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Outrageous Attacks on Supporters of Church-State Separation: Death
Threats, Murdered Pets, and Vandalized Property
The religious right often wages campaigns of harassment, intimidation and
outright violence against First Amendment plaintiffs.
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May 6, 2013 |
When it comes to the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, which forbids
the establishment of a state religion by the government even if a
majority supports it, is something most of us heartedly support.
But not all. The religious right despises the First Amendment, since it's
constantly foiled their efforts to inject Christian doctrine into
government. And when they've lost in court, religious conservatives in
the U.S. have often waged campaigns of threats, harassment and outright
violence against First Amendment plaintiffs, in the hopes of intimidating
them into backing down and achieving by mob violence what they can't
achieve under the law.
Last year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation contacted two public
school districts in Pennsylvania, in New Kensington and Connellsville, to
demand the removal of large stone Ten Commandments monuments prominently
placed on school property. When the schools chose to fight, the FFRF and
its local plaintiffs, including current students, filed a lawsuit.
As often happens in these cases, FFRF plaintiffs asked to have their
identities concealed because they feared harassment and retaliation from
the community. It was a well-founded fear, since some of them had already
been receiving threats on social media. On a Facebook page supporting the
New Kensington school, one person encouraged others to "slam the shit out
of the bitch" who filed the lawsuit. Another commenter asked, "Have the
families involved in the lawsuit been identified? I cannot believe anyone
living in the community would participate in such a worthless cause.
Someone needs to send that group back to Wisconsin with several black
eyes!"
Because of threats like this, the court granted the request for
anonymity, finding that "this basis upon which the Does fear disclosure
is substantial and that there is a substantial public interest in
ensuring that litigants not face such retribution in their attempt to
seek redress for what they view as a Constitutional violation, a pure
legal issue." In response, Republican state representative Tim Krieger
filed a bill... that would eliminate the right of plaintiffs to sue
anonymously over religious symbols on public property.
Thankfully, Krieger's understanding of federalism is as abysmal as his
grasp of the Bill of Rights: the FFRF lawsuit was filed in federal court,
where state laws have no effect. Still, the ugly, bullying intent behind
his bill is obvious: the unsubtle hope is to encourage bullying and
retribution against First Amendment plaintiffs, to "punish" them for
standing up for the Constitution.
The story of high school activist Jessica Ahlquist, previously reported
by Greta Christina on AlterNet, is another example. After speaking out
against an illegal prayer banner in her public school (and winning in
court), Ahlquist received vivid, violent threats on social media, and
even in a handwritten letter. Some of the threats were so serious she was
temporarily given a police escort for protection.
These two stories are just the most recent and high-profile examples of
the kind of harassment and intimidation of church-state plaintiffs that's
been going on literally for decades. Countless other stories could be
cited, like these:
Darla Kay Wynne. A Wiccan living in the town of Great Falls, South
Carolina in 2004, Darla Kay Wynne was disturbed by sectarian Christian
prayers before town council meetings. On one occasion, when she
deliberately came late to avoid the prayer, she was denied the
opportunity to speak at the meeting even though she had previously signed
up to do so and was listed on the official agenda. When she asked for
members of other religions to have an opportunity to give the prayers,
that too was denied; the mayor, Henry Starnes, said, "This is the way
we've always done things and we're not going to change." When she refused
to stand for one of the prayers, several people told her she "wasn't
wanted" and "should leave town."
Wynne filed a lawsuit, Wynne v. Town of Great Falls, which she easily won
based on existing precedent. In response, as reported by a South Carolina
newspaper,The State, someone broke into her home and decapitated her pet
parrot, leaving a note next to the body that read, "You're next!" Several
of her cats were also killed, and her tiny Yorkshire terrier was beaten.
The Santa Fe Does. In 2000, in the case Santa Fe Independent School
District v. Doe, the Supreme Court struck down student-selected, school-
endorsed prayer at high school football games in Santa Fe, Texas. As in
FFRF's Pennsylvania cases, the lower courts allowed the plaintiffs to
file anonymously to protect them from harassment. The wisdom of that
measure was soon demonstrated because employees of the school district
apparently spent considerable effort trying to figure out who the
plaintiffs were. The judge was forced to issue a further order,
threatening criminal contempt if there was "any further attempt on the
part of District or school administration... parents, students or anyone
else, overtly or covertly to ferret out the identities of the Plaintiffs
in this cause, by means of bogus petitions, questionnaires, individual
interrogation, or downright 'snooping.'"
