January 11, 2001

FROM: The Coalition for the Community of Reason on behalf of the following national organizations:

• American Humanist Association (AHA)
• Atheist Alliance International (AAI)
• Campus Freethought Alliance (CFA)
• Council for Secular Humanism (CSH)
• Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS)
• Internet Infidels (II)
• Secular Student Alliance (SSA)

CONTACT:
Herb Silverman
843/577-0637

The Community of Reason -- a coalition of national organizations representing and representative of those U.S. communities with no belief in supernatural deities -- expresses alarm at President-Elect Bush's nomination of defeated Missouri Senator John Ashcroft as our nation's next Attorney General. The office of U. S. Attorney General, as head of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, is charged with protecting our civil rights -- a position which requires the protection of minority groups, including those who hold no religious beliefs and those of minority religions, without providing favoritism to any other group. It is astounding to the nontheistic community that Governor Bush would tap such a sectarian stalwart as Senator Ashcroft to fill that office and responsibility.

Senator Ashcroft's record of promoting special privileges for religious organizations is shown by his 100% rating from the Christian Coalition for each of the six years he served in the Senate, during which time he was a co-sponsor of the Religious Freedom Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and a major architect of the "Charitable Choice" provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that removed all church-state separation restrictions from any religious organization that received government funds for social services. His obsession on President Clinton's sexual peccadilloes during the impeachment trials while ignoring far more serious issues of Presidential impropriety (such as firing cruise missiles at aspirin factories in a neutral country in Africa) raises serious questions about what Senator Ashcroft would consider to be of political import in his role as Attorney General.

Not since the infamous Postmaster General Anthony Comstock wreaked havoc on our citizen's civil rights in the early days of our Republic has this nation seen a politician with such a narrow and intolerant set of religious views nominated to a position of such unchecked power. Not only is Senator Ashcroft an aggressive Christian who has shown no compunctions about promoting his theology in his role as a government servant every chance he gets, regardless of the First Amendment; he is also on record in using his power in the Senate to block the appointment Judge Ronnie White, the first black jurist to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Missouri's own State Supreme Court Chief Justice. And he is on record as calling for President Clinton to be impeached on the basis of personal, not professional, infidelities. He also appears to have ties with Southern Christian White-Supremacist groups and other discriminatory southern institutions such as Bob Jones University.

Senator Ashcroft has given little reason to believe that he is willing or able to put aside his personal beliefs and fairly protect the reason-based citizenry of the United States from tyranny of the faith-based majority. He has repeatedly shown himself to act in meeting his own personal interests when he has had the power to do so. As Attorney General, Senator Ashcroft will be able to extend his sorry record to new heights. This is clearly a man who should not be given unilateral and unrestricted control over the politically sensitive issues that every Attorney General is sworn to uphold.

President-Elect George W. Bush's nomination of defeated Missouri Senator John Ashcroft raises serious questions among the nontheistic community of the promises made in the President-Elect's campaign to be a "Uniter, not a Divider." We are greatly disappointed that Governor Bush would make such a questionable choice for Attorney General. We further note with dismay that Governor Bush has made it a priority to meet with national religious leaders within days of being declared the winner of the 2000 election, yet he has made no efforts to meet with national leaders of the nontheistic community -- a community consisting of 11% of the population, or 36 million people. We hope that Governor Bush will reconsider and withdraw this nomination; but if he is not willing to do so, it is our hope that the Senate Judiciary Committee will ask the tough questions of Senator Ashcroft about his past record and his ability to act impartially in a role which requires him to do so. We hope that they will not confirm the Senator without a clear assurance that he will be able to set aside his narrowly focused and, some might say, un-American, religious and racial agenda and protect the civil rights of all citizens, regardless of race or lack of belief in supernatural deities.