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Public School Advocates Release Lifewise Tool-kit

Some concerns with HB 445 and RTRI

Most of you know we have been focused on the growth of Lifewise Academy and the inher­ent prob­lems it cre­ates for our pub­lic schools. President Doug Berger has been work­ing for a few months with a team made up of a cross-section of peo­ple con­cerned with Lifewise. It was led and host­ed by Honesty for Ohio Education and on August 29th they released a tool-kit and oth­er infor­ma­tion the pub­lic can use to lim­it or elim­i­nate the dam­age done by Lifewise.

For those new to the issue, Lifewise is a Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) pro­gram that, with parental per­mis­sion, removes kids from their pub­lic school and takes them off-campus to a Bible school class dur­ing the school day.

This is a prob­lem on many lev­els. Lifewise refus­es to have their pro­gram before or after school, they have used friends in the state leg­is­la­ture to strong arm dis­tricts who won’t let them oper­ate, and the pro­gram is less than trans­par­ent in their oper­a­tions.

The tool-kit goes over in more detail all the issues with the Lifewise pro­gram.

SHoWLE oppos­es RTRI on church and state grounds and would love for dis­tricts not to have a pol­i­cy at all. But we have been work­ing with the Honesty team to come up with some solu­tions that pro­tect the school dis­tricts and the chil­dren involved. These pro­tec­tions are miss­ing from the state law Lifewise is abus­ing. The tool-kit includes a mod­el pol­i­cy that dis­tricts should adopt or use to revise their cur­rent pol­i­cy if they have one.

Honesty and SHoWLE oppose HB 445 and SB 293 which would require school dis­tricts to have an RTRI pol­i­cy but would not address the seri­ous issues raised about Lifewise.

Our President Doug Berger got to help make the pre­sen­ta­tion on the 29th and here is a copy of the remarks he planned to make but due to time con­straints was not able to speak from them entire­ly.

My name is Douglas Berger and I am the founder and pres­i­dent of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. I have been fol­low­ing this issue since 2014 when the law that Lifewise is abus­ing was passed in the Ohio Legislature. Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022 was nev­er intend­ed to be used to allow the mass move­ment of pub­lic school chil­dren from the school to a Bible class in the mid­dle of their school day. The law was intend­ed to give high school stu­dents the chance to gain course cred­it for reli­gious class­es they might attend dur­ing the day in addi­tion to their reg­u­lar course work. The law sat on the books for almost 10 years before Lifewise came into exis­tence and abused the law for their own ends.

Released time has been part of the fab­ric of the pub­lic school since the US Supreme Court case Zorach v Clauson was decid­ed in 1952. All schools have poli­cies now that allow for stu­dents to be tak­en out of school by par­ents for reli­gious rea­sons. I know from my own his­to­ry that some of my class­mates would leave school to par­tic­i­pate in Ash Wednesday mass and return to school with ash on their fore­head. I also know that some rur­al Hancock coun­ty schools, my home coun­ty, have had RTRI pro­grams since the 1970s. This is a com­mon occur­rence.

The issue isn’t Released time but the abuse of it by Lifewise and any pro­gram that refus­es to oper­ate before or after school as has been done for more than 50 years by oth­er oper­a­tors who actu­al­ly respect the pub­lic schools in which they exist.

Lifewise stat­ed goal is to con­vert chil­dren to their brand of Christianity and to turn the pub­lic schools into reli­gious schools.

I am a tax­pay­er and firm sup­port­er of the pub­lic schools. The use of released time in the mid­dle of the school day hurts the edu­ca­tion of not only the kids who attend the pro­gram but the kids who are left behind.

I also have major con­cerns with how Lifewise oper­ates and I know that some have prob­lems with the the­ol­o­gy they teach which they refuse to freely share with any­one. They are known to bul­ly dis­tricts that don’t coop­er­ate or to use “friends” in state and local gov­ern­ment to lean on them. There are now two bills in the leg­is­la­ture, one in the House is HB 445 and the one in the Senate is SB 293 that would force school dis­tricts to adopt poli­cies under ORC 3313.6022 — which would­n’t con­tain any guardrails to pro­tect chil­dren. That is what Lifewise wants so they can get around local dis­tricts who val­ue all stu­dents edu­ca­tion more than the reli­gious beliefs of a few.

