Jared Huffman is a politician currently serving California's 2nd district in the House of Representatives since 2013 and was previously in the California State Assembly from 2006-2012 as well as being a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus within the Democratic Party. Huffman recently made headlines as he spoke out on his religious beliefs, or a lack thereof in this particular case.
The Missouri-born lawmaker is one of only a handful to actively go against 70.6 percent of the American population who describe themselves as Christian, saying "I think that there is too much religion within politics". To some, this may not seem like an important statement for anyone to make, the reaction from people who are sane would sound something like this: "Jared is an atheist? Cool". On the other hand however, this can have serious ramifications for his electoral chances in the future as atheists are one of the groups who are looked down upon the most with the current uber-religious Republican Party and many of the Democrats also claiming to believe in the long-haired man in the sky.
What ramifications could Huffman face? How about the fact that in at least seven US states, there are literally laws on the books that say non-believers are unable to hold any elected office. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Beats me. The seven states that effectively have a ban on non-believing politicians are: Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Now, of course the seven earlier mentioned states do not fully enforce these laws as there would be a gigantic backlash if they did, but to even have a law such as this existing is simply pathetic. The assumption that is made by many on the Religious Right is that due to Huffman being a non-believer, he is unable to know right and wrong, or have an underlying moral code which they see as being only found within the Bible. You could just be a decent person, I mean, I'm an atheist and I would like to guess that I'm a moral person, but I'm accepting of gays so I'll be off to Hell at some point!
Back to Jared Huffman, as with this revelation, he does two things. Firstly, he opens the door to any other non-believers who would like to also come out and say that they have no particular religious affiliation, as well as encouraging non-believers to run for elected office. Secondly, he may harm his political chances in the future as his stance on religion is one people take seriously when they go to the polls.
Some sections of the American public are more likely to vote for a gay or muslim person than they are for an atheist, which goes to show how deep this anti-atheist bigotry lies, especially with American conservatives. The fact that people put a lawmakers religious beliefs before their policy positions as they visit the polls is simply mind blowing, creating another political hurdle for atheists.
Even at the 2016 election, we saw religion used as a weapon and the candidates having to pander to religious groups in order to gain their vote.
How was religion used as a weapon? For this, we have to travel back to the Democratic Primary. The leaked Hillary Clinton emails via Wikileaks showed how her allies were concocting a plan to smear her opponent, Bernie Sanders, as an atheist, in the hope that this will cost him votes in the most God-fearing states. This created a situation in which Sanders had to rush to Live TV in order to debunk the emails, as Sanders is Jewish - something which has also been used to attack the Vermont Senator by Hillary supporters on social media. The leaked emails allowed the public to see how DNC Chief Financial Officer, Brad Marshall, referred to a man of "Jewish heritage" that Marshall believed to be an atheist. Hillary was running against Bernie Sanders, who we mentioned before is Jewish, but I will leave it up to you as to who they were talking about...
We've have also long seen Presidential hopefuls pandering to religious groups, who could forget Donald Trump's "Two Corinthians" blunder at Liberty University. Trump was obviously at Liberty University in order to show off just how God-fearing he is, an act he had to put on in order to gain the votes of the religious pupils and staff at the evangelical university. The very same Liberty that teaches the students that God created the earth just a short six thousand years ago.
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