Jews are 2% of Indiana's Recommended Rights Allowance
In a post from The Daily Pulse, dhonig tells an amazing story about his Rabbi and the Speaker of the State House of Indiana, Brian Bosma. For those that don’t know, there’s been a long drawn out fight in the Indiana Statehouse over their daily prayers turning “systematically sectarian” and favoring Jesus. US District Judge David F. Hamilton ruled the prayers unconstitutional, and the Speaker of the House is appealing this decision (story covered in Washington Post here). dhonig’s Rabbi went to lobby at the State House, and this is what he found. Here’s a snippet of the letter from dhonig’s Rabbi, telling the story:
Last Tuesday, the Indianapolis JCRC’s Jewish Lobby Day was held. Around 40 Jews from around the State of Indiana came to Indianapolis to lobby our state senators and representatives on a number of issues. The day ended with a private meeting with Speaker of the House Bosma meeting our group in the beautiful House chambers.
[…] Speaker Bosma wondered why we hadn’t discussed the controversy surrounding the issue of prayer in House chambers. He told us his version of what happened and what he believes, and a passionate exchange took place. The end of this exchange left us, the Jewish delegation, in shock. Speaker Bosma, defending the prayer issue, asked, “How many Jews are there in Indiana? About 2%? There are at least 80% Christians in Indiana.” The implication of this statement was that our minority community doesn’t and shouldn’t have any say or any voice. It is about the majority and what the majority wants. The jaws of the delegation dropped to the floor. We were speechless. Everything we believed about this country had just been trampled.”
To remind us of what the net can do, this story has been over lots of blogs, and as a result of the publicity its been getting, Bosma apologizes… well, sort of (from WISH TV, Indianapolis): ” I gave a heartfelt apology if the implication of my words were offensive to him,” said Bosma. He added “they are very valued citizens and that anything that had said to cause them to think anything differently that I sincerely apologized for that and he accepted that.”
According to WISH-TV, Bosma considers this matter closed.
I’m normally not the “they’re out to get the Jews” type, but maybe we should keep an eye on it, just in case.
Thank you for picking this up. The really good news is that Bosma has a challenger, a member of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, Susan Fuldauer. The enormous exposure of this incident in the blogosphere (25 or more diaries on almost as many blogs) could really give her a shot in the arm in fundraising. Her info is:
Committee to Elect Susan Fuldauer, 6284 Rucker Rd., Suite A, Indpls., IN 46220
Vote Susan (http://www.votesusan.com) should be up and running and have some additional methods for contribution working by next week.
And if you want to see the cartoon the news story ran, go to http://hypnocrites.blogspot.com, second cartoon from the top.
i’m originally from indiana, and i know rabbi adland his kids from different youth group stuff i did. this is absolutely shocking to me. man i fucking hated indiana… and aparently i was right!