Let me restate that Lifewise does­n’t need the law to oper­ate. They could start up a new pro­gram in any dis­trict today but they want the state to force all dis­tricts in Ohio to allow them to oper­ate dur­ing the school day. If a dis­trict refus­es to allow Lifewise to inter­rupt the school day it isn’t vio­lat­ing a par­en­t’s 1st amend­ment right to guide the edu­ca­tion of their chil­dren. They can always put the stu­dent in pri­vate school or in a pro­gram that oper­ates before or after school.

I don’t care that Lifewise is Christian and I would­n’t care about the reli­gion or non-religion of a pro­gram that wants to dis­rupt a school day. I would still oppose the dis­rup­tion.

I urge every­one to ask some seri­ous ques­tions if your dis­trict has a Lifewise pro­gram or if they are plan­ning on com­ing to your dis­trict. Work with your school board to install the guardrails miss­ing from Ohio’s Released Time law to pro­tect your chil­dren and your school dis­trict. Some of those guardrails are men­tioned in the toolk­it and also talk to your leg­is­la­tor about this issue and con­vince them why guardrails are need­ed and why this needs to be left up to the indi­vid­ual school dis­tricts.

Thank you

For more infor­ma­tion about this issue and to view and down­load the took-kit vis­it:

Honesty for Ohio Education — RTRI Tool-Kit

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Help Us Fund Our Kid’s Movie Event

Donate to our Kid's Movie fund image

Our cur­rent ser­vice project is to host a free movie and piz­za for kids at the West Toledo Branch Library each month. We have had good turn out each time, aver­ag­ing about 20 kids and some care­givers. We would like to con­tin­ue this project into 2025. If you can help fund the project please do.

Here is mes­sage from our President Douglas Berger:

The first place I lived when I moved to Toledo 8 years ago was on Lewis Avenue in the Five Points neigh­bor­hood. The near­est library branch was West Toledo in Library Village. This is a clas­sic Tudor style build­ing and is busy much of the time.

Our co-founder Shawn grew up in the Library Village area and want­ed to do a ser­vice project that was focused on the kids in the area. This area is mod­er­ate to low income area and with that peo­ple have mon­ey at the begin­ning of the month and by the end of the month not so much. Shawn hatched the idea of show­ing a movie and offer­ing free piz­za and oth­er snacks for the kids at the end of the month.

We show movies from the Disney library and pro­vide Marco’s Pizza and oth­er snacks like baby car­rots and bananas. We don’t talk about Humanism or our group since that is what church­es tend to do when hav­ing free kid activ­i­ties — pros­e­ly­tize. We just want the kids to come to the base­ment audi­to­ri­um, sit back, and have fun for a cou­ple of hours.

Shawn and sev­er­al of us have fund­ed the project through September but now we need your help. It can cost up to $100 for each event and we would like to con­tin­ue the project for a year. We would need at least $300 to fin­ish 2024 and $1200 to cov­er the whole of 2025. We will be look­ing for addi­tion­al sources of fund­ing but we hope you can help now.

To Donate, use the link below:

https://humanistswle.org/donations/kidsmovie

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Time to Renew Your Membership

Three people jumping in the air with Renew above them

It is that time of year for mem­ber­ship renewals. All mem­ber­ships pur­chased a year ago expire on 09/30/2024. We hope that those who mem­ber­ships need to be renewed will do so.

You can start the process on our Members page on the web­site. Login and on the Account overview page click on the renew box. Not sure how to login to our web­site? We made a handy dandy tuto­r­i­al linked below:

You can renew or upgrade your mem­ber­ship from the Account Overview page. We also ask that if you can, check the Auto Renew box so it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly renew your mem­ber­ship next year giv­ing you the peace of mind that it will be renewed with­out miss­ing a beat.

Here is a list of mem­bers who need to renew. If you feel you should­n’t be on the list, login and check your sta­tus and if you are still con­cerned reach out to President Doug and he will ver­i­fy your expi­ra­tion date.

  • Michaelene G. RENEWED
  • David L.
  • Tim R. RENEWED
  • Bruce G. RENEWED
  • Brian T.
  • Michael K.
  • jules r.
  • Rob W.
  • Debbie P. RENEWED
  • Peggy C. RENEWED
  • Margarette W.
  • Mallori T. RENEWED
  • Derrick S.
  • Jerry P RENEWED
  • Derek W. RENEWED
  • Louis F
  • David S. RENEWED
  • Robyn P.
  • TK B. RENEWED

You can also update your con­tact infor­ma­tion and pref­er­ences on the Edit your pro­file page.

Any ques­tions feel free to reach out.

Photo by Zachary Nelson on Unsplash
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Do We Really Need To Teach Young Kids About Human Sacrifice?

