This time last year, I was a candidate for Chesapeake Public School Board. I wrote an article last year about the need for more secular elected officials in our country. Sadly, not much has changed since then.
Just this past week, our Supreme Court has sided on behalf of an evangelical Christian postal worker who refused to work on Sundays (Groff v. DeJoy) as well as a hypothetical case opening the door for LGBTQIA+ discrimination (303 Creative v. Elenis). If anything, the need for secular legislators in our country has grown even more dire since last year. We cannot continue to rely on the courts to protect our civil rights!
This year, I was asked to run for Virginia’s House of Delegates in District 90 (Southern Chesapeake). As no other Democrat had stepped up to run, I felt called to answer that ask because I did not like the idea of giving a free pass to the most far-right member of the entire Virginia House of Delegates (according to VAPLAN2018).
I was hoping this year could be different and I would not be the only candidate running for the General Assembly that identified as secular. We had four candidates in primaries endorsed and supported by the Center for Freethought Equality PAC (who has endorsed me two consecutive years now), but all of them lost. As it remains, I am the last secular candidate left that will be on the ballot in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia on November 7th. We currently have zero openly secular elected officials in any of the 140 seats at the state level.
As we talk about representation and the Democratic Party of Virginia proudly proclaims it has one of the most diverse slates in Virginia history, even the DPVA doesn’t highlight the fact that we have the only openly secular candidate in a country where nearly 30% of the adult population now considers themselves “unaffiliated”.
The United States Constitution in Article VI states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” I submit that this is a great sentiment but not one that actually functions in practice. As the lines between separation of Church and State get thinner and thinner even while our population grows more secular, it feels like the “test” of religiousness is even more prominent now than it was when our founders created this great nation.
All this being said, I am not an anti-theist and I actually do value the place religious communities hold in our society. They just have no place in our government and never have.
The only answer I can offer to this problem is that we need to support the few secular candidates who are willing to step up, whether it be in local office, state office, or federal office. We also need to encourage and recruit more secular candidates to run. As the Chair of the Secular Democrats of Virginia, this is a task I take seriously.
As the candidate for VA House of Delegates in District 90, I ask for the support of secular folks across the country even if you don’t live in Southern Chesapeake or even in Virginia. A win for one of us is a win for us all and representation is always worth fighting for.