The McCollums. Vashti McCollum, her husband John and her son Jim were at
the center of one of the earliest and most important First Amendment
cases of the 20th century: McCollum vs. Board of Education, a 1948
Supreme Court ruling striking down a "released-time" policy in Illinois
that allowed clergy to come to a public school to teach religious
education classes to students during the school day.
While the case was going on, the McCollum family was threatened and
ostracized by their community. They received harassing and threatening
messages, including one that read, "There is no room for you nor yours
here. God damn you sons and daughters of bitches.... If you think you can
boss us around What fun We are going to have." On one Halloween, a mob
broke into the house and threw rotten fruit and vegetables at the family.
Vashti was abruptly fired from her job as a phys-ed teacher at the
University of Illinois at Champaign. Jim McCollum and his brothers were
beaten up while going to and from school. Most shockingly, the McCollum
family's cat was lynched and hanged from a tree.
The Bells. In 1981, in the Oklahoma community of Little Axe, school
officials allowed a Baptist religious group, the Son Shine Club, to meet
in the school building before the start of the day. The buses dropped
students off at school 30 minutes before the start of class, and those
who didn't want to attend the religious meetings had to wait outside the
building, even if it was raining or freezing cold.
Joann Bell and another local parent, Lucille McCord, were both Christians
but of different denominations, and didn't want their children exposed to
Baptist preaching on school time. When they filed a lawsuit with the help
of the ACLU, Bell v. Little Axe, retribution was swift and vicious.
Joann Bell was assaulted by a school employee who smashed her head
repeatedly against a car door; he was only fined, and the community
rallied around him and raised money to pay the fine. The Bells' home was
burned to the ground; fire marshals ruled it to be arson, but no arrest
was ever made. McCord's son raised goats, which an unknown person slashed
and mutilated with a knife. Both of them received threatening letters,
including copies of their own obituaries. The Bells got a phone call from
someone who said he would break into Joann Bell's house, tie up her
children, rape her in front of them, and then "bring her to Jesus." The
local superintendent, Paul Pettigrew, said, "The only people who have
been hurt by this thing are the Bells and McCords... They chose to create
their own hell on earth."
Although most of these champions of the Constitution persevered through
harassment and threats, sadly, that isn't always the case. Sometimes the
persecution is too severe to bear, as in the case of the Dobriches, an
Orthodox Jewish family who filed a lawsuit in 2005 challenging pervasive
Christian influencein their Delaware school district, including
explicitly sectarian prayers at parent-teacher meetings and graduation
ceremonies, special privileges given to children in Christian clubs, and
Bibles handed out at elementary school.
When Mona Dobrich complained on behalf of her son, Alex, a group calling
itself the "Stop the ACLU Coalition" publicized the Dobriches' home
address and phone number, and they received so many threats, harassing
messages and anti-Semitic hate letters that they were essentially hounded
out of their community. They ended up moving to another county, and their
daughter had to drop out of Columbia University because of the financial
strain they were under.
Another church-state plaintiff driven out of her town was Melinda Maddox,
a Roman Catholic resident of Brewton, Alabama who joined in a 2001
lawsuit challenging theocratic judge Roy Moore's illegal placement of a
Ten Commandments monument in the state judicial building. During her
honeymoon, someone shot out the windows of her house; her car was
vandalized, and she received violent threats like "You should be hog-tied
and thrown in the Escambia River." Her parents, both of whom were
battling cancer, received threatening and harassing phone calls as well.
When she asked community leaders to condemn the threats, they instead
counseled her to drop out of the case. The strain destroyed her marriage
and her legal firm, forcing her to relocate to Mobile. In spite of this,
she says she would do it all over again.
Adam Lee is a writer and atheist activist living in New York City. Follow
him on Twitter, or subscribe to his blog, Daylight Atheism.
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