Public schools all over the coun­try and espe­cial­ly in Ohio are being invad­ed by a Christian Nationalist group called LifeWise. They claim to be teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues using Bible sto­ries but in review­ing some of these Bible sto­ries, we have to ask, Do we want to be teach­ing young kids about Human sac­ri­fice for exam­ple?

LifeWise sets up in a local school dis­trict and with parental per­mis­sion take kids off-campus for some Bible learn­ing dis­guised as Character and val­ue edu­ca­tion. They refuse to let the pub­lic review their cur­ricu­lum and is in fact suing some­one who legal­ly obtained a copy and post­ed it online.

Maybe this is why LifeWise refus­es to let peo­ple out­side of LifeWise see their cur­ricu­lum:

In the Elementary cur­ricu­lum, that is not­ed for Kindergarten through 3rd grade, Lesson 8 is about the char­ac­ter trait “sac­ri­fice”. One seg­ment of the les­son talks about God test­ing Abraham. For those who don’t know the sto­ry, God tells Abraham to take his son up into the moun­tain and sac­ri­fice him to show his loy­al­ty to God.

God wants Abraham to mur­der his own son to show much he “loves” God.

Abraham does what God says and takes his son up the moun­tain, builds an alter, and is just about ready to do the deed and an Angel stops him and lets him know that since he was ready to mur­der Isaac he knew he feared God (ie. would do what God Wanted).

Side note: Isaac had no clue his father was pre­pared to mur­der him.

So, not only is LifeWise teach­ing lit­tle kids that human sac­ri­fice can be a good thing as long as it is for God, here is this tid­bit

Example of a LifeWise Lesson about Human Sacrifice

The les­son is to have 2nd and 3rd graders act out the Abraham sto­ry and for the oth­er kids to pro­vide sound effects. Have the kids act out human sac­ri­fice for God? Some kids have issues with what is real and what is not so should we be teach­ing this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry? We don’t think so.

That isn’t the only prob­lem­at­ic sto­ry. Here is a les­son about the trait sub­mis­sion:

Submission means learn­ing to be a good fol­low­er. Instead of doing our own thing, we can do what we are asked. We don’t talk back or demand our way. We choose to “fol­low the leader,” whether that is God, our par­ents, our teach­ers or oth­er good author­i­ties God puts in our lives.

LifeWise Lesson Example

In an iron­ic twist, the title of the les­son is “Jacob’s New Name” and some of the activ­i­ties are kids choos­ing a new name as a game. Yet, Joel Penton, the founder of LifeWise is against kids choos­ing their own name to social­ly tran­si­tion at school. Also LifeWise train­ing doc­u­ments make clear that the order of author­i­ty for chil­dren is God then their Parents.

If this was a sec­u­lar les­son about sub­mis­sion (it would­n’t be called that in the first place), the teacher would also talk about caveats like are you being hurt or ‘has an adult asked you to keep a secret.’ Unlike this Bible sto­ry we don’t teach kids to nev­er ques­tion why an adult or par­ent is ask­ing them to do some­thing. There will be things a kid must do that they don’t want to do — like their home­work or mow­ing the yard, but typ­i­cal­ly they need to “sub­mit” as long as it won’t hurt them in some way that typ­i­cal­ly is ille­gal if uncov­ered.

And what if a child actu­al­ly mur­ders their class­mate and they say they did it because God told them to do it?

LifeWise does­n’t have an answer for that.

If you are inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion about the prob­lems with LifeWise, check out our recent episode of Glass City Humanist.

Click on the image for link
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Now Available: Toledo Humanists You Should Know

Logo for the Toledo Humanists Page

When we do pre­sen­ta­tions to oth­er groups about SHoWLE, we talk about three well known Toledo natives who are or were human­ists. Until today we did­n’t pro­mote them on our web­site. That over­sight is fixed.

Starting today you can find short bios about the three human­ists from the Toledo area we talk about: Gloria Steinem, Edward Lamb, and Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Each page gives a short biog­ra­phy, their con­nec­tion to Humanism and we tried to add a quote that fits the Humanist phi­los­o­phy.

We hope this is just a start of a big­ger project so if you know of Toledo human­ists who should be added, let us know through our con­tact form.

Click on the image to go to the page:

Logo for the Toledo Humanists Page
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Winter Solstice Potluck with Gloria Steinem

One of the big events I’ve want­ed to have for the mem­bers and friends of SHoWLE was a win­ter sol­stice gath­er­ing. Many Humanist groups around the coun­try have one and my for­mer group in Columbus had a catered ban­quet each year in December. I would like to announce we will be hav­ing a Winter Solstice Potluck on Saturday December 21, 2024.

