lyons ally who has said slavery was a good thing for Africans, killed off any residual good will when he sent out an E-mail listing the UDC among those most responsible for "Southern Cultural Genocide" ... http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?...
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=228655#228661

[struggle4progress]

11. Previous GD thread Sat: Whackadoodle Right Alert: Conservatives in NC to sue atheist city councilman

struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Sat Dec-12-09 04:23 AM
Response to Original message
10. I haven't seen any evidence of a lawsuit yet, just two news articles citing neo-confederates, one in

the Asheville Citizen-Times earlier this week citing the very weird H.K. Edgerton, and this AP wire piece citing Edgerton and David Morgan of the Asheville Tribune

I can't imagine that Edgerton, Morgan, and similar wackos could produce a lawsuit that would pass even first muster in court

H.K. Edgerton was booted from the NAACP a decade ago. He then joined the neo-confederates and tried to get attention by the usual confederate flag worship, walking at one point to Texas dressed in gray and carrying the battlejack. He turned his mother's funeral into a neo-confederate celebration. Eventually, of course, the white supremacists drove him out. Now he's looking for some other way to get attention.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7207398#7208515