Homeless in Arizona

The good news was the gay community has fought that, so now while a lot of people still hate gays it has become socially unacceptable to terrorize gay folks like it used to be.

Sadly us atheists are in the same position that gays were in 20 years ago. Sadly it's still socially acceptable to terrorize atheists.

I think it's great that Rep. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe has come out and admitted that he is an atheist. While a lot of people will hate him for it, I think that it will help people began to see the fact that atheists should have the same rights as all other people, even if they hate us.

I am still pretty pissed at Arizona US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema for refusing to admit that she is an atheist. It sure seems like Kyrsten Sinema refuses to tell the public any of her positions if she thinks it may cost her votes, even if it is the truth.

Her official religion at the US Congress is listed as no religion, even though us folks here in Phoenix that know her, know that she is an atheist.

I am also still pretty pissed off at Kyrsten Sinema's attempt to slap an 300 percent tax on medical marijuana when she was in the Arizona Legislator.

I know Kyrsten Sinema never met a tax she didn't love. I a lot of conservative groups consider Kyrsten Sinema the worst legislator in the history of Arizona when it comes to her socialist tax and spending.

I also know that in all of Kyrsten Sinema campaigns for both the Arizona and US Congress she has been supported by the police unions. She says she supports the people, but when she votes, it seems like she supports the police state.

So I don't know if she tried to slap that 300 percent tax on because it is part of her usual love to tax and spend and simply thinks that every penny in your wallet is hers.

Or if she did it for the police unions, in an attempt to flush Prop 203 down the toilet. Prop 203 is Arizona's medical marijuana law.

Oddly Kyrsten Sinema does admit she is a gay, while not admitting she is an atheist, other then saying she doesn't have a religion.

Kyrsten Sinema is also a gun grabber and has been given an F by the NRA with a zero percent rating on a scale of 0 to 100.

Source

Arizona lawmaker: I’m an atheist

By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Tue May 21, 2013 10:06 PM

A state lawmaker acknowledged that he is an atheist as he gave the daily House invocation Tuesday, urging legislators to look at each other, rather than bow their heads, and “celebrate our shared humanness.”

Rep. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe, who said it was freeing to be open about his secular views, also introduced about a dozen fellow members of the Secular Coalition for Arizona who watched from the House gallery.

The House and Senate convene with a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. Members take turns giving the prayer or inviting a religious leader to do so — similar to practices that have taken place for centuries in Congress, statehouses and city halls throughout the country.

Mendez’s secular invocation comes as the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on whether prayers can be offered at government meetings.

An appeals court last year ruled unconstitutional the practice in Greece, N.Y., of having Christian pastors give prayers before public meetings. The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom appealed and the high-court ruling, expected by June 2014, will resolve conflicting appeals-court rulings about religious expression.

Tuesday’s invocation was to have been given by Serah Blain, executive director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona. But Mendez said House staff had no record of his request to allow Blain’s remarks, so he offered the remarks himself.

“This is a room in which there are many challenging debates, many moments of tension, of ideological division, of frustration,” he said. “But this is also a room where, as my secular humanist tradition stresses, by the very fact of being human we have much more in common than we have differences.”

House lawmakers appeared to have no reaction to Mendez’s remarks.

But in a statement Monday on the Supreme Court case, Speaker Andy Tobin, R-Paulden, defended the practice of praying before government meetings.

“The outcome of this case could very well preserve or eliminate one of the great American traditions, which poses no threat to the secular nature of the business of the state,” he said.

Blain leads a growing coalition that represents 17 secular organizations at the Legislature, focused on pushing back against the powerful Christian-based Center for Arizona Policy and promoting a death-with-dignity law and science-based sex education in schools.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that people with no religious affiliation make up the third-largest group worldwide, after Christians and Muslims. About 20 percent of people in the U.S. say they are religiously unaffiliated.