The extremists may be loud...
...but we are many.
Happy December, Secular Fam! I hope that everyone survived the holiday season with as little stress as possible. Despite my lack of religious affiliation, I LOVE Christmas. Christmas carols, Christmas cookies, Christmas decorations, I love it all. I love that I get to see family and friends, and that everywhere I go, people are pumping me full of food and drinks. Though, finding my way back to reality can be challenging.
2023 will soon be but a memory, and 2024, with all its election hysteria, is just around the corner.
In addition to the election year Dumpster fire we’ll all be subjected to, the 2024 legislative session is less than two weeks away. Already, the Arizona Freedumbdom Caucus is queuing up ALL their greatest hits, including a bill banning Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) training, another banning books, and another one that would require HOAs allow the “Appeal to Heaven” flag to fly.
This flag is a symbol of white Christian nationalism, so it tracks that the sponsor of this bill is Senator John Kavanagh (R-LD3). There were dozens of these flags present during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Back in 2022, one appeared and was later removed from the Arizona House of Representatives, and currently, the guy who is second in line to the presidency hangs one outside his office in Washington, DC.
These are just a handful of the deeply unserious bills being dropped into the hopper as opening day of the 2024 session looms. I say “deeply unserious” because Governor Hobbs has made good on her promise to veto bills that aim to discriminate. Elected officials will waste time and resources debating these bills they KNOW will be vetoed so they can run to Xitter and whine about her veto stamp.
Secular AZ will continue to be your voice for the separation of religion and government from school boards to the state legislature. We’re witnessing the death rattle of evangelical extremists, and as Andrew Seidel asserts, this is them raging against the “dying of their privilege.” This year, the number of complaints filed by our legal team nearly doubled, and 2024 will likely be similar, so we still need your help.
You can learn more about what we’ve accomplished in our end-of-year report. You can also sign up for our Secular Summit happening on January 6, 2024. Our theme this year is how evangelical extremist policies affect rural communities, so you will not want to miss it.
If you haven’t already signed up to provide comments on bills moving through the legislature, Civic Engagement Beyond Voting (CEBV) can help you get signed up (and on Feb 23, 2024, they’ll be presenting for our Friday Speaker Series).
Starting in the spring of 2024, we’ll begin scheduling our school board candidate forums. In 2022, we held several candidate forums for school board candidates across the state since they do not have as many opportunities to share their platform as legislative, county, and state candidates do. If there is a particular school district that you would like us to highlight, please let us know!
Of course, we will continue to write-up school board summaries for our Substack, and if you’d like to contribute to our Substack and/or blog, please let us know. Also, if you have ideas about programming, we’d love to hear from you.
As usual, we will be tabling at events all over the state during the spring and summer, so if you’d like to volunteer to help us, you can sign up here.
While the bluster of white Christian nationalists is getting more blustery, I agree with Andrew Seidel. This is because evangelical extremists are basically scared shitless that their numbers are dwindling and their policies are wildly unpopular. Especially with younger generations.
So keep your heads up, Secular Fam! While the extremists are loud, we are many. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so take care of yourselves. I know how paying attention to these issues can take a toll on our mental and even our physical health. Remember that it’s OK to not be OK, it’s OK to lean on the people in your life when you need help, and of course, memes make everything better.
See you in 2024, Secular Fam!
In Solidarity,
Jeanne
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For someone who professes to be about “local control” and “small government”- John Kavanagh is the worst offender of proposing far reaching, government control over every aspect of Arizona citizens’ lives. A quick survey of his greatest hits include:
- telling municipalities they cannot control the number of Air B&Bs
- telling HOAs what they can and cannot do
- where people can use the restroom
- how local school districts can function
- he proposed a law banning people from using their own phones on public streets to record police
- telling municipalities whether they can use speed cameras or red light cameras
- not allowing municipalities to make decisions to ban plastic bags (Bisbee)
He might not be as outwardly offensive or unethical like his fellow LD3 reps, Kolodin and Chaplik, but if he can propose a bill sure to piss off anyone that actually believes in local control and representational democracy, he is ALL OVER IT.
Further, he wins the legislative hypocrisy award. For a guy who thinks no one should pay taxes or receive any government benefit, he collects 3 government pensions (and, that’s not including the salary his wife had as mayor of Fontaine Hills). He’s only had government jobs and has always received government subsidized healthcare through his positions as first a port authority cop in NY, through the AZ legislature, and as a “professor” at local community colleges. Talk about “sucking off the government teat”. This from a man who said to me- “if you send your children to public school- you are a leech on society”. That actually happened.
It’s hard to pick the worst member of the AZ legislature, but he gets my vote.
I too am full of cheese S.A.L.
May the New Year bring you health and happiness and bring us more of your wit, memes and undying drive to shine a light on the chaos engulfing our school districts.
P.S. I'm trying to get a permit to set up my popcorn and tinfiloil hat booth outside the board meetings in '24.....wish me luck!