Cecil Bothwell is a new city councilman in Asheville, NC (a liberal enclave in an otherwise fairly conservative state).  Bothwell happens to be an atheist, but the North Carolina state constitution prohibits any officeholder “who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” Of course, anyone with a lick of sense knows that that provision is unconstitutional and would never stand up to a Supreme Court challenge–even Antonin Scalia would probably toss it out.  It’s also obvious that no North Carolina legislator would risk his or her political career by daring to suggest amending the state constitution to remove this nasty bit of prejudice.

And so, stalemate.  The bigots won’t do the right thing, but neither can they enforce the provision.  Meanwhile, Bothwell will serve and there’s not much anybody can do about it until the next election cycle.

What irks me is the oddly skewed coverage from the Associated Press.  The AP calls the provision a “quirk” in the state constitution, where the phrase “entrenched prejudice” would be more accurate.  Constitutional religious discrimination is no more a quirk than constitutional slavery.  Also, a law school professor is quoted as saying the legislature won’t bother with this “because lawmakers would rather not spend time weeding out outdated laws.”  Well, bullshit on that.  Lawmakers won’t touch this one with a 30 meter cattleprod because either a) they’re bigots who want like the state constitution just like it is or b) they’re political cowards who aren’t afraid of wasting time, but instead are afraid of voter backlash.

Conservatives are threatening a lawsuit.  I say bring it on: they’ll lose this one for sure, but they’ll still never change the NC constitution.

Tags: cecil bothwell, north carolina

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 2:23 pm and is filed under atheism, civil rights, politics, religion, religious rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.