In January of 2008, I was arrested for drunk in public. Yea, I know, you gotta be pretty stupid to get one of those, huh? Well, suffice it to say that my fair city had the highest arrest-rate for that particular crime in the state at the time and a disproportionate number of those arrested were Hispanic, a heritage I can claim. Ok, now that we've established that I was guilty of Walking Down the Street While Brown, how does this relate to Atheism? Like this: my civil rights were violated by me being coerced to attend court-mandated A.A. meetings.Here's the scoop. AA is a religion. All of these courts have ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion or engages in religious activities:
- the Federal 7th Circuit Court in Wisconsin, 1984.
- the Federal District Court for Southern New York, 1994.
- the New York Court of Appeals, 1996.
- the New York State Supreme Court, 1996.
- the U.S. Supreme Court, 1997.
- the Tennessee State Supreme Court.
- the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, 1996.
- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
- the U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh District, 1996.
- the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, 1996.
- The Federal Appeals Court in Hawaii, September 7, 2007, in the Inouye v. Kemna case.(orange-papers.org/orange-spirrel.html)
Forcing me to go to AA under threat of legal sanctions and criminal prosecution is the same as forcing me to attend a state established religion, which AA seems to be trying to do with their "cooperating with courts and judges" policy, but that's another story for another day.
