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Humanists Respond To Proposed Laws

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie has sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to the Ohio Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee con­cern­ing two bills before the com­mit­tee. One would allow the leg­is­la­ture to over­ride exec­u­tive orders issued by the Governor and the sec­ond would add more reg­u­la­tions to peo­ple need­ing pub­lic assis­tance. SHoWLE oppos­es both bills.

Senate Bill 17

Makes sev­er­al changes to the SNAP (aka Food Stamps) and Medicaid pro­grams. It pro­hibits the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services from adapt­ing SNAP eli­gi­bil­i­ty rules for sit­u­a­tions like hav­ing a pan­dem­ic. It also changes SNAP to a report­ing sys­tem where the per­son get­ting the benifit would have to report ANY change in their income. For exam­ple, most peo­ple on SNAP work. They would have to report any extra shifts they pick up even if the income over­all would­n’t put them over a thresh­old.

Another bad change is requir­ing able body peo­ple on Medicaid to work at least 20 hours a week. A good num­ber of peo­ple on Medicaid work so this change would hurt those, while not dis­abled, still should­n’t be work­ing. There is also a ques­tion about if a work require­ment is allowed since the Biden Administration just recent­ly rescind­ed all waivers for the require­ment.

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

Senate Bill 22

This bill would allow the General Assembly to rescind any exec­u­tive order made by the Governor or any emer­gency order by any state agency such as pub­lic health orders deal­ing with a pan­dem­ic that come from the Ohio Department of Health.

Even if there was­n’t a con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion about this pro­posed law, SHoWLE believes that allow­ing the leg­is­la­ture to ignore sci­ence and med­ical experts to end pub­lic health orders is a dan­ger to all Ohioans. The leg­is­la­ture has under­mined the response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that has killed at least 12,000 peo­ple in the state and almost half a mil­lion in the US. It is sim­ply wrong to politi­cize the lives and safe­ty of the cit­i­zens of Ohio.

SHoWLE believes Ohio would be in a much bet­ter posi­tion had the state con­tin­ued to do the right thing in address­ing the pan­dem­ic rather than giv­ing in to the self­ish and sci­ence deny­ing mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture. SB 22 will make things much worse now and in the future.

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

SHoWLE will con­tin­ue to keep track of and respond to pub­lic laws and poli­cies that are of inter­est to the group or fits our mis­sion state­ment and pur­pose. Laws and poli­cies that not only effect church and state issues but also social jus­tice issues will be respond­ed to as well.

If you feel as we do about these two bills, we ask that you con­tact your state Senator and let them know how you feel about SB 17 and SB 22.

*Update* SB 22 passed the com­mit­tee and the Senate on 2/17. The bill now moves on to the House.

House Bill 90

A com­pan­ion to SB 22 was intro­duced in the Ohio House and is now in the State and Local Government Committee.

Here is the let­ter I sent to the com­mit­tee oppos­ing HB 90:

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

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Ohio Attorney General Wrong To Insert State Into Religious School Lawsuit

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) have issued the fol­low­ing state­ment on the brief filed by Ohio Attorney General David Yost in sup­port of a law­suit brought by three reli­gious schools against a Lucas coun­ty pub­lic health order clos­ing all schools in the coun­ty to in-person instruc­tion.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 29, 2020

Ohio Attorney General Wrong To Insert State Into Religious School Lawsuit

Toledo  — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) is extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that Ohio Attorney General David Yost has decid­ed to insert him­self and the state into a Federal law­suit by three Lucas County reli­gious schools over the Lucas County Health Board’s order to close all schools in the coun­ty to in-person instruc­tion until January 11, 2021 due to the cur­rent COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Like the orig­i­nal law­suit, Attorney General Yost makes the same argu­ment that was reject­ed by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey J. Helmick on December 14th, that the reli­gious schools should be treat­ed like non-education sec­u­lar busi­ness­es that were allowed to stay open.

Judge Helmick stat­ed in his deci­sion:

“While, as Plaintiffs note, TLCHD has not ordered gyms, tan­ning salons, or casi­nos to close, (Doc. No. 1 at 5–6), these are not the rel­e­vant “com­pa­ra­ble sec­u­lar activ­i­ties.” Instead, the com­pa­ra­ble sec­u­lar activ­i­ties are edu­ca­tion­al class­es offered by all oth­er schools in Lucas County. These spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ments have sub­stan­tial­ly sim­i­lar group­ings and move­ments of indi­vid­u­als. Emmanuel Christian, St. John’s, and Monclova Christian are pro­hib­it­ed from offer­ing in-person instruc­tion to grades 9–12 (or grades 7–12) along with all oth­er Lucas County schools “because the rea­sons for sus­pend­ing in-person instruc­tion apply pre­cise­ly the same to them.””

