Mitch Kahle

Mitch Kahle, founder of the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church, has often been called "the Grinch who stole Christmas" for his efforts at making sure local governments don’t appear to be officially sanctioning religious practices or holidays, including, of course, Christmas. But Kahle doesn’t mind.

"I like Dr. Seuss," he said earlier this week, referring to the author of the famous children’s book about how "Grinch" tried to ruin Christmas for the tiny people of Whoville.

"Actually," Kahle recalled, "Mayor Jeremy Harris was the first one to call me the Grinch who stole Christmas. That was back when we resolved a conflict with the city by making them have a lottery for people who wanted to be involved with the Honolulu City Lights.

"It used to be that they had a Christian nativity scene on the front lawn (of Honolulu Hale)," Kahle explained, "and when Frank Fasi was the mayor, he actually told us that Christmas is for Christians. Then after Fasi went out and Harris came in, we challenged that, and we resolved it in an open lottery (to all nonprofit organizations) that we have now. So I’m used to being called the Grinch that stole Christmas. … It doesn’t offend me."

Kahle’s latest effort to put a wall between state and church involved acting to prevent the entanglement of Moanalua High School’s orchestra with the Christian group New Hope Oahu in presenting a charity concert earlier this month.

Other newsworthy cases included prompting the U.S. Army to remove a huge cross at Schofield Barracks, in 1997, and, starting last year, getting the state Senate to dispense with prayers and invocations at the start of its sessions.

In recognition of his work through the years, Kahle was named "free thinker of the year" in 2011 by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national organization that Kahle occasionally works with.

Kahle also is passionate about achieving full civil rights for homosexuals — which he has campaigned for since even before he took on his first state-church challenge. In recognition of his advocacy for gay rights through the years, he was named one of several grand marshalls for this year’s Honolulu Gay Rights Parade.

Kahle, 50, has been in Hawaii since 1992. He was born and raised in Michigan, where he graduated from Jonesville High School. He also attended Boston University and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He lives in downtown Honolulu with his significant other of the last 25 years, Holly Huber, with whom he has a small business involved in "everything from data base development to video production."

"We’re basically free-lancers," he said. "When you register your business in Honolulu — when you do a ‘DBA,’ as they call it — they ask you what your business is, and I remember putting down ‘Anything legal,’ and that’s kind of the way it’s turned out."

QUESTION: How did this latest public action of yours (involving the Moanalua High School orchestra and New Hope Oahu) come about? Was that inadvertent or do you go looking for these things?

ANSWER: We are constantly looking for these things, and we also are constantly being called and being told by people about violations. But we had been aware of Moanalua High School’s involvement in this concert for a number of years. … What really caught our attention this year was the lack of a charity (listed in the promotional materials). … So we were really suspicious of whether this was a public school endorsing a church fundraiser that was potentially raising money for itself or for a religious mission. That’s what really sort of tipped the scale on it for us.

What’s interesting is we wrote a letter voicing our concerns to the principal of Moanalua High School, and that letter was essentially ignored. … So we took it to the next step and contacted the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is out of Madison, Wis. They’re a national organization that we’ve partnered with before, and they provided a lawyer (who) wrote a letter to the Department of Education on our behalf. I can’t tell you for sure, but it looks like that letter and our letter got sent over to the attorney general, and I think the attorney general quite rightly recognized the legal entanglement … of this award-winning orchestra endorsing a church.

Q: How long have you been doing this?

A: We’ve been active here in Hawaii in state-church issues since 1997. Before that, going back even earlier, I was involved, and still am involved, in the gay rights movement. But our first case here, we were contacted by a Vietnam veteran who was upset about the large cross that was at Kolekole Pass. And that was really what sort of kick-started our advocacy here, because we filed a lawsuit in federal court and 45 days later the Army pulled the cross down. So that was kind of the start of things.

Q: What drove you to get into this kind of activity?

A: Well, I’ve always felt uneasy about the mingling of religion and government, … and I noticed that it was also making other people uncomfortable. So when a Vietnam veteran … comes to you and says he doesn’t want this cross on U.S. Army property, I was willing to take up the challenge for him.

And, basically, that’s what it’s been all along. … We’re able to help people because we can bring things to the public where someone else might feel intimidated or they might feel like they would be discriminated against.

Q: Why has the gay rights issue been so important for you?

A: Well, the injustice of it. The idea that we would deny an entire class of citizens in our society the rights and benefits of marriage is absurd to me. I have always felt that it is a grave injustice … , but it looks like we’re finally going to see that change.

Q: Most of your state-church challenges are related to the Christian religion? Why is that?

A: I don’t know if I can put this in an elegant sound bite for you, but basically only the government can violate the Constitution. Individuals and churches, we can’t violate the Constitution. Only the government can. And (in the United States) the government virtually all the time endorses Christianity over other religions.

Q: Why do you think there is a need to keep religion and government separate?

A: Well, that’s really the only way we can all have freedom of conscience.

Humans have a right to believe any idea they want, whether it’s a legitimate idea or an absurd idea. What we can’t have is the government deciding what ideas are appropriate and what ideas are not. And in the case of religion, if we have the government saying Christianity is an appropriate religion but Scientology is not — whatever anyone might think of Scientology — what that does is it inhibits the freedom of the citizens.