I ini­tial­ly had plans for a Winter Solstice Potluck to hap­pen in 2020 and we know why we did­n’t have one. Then after the pan­dem­ic sub­sided SHoWLE did strug­gle to get its feet back under it. I am con­fi­dent that in 2024 we are at least at the place we were at the start of 2020.

The catered ban­quet was used as a fundrais­er for my Columbus group but through the years the costs of the ban­quet wiped out any “prof­it” from sell­ing tick­ets to the event and peo­ple had a cer­tain expec­ta­tion when the event is catered. You buy a tick­et to a din­ner and you expect table ser­vice and bev­er­ages etc….

I like a potluck set­up bet­ter espe­cial­ly for a Humanist group who gath­er as a com­mu­ni­ty to observe the sol­stice.

We also don’t have to sell you tick­ets to attend and that way we can have some­thing else to fundraise off of like door prizes or a raf­fle. And I can assure you there will be plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties.

A potluck also keeps the event open and inclu­sive to the com­mu­ni­ty at large. That way you don’t need to spend $30 a plate for din­ner. It also helps us “cater” to peo­ple with spe­cial diets either they have a med­ical issue or they choose to be veg­an for exam­ple, a potluck is a bet­ter way to have food for every type of diet.

The Winter Solstice Potluck is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for December 21 at the Yager Center at Swan Creek Metropark. In the fall we will have more details and dish sign-up list to try to avoid too much dupli­ca­tion. Other details will fol­low soon after.

I am excit­ed to have this event even I was sweat in the heat and humid­i­ty of June.

Mark this on your cal­en­dar. You can keep up on details as we add them on the event page on our web­site

*UPDATE*

Humanist and fem­i­nist Gloria Steinem will be our keynote speak­er. She will appear via Zoom to say a few words. SHoWLE is thrilled she agreed to speak

https://humanistswle.org/event/winter-solstice-potluck-2024

Thanks to our donors we have raised Gloria’s speak­ing fee

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Another Old West End Fest In The Books

SHoWLE enjoyed anoth­er Old West End Festival on June 1st and 2nd this year. We had sev­er­al peo­ple join our email list and we talked to many more who stopped by. New this year was a dona­tion col­lec­tion box and we brought in $9.18.

The Prize Wheel was just as pop­u­lar with the kids and the young at heart but it did suf­fer some dam­age from overnight rain between Saturday and Sunday. We will have it restored and bet­ter than ever for the Maumee Summer Fair in August.

SHoWLE wants to thank the vol­un­teers that spent their week­end help­ing staff the booth — Ed, Michaelene, Anne, and Shawn. We also thank the donors that fund­ed the booth space and much of the swag we hand­ed out this week­end.

Here are some snaps tak­en dur­ing the event:

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Urge Toledo City Council To Mark Day Of Reason

May 4th is the National Day of Reason in 2024 and into the future. One of the ways we have want­ed to mark the occas­sion is to have the city coun­cil issue a res­o­lu­tion mark­ing the day in the city. We weren’t pre­pared for how hard it real­ly is to get it done. That’s why we start­ed a peti­tion.

Back in 2019, SHoWLE reached out to the Mayor of Toledo about issu­ing a procla­ma­tion but his office declined and then the pan­dem­ic hap­pened and our efforts fell by the way­side.

This year we decid­ed to focus on the city coun­cil since they have issued res­o­lu­tions for a whole host of issues with the most recent being demand­ing a cease fire in Gaza. So how hard could it be?

There is no writ­ten for­mal process but in talk­ing to a long time com­mu­ni­ty activist, they sug­gest­ed email­ing the coun­cil pres­i­dent with the request. We did that and heard noth­ing back. Not even a thank you for send­ing this email. After reach­ing out again, the pres­i­dent respond­ed back that our request had been missed and she declined to spon­sor a res­o­lu­tion from us.

A res­o­lu­tion has to be spon­sored by a mem­ber of coun­cil and this being a res­o­lu­tion from a non-religious group to mark a day about rea­son, there were not many coun­cil mem­bers to approach who would wel­come our request. We iden­ti­fied anoth­er coun­cil mem­ber known for their pro­gres­sive stances on the issues and advo­ca­cy for social jus­tice and reached out to them. Never heard back. Again not even an acknowl­edge­ment they got the mes­sage.

