Friend:

It should be inconceivable that antisemitism, anti-LGBQ+ terrorism, racism and religious extremism are flourishing in America in 2022. And yet it’s hardly surprising, when conservative Supreme Court justices cavalierly joke about Black children in Ku Klux Klan costumes while preparing to grant businesses the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers. And when our former president, who fueled an insurrection by Christian nationalists and militant supporters, dined publicly during Thanksgiving week with prominent antisemites.

I read with alarm the Department of Homeland Security’s new advisory that Jews, other religious and racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants are at heightened risk of domestic terrorism. The hate-fueled violence we saw in places like Club Q, the LGBTQ+ club in Colorado Springs; a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y.; and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh (to name just a few) is tragically predictable when religious extremists foment terrorism.

There can be no freedom for any of us in America until we are all free to live our lives without fear that we will be harmed because of who we are, what we look like or what religion we practice. Americans United is committed to defending the separation of church and state as the shield that ensures we may all live as ourselves and believe as we choose. Read our statement condemning antisemitism and other extremist ideologies here.

We’ve been spreading the message far and wide that undermining church-state separation endangers people and threatens so many of the rights and freedom we care about. On Monday, I was honored to be part of an American Bar Association panel that explored the connection between religious and reproductive freedom; I explained how abortion bans violate both. 

On Tuesday, AU Legal Fellow Gabi Hybel joined a Demand Justice webinar to talk about AU’s brief in 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Supreme Court case that seeks to allow businesses to ignore anti-discrimination laws. Gabi outlined how granting religious exemptions will harm LGBTQ people as well as religious and racial minorities. And yesterday, VP of Strategic Communications Andrew L. Seidel joined Rewire News Group to talk about how the Supreme Court is advancing a Christian nationalist agenda.

The last few weeks have driven home that America needs a national recommitment to separation of church and state. It won’t be easy, but with your support, we can achieve freedom without favor and equality without exception in our country. We’ve always been the ones on the right side of history, and America wouldn’t be America without the wall of separation we’re fighting to protect.

With hope and determination,

Rachel K. Laser
President and CEO