Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie
Building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.
The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie are dismayed and disappointed that several local members of the Ohio House of Representatives signed on to a letter to announce their intention to subvert the will of the voters who passed State Issue 1 on November 7th.
Continue reading “SHoWLE Disappointed Some Local Legislators Want To Subvert The Will Of The Voters”
During our members meeting, I was asked about a Student rate for membership. I said at the time we didn’t have a formal student level but we would never turn away a potential member who couldn’t afford the current full membership dues.
Today I announce we now have a Student/Fixed Income membership level. On the Join page, scroll down for the link then when you get taken to the sign-up page one of the levels available at the bottom is for Students and those on fixed incomes.
People won’t need to ask for the special rate and will be able to select it when they sign up.
The change needs to be confirmed by the Board so assume that level has all the same benefits of the full price. If the lower amount is still too much we also accept volunteer time and donations in-kind (like sharing a skill or donating an item you aren’t using).
– Doug
President of SHoWLE
President Douglas Berger submitted written testimony to the Ohio House Higher Education Committee that is considering House Bill 183 that would prohibit transgender kids and adults from using the public bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
Two people on the committee are from the NW Ohio area. Rep. Derek Merrin (R‑42) and Rep. Josh Williams (R‑41).
The hearing for opposition testimony is Wednesday October 11th. Here is the text of his testimony as submitted:
Chair Rep. Young, Vice Chair Rep. Manning, and Ranking Member Rep. Miller, my name is Douglas Berger and I am President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, based in Toledo.
I am writing today to express our group’s opposition to House Bill 183 that would prohibit transgender kids and adults from using the public bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
We oppose this discriminatory bill since it reminds us of the dark days of Jim Crow when bathrooms and even drinking fountains were segregated by race and this bill is based on the same kind of false narrative and flimsy evidence that those Jim Crow laws were based on.
We are also tired of members of this legislature passing off irrational religious bigotry as public policy and law. When will your need to impose your religion on others stop?
HB 183 has no factual basis and no data to justify a ban is needed. Most anecdotal stories are made up. The numbers of teachers and people of faith who have been arrested and charged for abusing children far out distance any reported crime due to Trans people using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. I am more fearful of a child being alone with a priest or minister than using a bathroom with a Trans person.
Representative Lear and Bird also failed to note which religious conservative lobby group they copied and pasted this ridiculous proposal from. There is a reason these proposals all look alike.
We can also promise that the people who introduced this bill and at least three members of this committee have never met a Trans kid and has never talked to the Trans community but they seem to want to discriminate against Trans people anyway. I’m sure it is easier to discriminate when you never talk to them.
Our members would also like to know who will enforce this ban and how will it be enforced. Will birth certificates be required to be shown or will a school official be designated as a genital checker? Will you have a parent sign a form so their child can have a genital check? If there is no enforcement mechanism then this proposal is just for show. In fact it would be used to out Trans kids and bully them.
Adding on an unfunded mandate on public schools and colleges that you barely help fund is also something to consider.
In a recent TV interview, a member of this committee said that educational policy should only go toward the academic progress of students and we shouldn’t be introducing social issues into the classroom. How does HB 183 advance academic progress? It doesn’t but it sure introduces social issues into the classroom. How will this bill improve the dismal school ranking the state has received recently.
Why don’t Trans kids deserve to be protected too?
We ask you to vote no on HB 183.
Each year we try to discover how our friends and members feel about SHoWLE. Please fill out the survey below. You can be anonymous but please be honest. It will be open until 10/1/2023. If you wish to tell us something not in the survey like you moved or something use our contact form for that or make sure you use your email address in the survey
If there is no embedded survey above click on this link…
*Note* All responses and information shared in the survey will be for internal use only and not shared outside the Board of Directors except for general aggregate results.
Toledo, July 1, 2023 — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie are very disappointed in the ruling on June 30 by the US Supreme Court in the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case. It is wrong that religious beliefs now trump all other rights to full public business accommodations and allow discrimination of people in a protected class.
The court said that requiring the graphic designer to make wedding websites for same-sex couples was an unconstitutional violation of her first amendment rights because the creation would be seen as an endorsement of something her religious beliefs prohibit.
We don’t believe requiring business owners not to discriminate against customers in protected classes makes the person or business endorse something against their religious beliefs. At the end of the day they can still not approve of same-sex marriages. If a business can’t bring itself to serve customers from the protected classes then they need not be a public business.
We are also concerned about the unprecedented protection the court granted to a religious person. They ruled on a case that didn’t include any actual harm. The plaintiff wasn’t creating wedding websites when she filed the lawsuit and there is some question that the LGBT customer written about in her case was made up. Secular people who claim their religious freedom was violated, like for example challenging 10 Commandment statues on court house lawns, are dismissed because the mere presence of the religious item or text isn’t an actual harm according to federal courts.
The plaintiff agreed in court that she would sell her services to LGBTQ people, just not wedding website designs. So her religious beliefs are not absolute. How does making a sign for a gay man not also seem to endorse his sexual orientation?
The decision was capricious and arbitrary and gave special rights to religious people that are not allowed by anyone else. The Christian Nationalists have been bent on subverting decades of church and state legal decisions.
The US Supreme Court set back religious freedom for many years.
For further information on this decision see: Supreme Court rules website designer can decline to create same-sex wedding websites
About Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie
The mission of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is to provide a supportive local community for humanists and other nontheists, while promoting an ethical, reasonable, and secular approach to life through education, community service, outreach, activism, and social events.
We envision a Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan where secular people are respected and integrated in broader society, live values of reason and compassion, and enjoy a friendly humanist community.
