WaPo's Sally Quinn says belief in god is required for American Citizenship

[OriginalGeek]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/10/06/washington-posts-sally-quinn-american-citizenship-requires-belief-in-god/

Washington Post’s Sally Quinn: American Citizenship Requires Belief in God
This is a religious country. Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian. We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence. We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins. We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance. And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God.

This is why I am for taking god off money and prayers out of public functions and out of the pledge. When people say "oh, that's such a little thing...why get worked up over it?" it's because the continued use of them makes religious people think they are better and more american and deserve to tell us what to do.

[yellerpup]

1. Surely there is a copy of the Constitution

lying around the Washington Post that Sally Quinn could peruse. She should fact-check her own story.

[randr]

2. I guess the whole notion of "religious freedom" goes out the door in Quinn' narrow little mind

Freedom of Religion is Freedom from Religion!!!!!

[FiveGoodMen]

3. A belief in the Bill of Rights is required for citizenship

This traitor needs to be deported.

[onager]

4. Respect, please! This woman was groped by Strom Thurmond!

How did this woman get a job as a "writer?" Easy - Quinn is the wife of Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post since 300 BCE or thereabouts. Just your basic Bedroom Affirmative Action Program.

She's kept working journalists in comedy material for years.

If you think her First Amendment views are hilarious, look what happened back in June 2012, when she tried to write a piece about "The End of Power."

Basically, "the end of power" means the DC dinner-party circuit isn't what it used to be. The hoi-polloi have invaded! A Kardashian turned up at a Washington dinner party, and nowadays we're even exposed to the political opinions of "25-year-old bloggers."

Jonathan Chait ripped her a new one:

Sally Quinn Forced to Dine With Non-Fake Friends

By Jonathan Chait

After pretty much the entire journalistic world has made fun of Sally Quinn’s weekend Washington Post essay declaring the End of Power, further abuse may seem unnecessarily cruel. And yet even the fulsome stream of disparagement directed at Quinn has not adequately conveyed the full awfulness of her piece.

Quinn, a Washington Post writer and wife of Post editor Ben Bradlee, is the reigning queen of Washington dinner party culture. Her essay broadly belongs to a particular genre that I think of as a cargo cult of bipartisanship focused on dinner parties...

Washington writer Sally Quinn told of a 1950s reception where: “My mother and I headed for the buffet table. As we were reaching for the shrimp, both of us jumped and let out a shriek. Senator Strom Thurmond, grinning from ear to ear, had one hand on my behind and the other on my mother’s. As I recall, we were both quite flattered, and thought it terribly funny and wicked of Ol’ Strom.”

Once Washington was a happy place where a girl and her mother could be groped simultaneously in good fun by a white supremacist. Sadly, it has all been ruined by Kim Kardashian and Ezra Klein.


http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/sally-quinn-forced-to-dine-with-non-fake-friends.html

[OriginalGeek]

5. THAT's where I've herd her name before

I remember laughing that some socialite was mad at the current state of dinner party affairs.

[onager]

6. I hope Paula Kirby responds to this bilge.

She's also a frequent contributor to the WaPo "On Faith" section, and an atheist. And a very good writer.

I love the way Kirby summed up the "Atheism-Plus" idea: "Atheism-Plus: fighting ageism, racism and sexism. Old white men need not apply."

[JoeyT]

7. Except she's wrong about that.

There are plenty of old white dudes involved.

[onager]

11. Possibly including Schrodinger's A-Plusser...

Matt Dillahunty. Or possibly not.

For those who aren't keeping up with the Atheist Reality show, just Google "Dillahunty Atheism Plus." He basically posted anonymously at the A+ forum, to prove they aren't arbitrarily banning people. And promptly got arbitrarily banned.



You might want to make popcorn. But when you get thirsty, Atheism+ has plenty of Kool-Aid.

[JoeyT]

12. Of course you could hang out in the Slymepit

and chill with the three active members and their token woman.

NEVAR FORGET THUNDERF00T!!!!!111

I'm not even actively involved in A+. I kind of mostly ignore it as a passing fad. The Slymepitters and their ilk are pathetic. They spend far more time whining about A+ than the people involved in A+ do. The time they're not whining about A+ they're whining about how A+ people are oppressing old white men. It's quite Christian of them.

Edited to add: Like say bringing it up in forums that are completely unrelated to the subject.

[onager]

15. Your concern is noted, Cupcake.

[Rob H.]

8. LOLwhut?

Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. Amen

to your comments. All this is not a little thing, and one day, if we are not vigilant, Quinn will actually be right.

If looking for anything in the requirements of citizenship, I could find nothing about this....not a word. But I did find a study guide for getting citizenship, and it has this to say:

Term: What is freedom of religion?

Definition: You can practice any religion, or not practice a religion.

And this woman is the reason that religious people make me crazy. If they just stuck to their beliefs and practiced them in their churches and left the rest of us alone, I would have no issue with them.

[dimbear]

10. It's loose talk like this that makes Karl Rove deny his atheism.

Don't make Karl be a hypocrite, Sally. He has enough problems.

[Viva_Daddy]

13. If, as the Constitution says, there shall be "no religous test" for any...

candidate or position in the Federal Government...then there can be no religious test for citizenship either.

[LeftishBrit]

14. Doesn't that go against the First Amendment?

[kdmorris]

16. Of course that is a stupid argument

"In God We Trust" was put on the money in the 1950s and 1960s... so it wasn't there when most of these people were born!

"One Nation Under God" was added to the pledge in 1954... before that it was One Nation, Indivisible. Does that mean that people who are trying to divide our country should not be citizens?

I get so tired of this bullshit. The Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution. It was a letter to declare themselves free from England. The Constitution is the law of the land and what was written in THERE about God was:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What a bunch of dumbasses...

[YankeyMCC]

17. How open hearted of her

"..even if you are not Christian"

[sakabatou]

18. OFFS!

"Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God..."

That part can be omitted. It is not a requirement of the oath itself.

"We’ve got the Creator in our Declaration of Independence."

These were people who were mainly ambivalent to a supreme being.

"We’ve got “one nation under God” in our Pledge of Allegiance."

Only since the 1950s.

"We’ve got “In God We Trust” on our coins."

Only since 1864.

"And we say prayers in the Senate and the House of Representatives to God."

So what? Apparently, this person has no idea about the history of the US.

[dmallind]

19. ....and thereby voices the opinion, either explicit or tacit, of 90% of US believers. nt

[JNelson6563]

20. Special kind of stupid.

Oy.

Love the thread all, great OP. fun replies, AA is a haven for me.