Secular Coalition for America Flunks More Than 50% of the U.S. House of Representatives

After failing most of the presidential candidates, the Secular Coalition for America has released its scorecard for the first session of the 112^th U.S. House of Representatives.

It doesn’t look much better:

Grade A: 17 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Grade B: 55 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Grade C: 110 Democrats, 6 Republicans
Grade D: 5 Democrats, 5 Republicans
Grade F: 3 Democrats, 230 Republicans

(Not all Reps were counted for different reasons.)

Can you tell which party opposes our values more…?

“The results of this report card show that our secular government struggles to be free from the encroachment of religion,” said Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition. “The only way to protect everyone’s right to religious freedom is to keep all religion out of government and leave it free for the individual to pursue or not.”

In general, the Reps were scored based on their votes on 7 different issues important to Secular Americans, including eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood, expanding federal funding of religious schools in D.C., acknowledging that climate change is occurring, pushing for church transparency, promoting freedom of religious minorities, reaffirming “In God We Trust” as our national motto, and giving land to the anti-gay/anti-atheist Boy Scouts of America.

You can find how your state’s Reps did in the left-hand sidebar here.

Illinois didn’t fare too well. Only two As and even one member (Rep. Joe Walsh) with a 0%!

How did your state do?

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Erin W

Mostly Cs and Fs split on party lines, but no one got a 0 and my rep got an A (80%). He skipped the votes on the motto and the church investments, and voted for giving land to the Boy Scouts. It’s better than I could have hoped in Pennsylvania, though.
Rbray18

Oklahoma of course failed loverly.1 d rest f’s all but the d at 14%.no clue who my rep or district is but it doesn’t matter.
Entertaining Doubts

Not surprisingly, my reps here in Idaho got a D and an F. Deeply red state, with influence split between the fundies and Mormons. I keep sending my reps the “call to action” e-mails from the Secular Coalition and other secular advocacy groups whenever I can, though, just out of principle. Pretty goddamn frustrating.
Evan Kelley

Out of 18 reps in Ohio, Boehner didn’t get graded, leaving 17. Of those, 12 got Fs, all of the Republicans. 4 Dems got Cs including Kucinich and 1 got a B.
Rbray18

wanted to ad the one who got a d was a dem. which surprised me that we have a dem in office here they got a 33% but they skipped one vote but it seems rc 673 is the only one they all voted the correct way on.
guest

I live in texas….so……well, yeah.
J. R. Boedeker

I guess I don’t understand one thing. What exactly does Planned Parenthood have to do with secularism? The rest are obvious, PP not so much.
Adam Patrick

In Mississippi, the 3 reps got an F while the dem got a B
Anonymous

While I think I agree with the Secular Coalition on these issues, I’m not sure how the Planned Parenthood and the climate change bills relate to secularism. I could very easily see an Ayn Rand Objectivist Atheist being against funding for Planned Parenthood or stopping climate change.
Missouri Fails

Missouri fails miserably. Only one rep got an “A” and I have no idea who he is. My rep got a straight “F”. Ugh. Can I move out of Missouri now?
Godless Lobbyist

The Planned Parenthood amendment was included because the motivation to defund the organization was based purely on religious ideology and would have negatively affected the secular rights of millions of people who rely on PP to provide reproductive and health care services.

Rep. Boehner from Ohio was not counted because he followed the tradition of other Speakers of the House by not voting on any House votes.
Dan W

I’m in Iowa. Not surprisingly, the 3 Democrats did better than the 2 Republicans. 2 Bs and a C from the Democrats, Fs from the Republicans. My representative got a B, so that’s nice.
Reve

Oregon looks good!

– Blumenauer, A: didn’t vote on church investments or motto reaffirmation.
– DeFazio (my rep), B: didn’t vote on church investments, voted for motto reaffirmation.
– Schrader, F: despite having the exact same results as DeFazio? I wonder if that’s an error.
– Walden, F: the only one he voted “correctly” on was promoting religious freedom for religious minorities. He’s also the only Republican.

(Apparently, all of them failed the Boy Scouts one because it was a voice vote and there just wasn’t a record.)
Anonymous

This seemed kind of silly. CO didn’t do too great, my rep got an F. Was surprised that Polis voted against PP, took him to a C.
Richard Wade

California got:
5 A’s, (all Democrats)
13 B’s
15 C’s
2 D’s
18 F’s (all Republicans)

My Congressman got an F. He’s received F’s from me for the last 19 years. Ugh. I have never seen a vote by him that I agreed with. He gets low grades from education and public health groups. The guy is against everything I’m for. The best thing about him is he’s over 70, but that’s not old enough.
Christoph Burschka

The religious right is consistently clamoring to defund PP for providing abortions, even though no federal funds are being used for that. Since the stated reason for defunding PP is religious, it’s a secularism fail.
zzz

Not surprisingly, West Virginia failed miserably.
Salo

Not surprisingly my rep, the only atheist in congress (even if he doesn’t use that exact label), scored an A.