Speckhardt Condemns Sec. Carson’s Religious Hypocrisy

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Sarah Henry, (202) 238-9088 ext. 105, shenry@americanhumanist.org

(Washington, D.C., October 23, 2019) – American Humanist Association Executive Director Roy Speckhardt issued the following statement in response to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson’s recent Cabinet remarks:

When Ben Carson said that church-state separation “doesn’t mean that they cannot work together to promote godly principles,” he revealed just how narrowly he defines the group he feels is worthy of government support. Trump continues to surround himself with officials who blatantly exclude more than a quarter of the American people. This echo chamber of Christian nationalist privilege isn’t limited to saying grace at a Cabinet meeting. The rhetoric of the religious right is directly impacting policy decisions. And yet, despite promises of an “understanding heart and a compassionate heart,” a disregard for basic civil rights remains apparent in the Trump administration.

While Carson espouses care for your neighbors, such underlying compassion is absent from HUD’s recent proposal to severely weaken the disparate impact standard that protects against housing discrimination, jeopardizing the security–and neighborhoods–of millions of Americans. Attacks on the civil rights of communities of color, women, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, religious and nonreligious minorities, and families with children have been an underlying theme of many Trump administration policies. This not-so-subtle attack on nontheists is no different.