Floridians Rebel Against Mosque Polling Place Despite Many Churches Serving the Same Function

A lot of you will inevitably vote in a church this November. It’s legal, as long as there’s no overtly religious imagery present and no one trying to proselytize while you’re there. But it’s understandably frustrating since the boundary between church and state can so easily be blurred.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation and other church/state separation groups have repeatedly said churches shouldn’t be used as polling places, as a matter of principle.

There’s another side to that argument, though. If churches are allowed to be polling places, what about mosques?

In Boca Raton, Florida, where a single mosque functioned as a polling place alongside “about 80 Christian churches and five synagogues,” it was enough to make people flip out.

[County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher] told the center’s president that she received about 50 complaints, including threats of violence, from people who don’t want to vote in a mosque, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Florida.

Huh. It’s almost like some people don’t want to vote in a house of worship of a faith they don’t believe in… Funny, that.

In this particular case, the complaints were enough to move the polling place from the mosque to a local library… which makes you wonder why they can’t do something similar with a few of those churches.

FFRF was quick to pounce on the hypocrisy:

… if churches and synagogues are allowed to host polling, so should mosques, said Annie Laurie Gaylor, [FFRF’s] co-president.

“Christians who are offended about voting at a mosque now know how it feels for an atheist or agnostic who is forced to vote at a Catholic church or a mega church,” she said.

If Christians can’t handle voting at a mosque, they should be the ones fighting for secular alternatives across the board. You won’t see that, though. That would require the majority giving up some of its power.

(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Insightfill for the link)