In con­sult­ing our com­mu­ni­ty activist friend again, he men­tioned that coun­cil is innudat­ed with requests like ours all the time, they have no for­mal office or staff at city hall, and most times they won’t act on any­thing unless they know cit­i­zens are request­ing it and will back their efforts.

That’s where our peti­tion comes into the pic­ture.

We’ve start­ed a peti­tion with the goal to ask the Toledo City coun­cil to adopt a Day of Reason res­o­lu­tion. The National Day of Reason is May 4th. so it is most like­ly too late this year to get a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed but we will share the peti­tion with the coun­cil for next year’s Day of Reason. Won’t you help us out?

*Note* We would real­ly like to lim­it the sign­ers to peo­ple who live in the city of Toledo but if you don’t you can still help us out by mak­ing a dona­tion to SHoWLE.

Sign Our Petition Here

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Find SHoWLE on Discord

Starting today you can find a SHoWLE com­mu­ni­ty serv­er on the Discord plat­form. Participation is free and open to any­one who wants to par­tic­i­pate but it does require an invi­ta­tion.

You need to cre­ate an account on Discord. You will need to install the Discord app or use the brows­er ver­sion to access the group.

The good news the invites are free. A lim­it­ed time one is with this post. If it is expired feel free to reach out to us and ask for an invite. If you are a mem­ber of SHoWLE you get a spe­cial invite and get a spe­cial role on the serv­er.

This is just anoth­er social media plat­form to have some dis­cus­sions and fun out­side for­mal meet­ings. It is mod­er­at­ed and there are some rules for the group.

https://discord.gg/PTJTP8b6 (this link will expire after April 4, 2024. Just reach out to us for anoth­er if it is expired or check the social media links menu.

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Judge Rules Against Catholic Families in Sylvania Bus Dispute

Images of Sylvania school bus

On Tuesday 3/19, Lucas coun­ty Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus trans­porta­tion plan for stu­dents of non-public schools does­n’t vio­late Ohio law or con­sti­tu­tion.

Back in 2022, a cou­ple of fam­i­lies that send their chil­dren to a catholic school in Sylvania, filed a law­suit because their chil­dren had to be picked up hours before their school start­ed, trans­port­ed with old­er stu­dents, then dropped off at a high school to trans­fer to anoth­er bus, to arrive at their catholic school. The par­ents thought it was unlaw­ful and vio­lat­ed the equal pro­tec­tion and reli­gious free­dom claus­es of the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion.

From the rul­ing:

“The evi­dence sub­mit­ted by plain­tiffs con­sist of sev­er­al affi­davits by the par­ties and a non­par­ty spouse. These affi­davits recite that they choose Catholic edu­ca­tion because of their per­son­al Catholic faith. The affi­davits also recite the var­i­ous incon­ve­niences the Plaintiffs and their chil­dren face because of the District’s trans­porta­tion scheme. However, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered no evi­dence of any coer­cive effects on their reli­gious prac­tice: there is no evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled Plaintiffs to do any­thing for­bid­den by their reli­gion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing some­thing required by their reli­gion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled them to affirm or dis­avow a belief for­bid­den or required by their reli­gion. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to demon­strate any coer­cive effect upon their reli­gious prac­tice. The Plaintiffs have there­fore failed to show that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Court finds against Plaintiffs as to their claim that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution. Again, the pre­sump­tion that a leg­isla­tive act is con­sti­tu­tion­al applies to the Board’s trans­porta­tion plan. With this pre­sump­tion the Court finds in favor of Defendants as to Plaintiffs’ free exer­cise claim.”

JENNIFER A SWIECH, et. al., v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE SYLVANIA CITY SCHOOL DIST., et. al.,

Both par­ties had asked for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment since the facts in the case weren’t in dis­pute. In the orig­i­nal law­suit the fam­i­lies asked the court for an injunc­tion to order the school dis­trict to “fix” the trans­porta­tion plan. Judge Cook said the court could­n’t do that, it could only rule if the dis­tric­t’s act was law­ful and not uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The orig­i­nal law­suit was dis­missed by the par­ents on August 30, 2022. Parents refiled on September 16, 2022 and asked for class action sta­tus and removed all ref­er­ences to the 1st amend­ment to keep it out of Federal court. The class action was nev­er cer­ti­fied.

A lawyer for the fam­i­lies, who was one of the plain­tiffs when the law­suit had been filed in August 2022 but dropped out in September of 2022, stat­ed they were prob­a­bly going to appeal the rul­ing.

Additional infor­ma­tion on this sto­ry is in the Toledo Blade behind a pay­wall. Images of the arti­cle is below.