Q: Is it really illegal for atheists to hold public office in Arkansas?

A: Yes and no. Especially no.

See, this is how rumors get started. A post last week on the WaPo's Under God blog reported that Arkansas state Rep. Richard Carroll (the Green Party's highest-ranking elected official) had introduced a resolution to repeal Article 19, Section 1 of the state's 1974 Constitution, whereby: "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court." As Under God's David Waters writes:

Arkansas is one of half a dozen states that still exclude non-believers from public office. [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled all such state provisions unconstitutional and unenforceable in a 1961 ruling in a Maryland case: "We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.'"

Carroll is merely trying to do some symbolic constitutional housecleaning...

Waters goes on to say that Carroll might face opposition from the wahoos who run Arkansas, but the point stands: It's a "symbolic" gesture meant to clean an outdated provision off the books. But when the U.S. News' Bonnie Erbe reblogged the story, she left the bit about symbolism out:

Can it be constitutional to exclude from public service or service as a witness in a state court any and all atheists? Such a practice is so throw-back in nature, that it reminds one of the Spanish Inquisition. And yet, when I read the first part of this Washington Post piece, I was flabbergasted to find that Arkansas is one of a half-dozen states that does so.

I don't know that it reminds me of the Spanish Inquisition so much as, oh, say, 19th Century Utah.

Anyway, Erbe's piece rocketed up the charts at Reddit, where it now hovers near the top of the front page, declaring "Arkansas, 5 Other States, Ban Atheists from Public Service. Seriously..."

Well, I have some good news for you, Bonnie Erbe & the Redditors. The first good news is that "Bonnie Erbe & the Redditors" is the greatest name I've ever heard for a 1960s R&B act. The second bit of good news is that state provisions that have been ruled unenforceable by the Supreme Court are... wait for it... unenforceable.

Richard Dawkins: Future mayor of Little Rock.

For one thing, any Arkansas prosecutor who sought to bar a witness' testimony based on Article 19 is basically giving the defendant a "Get Out of This Court's Ruling Free" card. And the only thing stopping an atheist from getting elected in Arkansas is the wahoos who live in Arkansas. I mean, how do you even test for atheism? Sadly, atheists don't float -- and I'm pretty sure the Supreme Court has ruled burning them at the stake to be unconstitutional.

One of the downsides to recording all of our laws in constitutions and books and such (rather than letting a dictator decide on the fly) is that, because there happen to be a lot of laws, there tends to be a lot of bureaucracy involved, and sometimes the massiveness of that bureaucracy means no one has a chance to remove all the old, dumb laws no one follows anymore. For instance, right here in Cleveland, did you know...

• it's illegal for women to wear patent leather shoes, "lest men see reflections of their underwear"?
  
• And illegal to catch mice without a hunting license?
• Or that in North Canton, it's illegal to roller skate, or play any game in a public park without alerting the proper authorities?
• Or that in Bay Village and McDonald, Ohio, it's illegal to parade a cow or duck, respectively, down the main drag?

Seriously, there are enough dumb laws in Ohio and all over this big, dumb nation to fill up a big, dumb Web site of them: namely, DumbLaws.com. But just because a dumb law is still on the books doesn't mean anyone still considers it valid. Policemen in Lima, OH, are explicitly permitted to quiet dogs by biting them, but I'm pretty sure all the "Cop Bites Dog" stories in Lima end with somebody handing over their badge.

In all of my research, by which I mean 35 seconds of Googling, I was unable to find any evidence of Arkansas' Article 19, Section 1 being invoked in modern times. And regardless of what happens to Carroll's resolution, it almost certainly never will, not without SCOTUS getting involved. That's what the Supreme Court's for. (But not Scalia. He'd be happy to give you the chair for your duck-parading ways. And I'm pretty sure he bites dogs just for fun.)