Alabama Judge Orders Court To Join In "Circle of Prayer"

There is a new blight on the Alabama judicial system and this time it is very close to home. It appears that a judge in a neighboring county of mine is insisting that people pray to his god during court proceedings. Of course this may not be news to most of those who live in Covington County where M. Ashley McKathan is the presiding Circuit Judge. I live just 47 miles from Andalusia where this all took place and I first heard about it on my local NPR station. It was only a brief mention but it was enough to get to researching the insident.

According to the Associated Press the Alabama judge:

"who once wore the Ten Commandments embroidered on his robe has been accused of violating judicial ethics for ordering a group in his courtroom to hold hands and pray."

Imagine that! This same judge, who refused to delay proceedings in his courtroom after a defense attorney objected to his Ten Commandments embroidered attire back in 2004, is now ordering citizens of the United States to hold hands and pray in a court of law.

The Infamous Robe




Judge Ashley Posing With His Infamous Robe

Is anyone really surprised that this judge is capable of such blatant disregard for the constitution?

In 2004 McKathan told The Associated Press that the Ten Commandments represent the truth:

"and you can't divorce the law from the truth. ... The Ten Commandments can help a judge know the difference between right and wrong."

When asked by The New American Magazine if he ever experienced any difficult cases in his career in which his "reliance on the truth of the Ten Commandments or on the truth found in the Bible" helped clarify his thinking and decision making, Judge McKathan said:

"Absolutely! It can arise in many different ways but one of the areas where this comes up most frequently is in making child custody decisions. Without some guiding principles, how do you decide what is in the best interest of the child? I often use this example — and I haven’t seen anybody publish it yet — if you had a child custody case in which the parents appeared otherwise equally able to parent the child but one was a Christian or a Jewish person and the other was a Satanist, who do you give the child to? The answer to that question is a religious answer. You seldom have that extreme, but you have variations of that issue that arise in child custody cases. That is just an extreme example but the principle comes up in all kinds of situations of the law."

Replace Satanist with any other religious or secular group—Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc… or Atheist, Humanist, Agnostic, etc... –and tell me how anyone who is not Jewish or Christian can expect to receive a fair trial in this man’s courtroom.

If this isn’t a slap in the face to all Non-Judea-Christian parents then I don’t know what is! That’s right my fellow nonbelievers, if you are an atheist and you end up in a child custody battle with a Christian spouse in this fundamentalists courtroom, you can pretty much count on losing custody of your child.

It looks like he is trying to dethrone Roy Moore as Alabama's leading Christian Nationalist and he just might succeed with his latest antics. Now this religious bigot is coercing the citizens of Alabama to pray to the Judea-Christian god in a United States court of law.

According to the AP, the judges latest violation of the constitution was brought to attention of The American Civil Liberties Union when a complaint was received that said:

“McKathan dropped to his knees and prayed aloud during a court hearing in February [and] told the 100 people in the courtroom that he was not afraid to call on the name of Jesus Christ, witnesses said, and ordered all to join hands and pray.”

It is noteworthy to point out the complaint was filed on behalf of several Monroeville residents which included local church members. That's right people, I said church members...the wall of seperation between chuch and state is there for a reason and many religious people relize this too.

But unfortunatly Judge McKathan appears unwilling to abide by the basic principles of the separation of church and state that the founders of this country set forth. Instead he chooses to order a 100 people to form a “circle of prayer” and he acenuates his directive by dropping to his knees in prayer in the courtroom.

People like McKathan who publicly acknowledges their belief that the law is based on more than just words written in law books and that "gods law" overrides "mans law" are not fit to serve as judge over citizens of this country.

When will these fundamentalist stop trying to rewrite history of this country?

I'll end this blog with a quote from Austin Clines Godless Constitution:

"No matter how hard conservative apologists for the Christian Right try, they cannot locate endorsements of religion, God, theism, or Christianity in the Constitution. At no point does the Constitution exhibit anything less than a fully secular, godless character. The American Constitution was a novel experiment in the creation of a secular government on the basis of popular sovereignty and democratic principles. All of this would be undermined by the Christian Right."

Peace, love and all that other good stuff...TPO