WASHINGTON (ABP) – Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are now only one degree of separation away from Kevin Bacon.
The fathers of the First Amendment's religion clauses came together (in spirit, at least) with the contemporary actor at a celebrity-laden March 25 event in Washington, designed to kick off an election-year effort sponsored by two church-state separationist groups.
Bacon is the subject of the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, popular on college campuses in the 1990s, which tried to connect Bacon with any other actor by six or fewer levels of relationship.
Bacon was joined by other film and television notables to tape the talk-show-style presentation, dubbed “Everything You Wanted to Know About Separation of Church and State … but Were Afraid to Ask.” It was simulcast in movie theaters across the country the following evening.
The event was a splashy way to kick off a campaign, called First Freedom First, to get politicians and voters focused on maintaining strict church-state separation in the 2008 election cycle.
The purpose, said actor Peter Coyote, who emceed the show, was “to extend an invitation to all Americans — atheists and believers alike — to join us in gaining deeper appreciation for the history, the meaning and purpose of our sacred, protected right to worship or not.”
Coyote was joined by Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance and Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State as he interviewed several in-studio guests who had fought battles against government endorsements of religion or mistreatment of religious minorities.
They included Matthew LaClair, a student at a public high school in Kearney, N.J. He was ostracized and threatened after he attempted to get school authorities to rein in his American history teacher for his repeated endorsements of Christianity. LaClair made headlines when, in 2006, he released tape recordings to the press of the teacher, David Paskiewicz, using class time to say that those who don't accept that Jesus died for their sins “belong in hell,” that there were dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark, and that evolution and the Big Bang Theory are scientifically unsupportable.
“I think the core of the problem was that this man had been teaching for 14 years by the time that I got there. Not one student has ever done anything,” LaClair said. “I think we have to start standing up for separation of church and state, because it's so important.”
The guests also included Army widow Roberta Stewart. Her husband, Patrick, was killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2005. But the Department of Veterans Affairs initially refused to place the pentacle, symbol of the Stewarts' Wiccan religion, on the soldier's grave marker — even though the military has Wiccan chaplains and even though it had several dozen other “recognized” religious symbols.
Roberta Stewart fought the government on the decision, ultimately winning the symbol and a personal apology from President Bush. “I decided to fight because if I didn't I felt it made our love not as valid,” she said. “And I wasn't willing to accept that, nor was I willing to accept discrimination.”
Veteran television and film actor Jack Klugman also appeared on the show, as well as in a made-for-television advertisement associated with the First Freedom First campaign. The ad urges candidates to clarify their views on end-of-life issues.
Klugman, who is 85, said he was motivated to do the spot because of the 2005 controversy over the fate of Terri Schiavo. The brain-damaged Florida woman had been in what doctors described as a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, and her husband had won several court battles in an effort to remove the feeding tube that kept her alive. But her parents and siblings objected, touching off a battle that many social conservatives cast as a pro-life issue.
Their allies in Congress passed an emergency law intervening in the case.
Klugman said the way conservative members of Congress handled the case disgusted him. “I did the spot mostly because I'm more at the end of my life than I am at the beginning, and I wanted to make a stand,” he said.
Bacon and his band provided entertainment during the show, which also featured comedy acts and a taped message from actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. Fox appealed for science to take precedence over religiously motivated opposition to embryonic stem-cell research.
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