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The front steps of the Capitol.

Article Excerpt
This story starts out familiar enough, with government officials unabashedly ignoring the First Amendment to endorse and promote religion in the spotlight of the public eye. However, this story has an unexpected beginning and a surprisingly refreshing ending.

On an otherwise uneventful day in February of 2005-February 8th--I was walking past our Idaho State Capitol building. I was on my lunch hour and heading to the downtown Post Office, to check our American Atheist mailbox. As American Atheists Idaho State Director. I'd done this hundreds of times before over the past several years. However, this day was different. At the time I was walking past the Capitol building, looking at the front steps, I was thinking about this upcoming first Thursday in May-May 5th--when I presumed our Governor would once again be promoting religion, in the most symbolically prominent place in the state. Specifically, he once again would be endorsing the religious practice of prayer by personally attending and issuing an official National Day of Prayer proclamation on the front steps of our Idaho State Capitol building.

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Over the past several years. I had written to our Governor. Governor Kempthorne, numerous times telling him that such actions endorsing religion were unconstitutional. I had asked him to stop, time and time again. I had even gone in person to these government-entangled religious events on a number on occasions to introduce myself and tell him face-to-face that his actions were wrong. At the moment when I walked past the front steps on that February day, I was dreading the thought of having to write yet another letter and go there once again to tell him in person that his tradition of endorsing religion was wrong and prejudiced the image of Atheists in the eyes of the public. It was an unconstitutional tradition.

To put my frame of mind in context, at one point, many years previous, the Governor's attorney wrote to me that as long as the Governor didn't favor religion over non-religion, he could endorse these religious events. That was in 1999 and that's when I began writing and asking for Atheist proclamations. Of course, with only so much time and energy available, my primary goal was to stop the government endorsement of religion and not to look for reasons to create new events, but I thought this 'equal access' approach was worth a try. So for six years I tried--I wrote to the Governor and told him that if he wasn't going to stop issuing religious proclamations, then he should issue Atheist proclamations. However, while the Governor continued to issue religious, primarily Christian, proclamations, he repeatedly refused to issue Atheist proclamations. He gave evasive excuses and various bogus reasons. Other community members and members of our affiliated state organization, Idaho Atheists, including the Idaho Atheists President, had also written to him. We tried and tried to get him to understand our perspective, our concerns, and our issues. Near the end of January 2005, we'd received yet another rejection letter to our latest request. The result...

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