Bob Geary interviews Kristen Douglas, a “borderline agnostic” from North Carolina, on the contentious Hagan-Dole U.S. Senate race:
“Are godless Americans less American than religious Americans?” she asked.
Actually, the issue was muddled a bit at first by the way Dole’s ads misrepresented the fundraiser and Hagan’s faith. And even after it emerged that the voice crying “There is no god!” in Dole’s first ad wasn’t actually Hagan, and that Hagan is a Presbyterian elder who believes in God with a capital G, Dole persisted with a second ad that again bollixed the fundraiser.
When the facts were sorted out, though, what remained of Dole’s “charge” was that Hagan had sinned politically by attending a fundraiser at the home of a couple, Woody Kaplan and Wendy Kaminer, who are avowed atheists and active in groups espousing church-state separation. “If godless Americans threw a party in your honor,” the second Dole ad asked, “would you go?”
What frightens Douglas is, first, that Dole obviously thought she’d gain by smearing atheists; and second, that Hagan “defended” herself without ever mentioning that the Bill of Rights protects the free exercise of religion and of non-religion and also bars the establishment of religion by the government.
Read the entire article here.