In an apparent effort to make life in a completely rectangular, flat state - an impulse I can understand - State Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska has filed a lawsuit against God. Not against a person calling himself "God," but against the deity named and described in the Christian Bible. More proof, I suppose, that state legislatures simply don't have enough to do.

Unfortunately, the humor in this is shallow and short-lived, because Senator Chambers has an agenda with this. He filed the lawsuit in order to highlight "frivolous" lawsuits and the way they hinder and abuse our justice system. In fact, Senator Chambers told KETV7 that

his main objection is that the constitution requires that the doors to the courthouse be open to all.

That's a chilling statement. Ernie Chambers thinks that the doors to the courthouse should be closed to certain people. He hasn't gone into detail as to just who those people are, but the above-linked article does give us a small clue into his thinking:

Chambers said he decided to file the lawsuit after a suit was filed in early September in federal court against Lancaster County Judge Jeffre Cheuvront.

Now we're getting somewhere. Judge Cheuvront is the subject of a lawsuit because during a rape trial he prohibited anyone from using the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant and sexual assault kit. It's a RAPE TRIAL. The crime at issue is RAPE. But the good Judge Cheuvront, so concerned, apparently, for the rights of the accused, doesn't want any of that inflammatory language to be used. He doesn't want the jury to be prejudiced by the use of words that describe the crimes the defendant is accused of committing, nor does he want prosecutors to call things by their actual names, like "sexual assault kit."

Not only can jurors not hear those words, they cannot be told that those words have been banned from the courtroom. So prosecutors are required to use terms even more loaded than rape: sex, intercourse, have sex with. All of these imply consent and innocence.

To bar the prosecution from using the legal term used to describe the criminal charges which form the basis of the trial is a huge miscarriage of justice. No one should be happy about this, no one. I can only assume that Judge Cheuvront has already decided on the innocence of the accused and is willing to rig the trial in order for it to return the verdict he wants. It's disgusting.

But leave it to America to have someone else put in a position of authority that not only agrees with Cheuvront, but is willing to pull a stupid stunt to get it done. See, wanting to use proper names for things like "sexual assault kit" and to tell the jury just what it is the accused is accused of is just like filing a lawsuit against God. That silly woman, wanting to be able to tell the jury even that she thinks she was sexually assaulted. Clearly they just had sex, and now she's all pissy about it. The jury can just draw their own conclusions, which I'm sure they will.

Will Cheuvront ban "murder, burglary, assault" and all other terms contained in the charges prosecutors file? Will the family of a murder victim be required to dance around every word that might imply unhappiness with the fact that their loved one just happened to die one day?

Somehow, I doubt it.

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