David Dornak wants to kick God out of court. Hell, he'd deport Him from the country if he could, for all Judeo-Christian religious belief has done for the county (not to mention the poor and starving of the world, kept poor and starving in part by “well-meaning” self-professed Christians in Congress denying aid for family planning, but don't get him started).
Rather: Do get him started.
“I don't care what you believe, as long as you keep it out of our government, you keep it out of our courts, you keep it off our money,” he said minutes before heading to U.S. District Court to file his lawsuit against the United States of America, the state of Texas, and Bexar County seeking nothing less than an admission that God does not exist.
“Specifically, David Dornak avers that on five separate occasions in both Federal and State Courts his rights have been violated as a direct result of his knowledge that God does not exist,” the suit reads, sure to provide some of the more interesting reading material to cross U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia's desk this week. “Without this litigation imminent harm will come to other citizens in the United States by the agencies of the Defendants.”
When Dornak locks eyes with you, there's no mistaking the intensity of conviction behind his words. God is adult fiction, akin to Mickey Mouse, but much more dangerous, he says. “As long we we allow government to run based on this adult imaginary cartoon, it's not your government; it's been stolen.”
Evidence of that theft exists in the very existence of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security, he said, in violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition “against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
“They use god as a moral precept based on the idea that 'we're doing this for the moral good of everyone else.' Then they create all these agencies that, in fact, the Founding Fathers specifically warned about the idea of federal police.”
His suit for declaratory judgement, filed June 11, would require admission that:
- References to God in a "public context," ie. on currency or public buildings or in swearing in, is a violation of the First Amendment.
- That the FBI, Homeland Security, and a number of other federal police agencies are unconstitutional.
- Property taxes as applied in Texas and Bexar County are unconstitutional.
Brought up on traffic charges recently, Dornak says he refused to swear “under God” to tell the truth. A court secretary at Precinct 3 Judge Keither Bakers office said folks do protest the language from time to time, but that he allows an alternate, more secular swearing in in those cases. She would not comment on any specific cases. That experience helped propel the suit that had been simmering within him for some time. ("He made it so obvious that that's why I had to object to him when i was swearing in. That's not justice."
It'd been stirring with the 48-year-old at least as long as a certain cross-burning incident that led to the 2003 charge of arson in Wharton County and seven years probation. (The cross burning was directed at his religious parents who he says were constantly entering his house and taking things, unwelcome trespasses the rural DA and police allegedly refused to prosecute). That effort was his first attempt to get his issue taken up in federal court, he says.
Dornak can rattle off the evils of religion with the best of them. After describing a variety of professions enriching themselves by promoting a belief in an all-powerful deity — everyone from psychiatrists to modeling talent scouts — he offers a warning: “For all these who call themselves Christians, be very afraid if He comes back, because He's going to be pissed.”
Gumption points for filing the lawsuit? Plenty of 'em.
Chance of toppling “One Nation Under God”? ... We'd urge him to run for public office, but according to the Texas State Constitution, atheists are not allowed to serve in higher office.
Seems he's onto something.
