Bothwell can't be forced out of office over his atheist views because the North Carolina provision is unenforceable, according to the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. Six other states, Arkansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, have similar provisions barring atheist officeholders....
Bothwell said a legal challenge to his appointment would be "fun," but believes his opponents' efforts have more to do with politics than religious beliefs.
"It's local political opponents seeking to change the outcome of an election they lost," said Bothwell, who's lived in Asheville nearly three decades and wrote the city's best-selling guide book.
Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC
By ALYSIA PATTERSON
The Associated Press
Friday, December 11, 2009 5:45 PM
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government - but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.
Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution....
That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.
"My father was a Baptist minister. I'm a Christian man. I have problems with people who don't believe in God," said Edgerton, a former local NAACP president and founder of Southern Heritage 411, an organization that promotes the interests of black southerners.
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"My father was a Baptist
I guess Edgerton's understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and of those who participated in that struggle is especially narrow.
I guess Edgerton's
Well, I guess you have to draw the line somewhere.
Well, I guess you have to
Yeah, if you recognize the Constitutional rights of atheists, God might lose his cool.
The AP's description of Edgerton is ridiculous
Edgerton is a neo-confederate:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=252
Southern Heritage 411 is an organization promoting "Lost Cause" and the idea that blacks were part of the "Lost Cause"...
Describing it as an organization that "promotes the interests of black southerners" is ridiculous. I can't even imagine Edgerton describing them as such.
@ TKG
Now that's right interesting.
Edgerton often describes his activism as an extension of King's work and the ongoing fight for civil rights. Knowing that few blacks would view King's legacy, civil rights or Southern history as he does, Edgerton seems motivated all the more.
"If every African-American would pick up the Confederate flag," he proclaims, "I would say, 'Free at last, free at last, God almighty, I am free at last.'"
..."His elevator doesn't go all the way to the top," Rev. Skip Alston, executive director of the North Carolina NAACP, told a reporter recently. "It doesn't even reach the second floor. We don't recognize anything that he's doing."
It completely changes the article
He is a pretty well known figure.
Here he is arguing that a school named after the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan should not change it’s name:
http://www.dnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061127/NEWS01/611270319/1002
Here he is marching to Obama’s inauguration:
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/local/article/black_southerner_marching_to_d.c._seeks_respect_for_confederate_flag/34271/
Pretty much any time anyone is trying to remove the Dixie flag, or change something named after a confederate general…Edgerton will show up in wearing confederate soldier’s garb, waving the flag of Dixie and telling his version of the Lost Cause narrative where the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with race.
Edgerton is the only “conservative” opponent of Bothwell listed by name.
You get the sense that there is no fact checker at the A.P.
Knowing Edgerton’s background the story reads to me:
“
-Neo-Confederate goes around wearing Confederate soldier’s uniform and putting forth an ahistorical narrative of a racially harmonious Confederacy.
-Despite the historical record where advocates of secession railed about the need to keep the evil influence of Abolitionist Christians out of political/economic life, people invested in the Lost Cause narrative insist that the Civil War was a war about Southern Christians trying to stop the spread of Northern secularism.
-Atheist elected to city council in Neo-Confederate’s hometown.
-Local Neo-Confederate decides this is something else he can grandstand on since it both deals with sovereignty of State Constitution v. evil Federal gov’t and the image of Christian south keeping out the evils of northern secularism.”
Thats a very different story than the one Alysia Patterson wrote for the AP.