House Bill 68, the so-called ‘Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act’, that would ban children, in Ohio, from getting gender affirming care, is currently being considered by the Ohio House Public Health Policy committee. SHoWLE President Douglas Berger submitted written testimony to oppose the bill:
Continue reading “We Oppose Bill Banning Gender Affirming Care”
The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie oppose State Issue 1 and ask that you vote NO on August 8th.
Continue reading “We Ask You To Vote No On August 8th”
SHoWLE President Douglas Berger had a letter to the editor published in the Toledo Blade on April 20, 2023, responding to a previous editorial that seemed sympathetic to a woman who gave a speech against Trans women at the University of Toledo. The editorial downplayed the bigoted framing and rehash of anti-Trans tropes relating to Trans women participating in women’s sports. The editorial complained about Trans rights supporters protesting Riley Gaines’ speech but didn’t point out the false narrative that Gaines used in her speech and the fact that it was sponsored by the right-wing Christian Nationalist group Turning Point USA.
Douglas was also disappointed that even though his letter was published, the heart of it was cut out by the Blade and made it seem, again, that the issue was one of difference of opinion and not one of a battle to protect the rights of a marginalized group. SHoWLE doesn’t believe that human rights should be put up for a popular vote or be debated like what ice cream flavor you like.
Below is the full text of the letter Douglas submitted followed by images of the Blade editorial in question and the printed letter.
I sat down to read the Blade and saw yet another editorial (“Editorial: Let Riley tell her story” published 4/22) claiming that someone with bigoted ideas is being hurt because other people have called them out on their bigotry. Make no mistake, Riley Gaines told her story framed in bigotry against Trans women all because a Trans woman won ONE event at the NCAA tournament.
Gaines should know that more goes into performing sports than just body parts and what sex one is but we live in a society that seems to accept the status quo for longer than we need. Take basketball. When women were first allowed to play basketball, they were only allowed to play half court because men assumed that women didn’t have the stamina to run up and down a full court. They also had to play in skirts because it was un-ladylike to wear shorts in public.
Does Gaines feel the four other women that beat her in the 200 freestyle were actually “intact males” and why didn’t Lia Thomas win that race if she won the 500 freestyle? I thought Trans women had an unfair advantage?
The science on the issue isn’t clear yet but unlike Gaines’ anecdotal “evidence”, the NCAA has had specific rules to include Trans athletes for at least 10 years now. One would think the flood gates would be open and there would be only Trans women winning everything — obviously that didn’t happen. A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance.
It is also telling that Gaines’ talk was sponsored by the Christian Nationalist group Turning Point USA, whose founder and President Charlie Kirk, on a podcast in 2022, said that the Transgender community was a “social contagion” and that this “public mania” would, in 20 years, be likened to “the modern-day equivalent of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s”.
Riley Gaines (like Charlie Kirk) used bigotry to tell her story, the content of which was underplayed in the editorial. As we move forward and the people who support all humans as having basic dignity and worth become the majority only then will we be actually united as people.
The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie are asking local media in Northwest Ohio to stop airing the TV ad by the anti-abortion group “Protect Women Ohio” because it is a false ad.
In that ad that began airing March 15th, a narrator speaks:
“Your daughter is young vulnerable online. You fear the worst. Pushed to change her sex or to get an abortion. You have some right to help her through this but activists want to take all that away. Under their proposed amendment to the Ohio. Constitution the state shall not interfere with individuals getting abortions or sex changes meaning you could be cut out of the Biggest decision of her life.”
Audio of Protect Women Ohio: Fear the Worst 3/15/2023
Forcing daughters to get sex changes or abortions appears no where in the actual text of the proposed amendment.
FULL TEXT OF PROPOSED AMENDMENT
Be it Resolved by the People of the State of Ohio that Article I of the Ohio Constitution is amended to add the following Section:
Article I, Section 22. The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety
A. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on:
contraception;
fertility treatment;
continuing one’s own pregnancy;
miscarriage care;
and abortion.B. The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either:
An individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or
A person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual’s health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.
However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.C. As used in this Section:
“Fetal viability” means “the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.”
“State” includes any governmental entity and any political subdivision.D. This Section is self-executing.
Text of proposed amendment as approved by Ohio ballot board March 2023
Sex reassignment surgery is not mentioned at all. The proposed amendment only covers individual reproductive choices. The anti-abortion ad also selectively quotes the petition saying the state “shall not interfere” to fear monger to parents who demand tight control on their children. The “protect women” group is simply lying.
Local media need to stop running the ad. Advocacy ads are not covered by federal law or covered by the first amendment. We aren’t talking about a difference of opinion we are talking about a false ad.
Are ad dollars more important than the truth?
Broadcast media are granted a license to use the public airways in the public interest. Passing off a false ad that advocates taking rights away from people is not acting in the public interest.
About Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie
The mission of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie is to provide a supportive local community for humanists and other nontheists, while promoting an ethical, reasonable, and secular approach to life through education, community service, outreach, activism, and social events.
We envision a Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan where secular people are respected and integrated in broader society, live values of reason and compassion, and enjoy a friendly humanist community.
Media Contacts
Douglas Berger — President
567–215-2694
This session, the Ohio Senate introduced Senate Bill 49 also known as The Religious Expression Days “R.E.D.” Act. If passed it would give religious students in public schools three days off each year for religious reasons. SHoWLE opposes this bill for the main reason is it gives special privileges to religious students. We also don’t believe a law is needed since many school districts currently make accommodations for religious observances.
SHoWLE President Douglas Berger submitted written testimony to the Ohio Senate Education committee. Here is the text of his remarks:
Continue reading “SHoWLE Opposes Senate Bill 49: The Religious Expression Days “R.E.D.” Act.”