2026 college essay contest: 9th place (tie) — Amelia Keefe

This country is great in spite of religion

FFRF awarded Amelia $400.

By Amelia Keefe

President Trump has used religion as a tool to grow his conservative Christian base. “As I have often said, to be a great nation, you must have religion, and you must have God,” Trump said. To this comment, I’d like to ask: Which religion and which God? Of course, this is rhetorical. All of us know that only the Judeo-Christian God counts and the only valid religion is Christianity. The rest are clearly made up. It is this absurdly limited view of American society that allows hate to flourish.

Far from making America a great nation, this obsession with religion and God makes America weaker and more divided all in the name of an imaginary man in the sky.

Indialantic Elementary School was the place where I happily spent my grade-school years. It was also the place where my peers and I witnessed the formation of an actual hate group. This group formed from the ground up by a mom that I regularly saw at playdates and birthday parties, a mom who was very active in our school PTO and who somehow gained a platform that has done untold harm in the name of “parents’ rights” and “Christian nationalism.”

This hate group started as something called “Opt-Out Brevard,” as this mom did not want her kids taking required standardized tests, and eventually morphed into what you now know as “Moms for Liberty.” This extremist group now has over 130,000 members spread out over 310 chapters in 48 states. Moms for Liberty grew so fast due to a massive amount of funding from the Heritage Foundation. This conservative Christian organization promotes “American Family Values,” which is code for censorship, homophobia, transphobia, racism and misogyny. This group has championed book bans, something that horrifies me because I love to read.

The irony is not lost on me that I am the six-time Reading Counts annual points champion of the same elementary school where this evil woman honed her book-banning skills. Hiding under the guise of “family values,” Moms for Liberty has fought against transgender athletes and against allowing trans people to use the restroom aligned with their gender identity. It championed the “Don’t Say Gay” movement in Florida. Their religious beliefs should not dictate the rights of other human beings.

I have a person dear to me who was assigned male at birth. She has always been a girl since the first moment she could express herself. It makes me sick to think that bullies like Moms for Liberty are championing policies forcing her to have to use the boys bathroom at school. She can’t play sports aligned with her gender identity. She is treated as an “other” under the cover of religion and family values instead of being recognized for the girl that she is. She is an actual child and grown women are bullying her and her transgender peers for existing.

I do not see how it makes our country great to marginalize people who don’t fit the conservative Christian mold of the ideal American.

As freethinkers, I believe that it is our duty to fight back against the encroachment of religion into state matters. Moms for Liberty does not deserve a seat on our school boards and should not be allowed to ban books or to try to ban the existence of gay and trans people. President Trump is wrong. If we want America to be great again, we need to take our country back, and that means getting religion out of state matters.

Amelia, 20, attends the University of Central Florida with plans to double major in interdisciplinary sustainability and theme park and attraction management.

“I have already completed an undergraduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which is something that I became very interested in while doing my ongoing Science Research project at Melbourne High School,” Amelia writes. “I am also a member of the UCF Burnett Honors college and a member of the UCF Solar Knights vehicle design team. My career goal is to use my GIS certification to map invasive species in and around critical watersheds. Wherever I work, I want to prioritize the health of our fragile Florida ecosystem through my work and research in GIS.”