The irony of the separation of state and church is that the United States is one of the most religious of modern nations on Earth, and it is because we keep religion out of government. The separation of church and state is a very misunderstood legal precedent.

Q: Some of our letter writers think you’re pulling a fast one, saying, "Where does it say that in the Constitution?"

A: Right. The word privacy doesn’t appear in the Constitution, but I don’t think anybody would want to say that we don’t have privacy rights. The separation of church and state was a metaphor created by Thomas Jefferson when he wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists who were concerned about the Congregationalists being endorsed by the government. They used to have established churches, as you know, and Jefferson simply coined the metaphor "the wall of separation between church and state." That’s where it comes from.

Q: In general, do you think courts are a better way to confront a particular case than via legislative bodies?

A: Traditionally the courts have been where this has been settled. I mean, even if we go back to the 1960s, to Engel v. Vitale, which is the case that made it unconstitutional for public schools to have morning prayers. Or you go forward to the cases that made creationism not allowed to be taught in high school science curriculum. These types of cases are really what has become what we call the separation of state and church today. … And these are all, really, I think when you add all these up over about 40 years, the precedent that establishes what is the separation of state and church.

Q: Have you ever considered taking on tax exemptions for churches? Is that something that galls you at all?

A: It does bother me a lot. I do not believe that churches should be tax-exempt. I believe that they should be treated like any other sort of private club. Churches use the same kind of services that anyone else does. They have fire protection, police protection, water and sewer, roads connecting their churches to parishioners. I think that they should pay taxes like anyone else.

Q: Regarding that episode at the Legislature, in 2010, it was determined that you were assaulted, right?

A: Well, yeah, I got the bruises to prove it. (Laughter) It was in April of 2010, and it was after spending most of the legislative session petitioning Senate President Colleen Hanabusa to refrain from having these overtly Christian prayers. She really left us no other choice but to stand up and object right there in the Senate chamber. It wasn’t a rant. Very simply, I stood up and said "I object." I stated my name, and I said, "I object to this prayer on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution." And I sat down quietly.

Now, I was dragged outside the Senate chambers and thrown down on the ground. And when one of my associates (Kevin Hughes) was trying to record them with a video camera, the video camera was punched and he was thrown to the ground. And so, when that type of thing happened, we knew that we had to file a lawsuit. There was really no way to allow that to ever happen again.

And, actually I want to give the new Senate president, Shan Tsutsui, credit because he resolved the situation by changing the Senate rules so that they don’t have prayers and invocations any more. And that is really the way to do it, because it’s a breath of fresh air to go to a legislative session and hear the Senate just go to work and not waste any time with endorsing or promoting Christianity, which is really by far and away the only religion that was ever represented.

Q: You had a monetary award. What did you do with that?

A: Yes. We settled the case. The case actually went into litigation, and we litigated for about a year, I guess. And then we went on a hearing on a motion before Judge Leslie Kobayashi, and she ruled definitively in our favor. And, really, we set a wonderful legal precedent, in that if the government invites the public to participate in a prayer, that creates an open public forum, and by doing so, she basically made it so that the state had no possible way to defend its case, and literally within 24 hours they were agreeing to a six-figure settlement.

Q: So did you sink that money back into the group?

A: Well, it was awarded to us personally; it was a personal injury lawsuit. Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and Church does not accept monetary donations of any kind. We do not even have a bank account. No one in this organization has ever received a penny of compensation of any kind.

You know, in just this last week I’ve had more than a dozen people wanting to donate to us, because of the publicity (surrounding the charity concert issue) and what we always do — and it’s stated right on our website — we ask people to join the ACLU of Hawaii or donate to the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Q: What do you think about the imprisonment of Hawaii island resident Roger Christie, who claims a right to smoke marijuana on religious grounds?

A: Well, you know, that was dealt with by a court — I believe it was in Oregon — in a case where Native American practitioners wanted to use peyote. So the court has already ruled on that. Now, I don’t think there’s much difference between someone who wants to smoke a little marijuana as part of their religious ritual and somebody who wants to drink communion wine. So I think that there is a problem, and hopefully someday that will be resolved by the court.

Q: Are you a religious man yourself, or an atheist, an agnostic?

A: Well, it all really depends on how you define these words, and let me tell you how I define the word "atheist." It’s someone who’s not religious. Just like if someone is apolitical. It means they’re not political. … For myself, I like to have evidence for something that I believe. For instance, there’s no evidence that unicorns or fairies exist. So, therefore, I don’t really have to go around proclaiming myself to be a nonbeliever in unicorns or fairies.

Same thing with being atheist. It really doesn’t describe much of anything. It doesn’t say a thing about a person. Somebody who’s an atheist could be a really wonderful, humane, empathetic person. Or they could be a rude, rotten criminal. It doesn’t really say anything about anyone.

Q: Do you have any legal cases pending right now?

A: We always have a few things in the warmer, but they’re not ready to come out yet. … And sometimes things have a way of resolving themselves. I mean, look how rare that you actually really do have to file a lawsuit. In this case with Moanalua High School, a couple of well-written letters and the situation was taken care of.