A NEW ANTI-THEOCRACY LOBBY IN WASHINGTON

This morning's USA Today reports that this is the first day on the job for Lori Lipman Brown , a former Nevada State Senator (right) , who begins work today as executive  director of the Secular Coalition for America, a newly-formed alliance that wants to fight the galloping drive toward theocracy by the Christian right and their Republican allies. "Her two goals: keep religion out of government and win respect for a stigmatized minority" -- Americans who don't believe in God, as the paper puts it.

In the latest Pew poll on religion in America, released August 30, 11% said they do not believe in God but do believe in a "universal spirit" or "higher power"; 3% said they do not believe in God or a spirit or power. In a separate question, 1% said they are atheists , 2% said they are agnostics, and 11% said they have no religious preference.The no-preference category includes people "who may not be ready to declare themselves atheists or agnostics," Pew Director Andrew Kohut says. But that's still a significant slice of Americans who reject the Bush-imposed obscurantist, anti-science, and homophobic insults to intelligence now being turned into policy and legislation -- from the administration's war on condoms and safe-sex education, lethal in the domestic and global fights against AIDS; to trying to limit an individual's right to die with dignity by challenging Oregon's assisted-suicide law (a case, Gonzales v. Oregon -- first initiated by John Ashcroft (left)-- that will reach the  Supreme Court next month and, if successful, create thousands of Terri Schiavo cases); to breaching church-state separation by reimbursing the churches with taxpayer dollars for their post-Katrina relief efforts (as Bush announced in his televised speech to the nation, although this unprecedented theocratic raid on the U.S. treasury was ignored by the press). Lori and the Secular Coalition will have her work cut out for them. And the list goes on, and on, and.....

The Secular Coalition's website says its mission is to " increase the visibility and respectability of non-theistic viewpoints within the larger culture and to protect and strengthen secular government as the best guarantee of freedom for all," adding that "we encourage the pursuit of knowledge, meaning, and responsible ethical codes without reference to supernatural forces. We affirm the secular form of government as a necessary condition for the interdependent rights of religious freedom and religious dissent..."

The Secular Coalition is sponsored by a half-dozen groups including the American   Humanist Association, the Atheists Alliance, and the Secular Student Alliance, and is also endorsed by a dozen more organizations ranging from the American Ethical Union  to the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations and GALAH (the Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists).

The Secular Coalition is just starting out and has, for the moment, only a $100,000 budget (Lori Brown took a significant pay cut to take the executive director job, to her credit.) But it deserves support -- and you can sign up for its e-mail list to enlist in its important lobbying efforts to fight the Christers in Washington by clicking here.

RECOMMENDED READING: Peter Daou (right, appearing on MSNBC ), the editor of the first-rate Daou Report -- a daily survey of the most interesting stuff in the blogosphere that now appears on Salon, and is on my daily must-read list -- has today posted an interesting reflection on the electoral influence of blogs and how they can help undermine Bush,  which you can read by clicking here. Peter ran John Kerry's blog operation, and among the Kerry campaign's many failings Peter recounts in this piece how, when it came to the blogosphere, the campaign's honchos just didn't get it....