Judge Helmick also not­ed that if we were to take the school’s argu­ment to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion, the state would not be able to reg­u­late any­thing involved with a reli­gious group.

“Plaintiffs’ argu­ments, there­fore, would extend to pro­hib­it the gov­ern­ment from reg­u­lat­ing any aspect of a Christian’s pub­lic life because, as Plaintiffs’ mis­sion state­ments make clear, the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing “a bib­li­cal foun­da­tion for … stu­dents” is to pre­pare stu­dents “to exem­pli­fy Christ [and] make Biblically-based deci­sions” through­out an indi­vid­u­al’s life, and not only dur­ing the schools years. Thus, a Christian busi­ness would be exempt from min­i­mum wage and max­i­mum hour laws,9 while Christians in states where offi­cials have issued Covid-19-related orders clos­ing restau­rants for in-person din­ing could not be pro­hib­it­ed from gath­er­ing to share a meal in one of those restaurants.10

More close­ly to the issue at stake in this case, Plaintiffs’ argu­ments would mean States could not man­date that stu­dents attend­ing parochial schools receive the equiv­a­lent num­ber of hours required of public-school stu­dents or require that parochial schools pro­vide cours­es in spe­cif­ic sub­jects.”

The law­suit, instead of try­ing to pro­tect the right of the schools to be treat­ed equal­ly, is try­ing to force the coun­ty to treat reli­gious schools dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­er schools that have com­plied with the order. They want a court to force the coun­ty to give them pref­er­en­tial treat­ment just because they are reli­gious.

This is the com­plete oppo­site mean­ing of the 1st amend­ment which is meant to keep reli­gious activ­i­ties from being sin­gled out by the gov­ern­ment for being reli­gious.

“The fact remains, right­ly or wrong­ly, that the Lucas County pub­lic health order specif­i­cal­ly exempts in-person reli­gious activ­i­ties,” SHoWLE pres­i­dent Douglas Berger said. “We believe that church­es and reli­gious groups, includ­ing reli­gious schools, should put the long-term health of their mem­bers above the need to gath­er togeth­er for their reli­gious activ­i­ties since those activ­i­ties aren’t restrict­ed to hap­pen­ing out­side the home. It is for this rea­son the pub­lic health order, that explic­it­ly exempts reli­gious activ­i­ties of the schools, isn’t an undue bur­den on them.”

It appears that Attorney General Yost has decid­ed, after claim­ing he would defend state pub­lic health orders, and against the facts of the case, that pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for reli­gious schools is in the state’s best inter­ests.

We strong­ly dis­agree with his deci­sion to insert the state in this case with his brief to the court.

Reference:

Ohio AG files brief sup­port­ing reli­gious schools’ return to in-person instruc­tion

Monclova Christian Academy et al v. Toledo-Lucas County Health Department 12/14/2020

SHoWLE President Douglas Berger dis­cussed this case in Episode 16 of the Glass City Humanist pod­cast start­ing at the 08:34 mark.

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.

*Update* - On December 31, a three judge pan­el of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals grant­ed an injunc­tion to the schools against the pub­lic health order pend­ing an appeal hear­ing.

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People Need Help All Year. SHoWLE Wants To Get There

One of the things that SHoWLE does, that I would like to see do, is assist the com­mu­ni­ty where we live. One project we com­plet­ed for the sec­ond year was adopt­ing a fam­i­ly through Lucas County Children Services for Christmas. Of course the ques­tion that get asks is why only at Christmas when fam­i­lies need help all year round? Why copy what oth­er faith groups do? Those are valid ques­tions and I’ll explain our phi­los­o­phy about com­mu­ni­ty projects.

Douglas Berger — President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie

I am total­ly with those who com­plain about copy­ing reli­gious groups and pulling out the volunteering/donation machine only dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. I think only lim­it­ing such action to the hol­i­days plays into the reli­gious nar­ra­tive that help is only need­ed dur­ing one time of the year so we feel bet­ter about not help­ing at oth­er times.

The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion for year end donat­ing is tax­es. People who are able to deduct dona­tions may want to wait until the end of the year to get their full return on the tax forms the next year.

Some non-profits also use the hol­i­day sea­son to raise aware­ness and dona­tions about their cause dur­ing a time of the year when peo­ple are think­ing about donat­ing time, mon­ey, or things to those who are strug­gling.

The only obsta­cle to SHoWLE help­ing a fam­i­ly all year is we would need to have a group of mem­bers com­mit­ted to help­ing all year. It would not be some­thing to be thrown togeth­er at the last minute IF we have time. There will be times such an endeav­or will be a grind and some­one might not be “feel­ing it” that par­tic­u­lar time or date. I know from past expe­ri­ence with the group I was part of in Columbus that even if you have five or six peo­ple say­ing they will help even­tu­al­ly it is left to one of two peo­ple to do all the work.

I won’t com­mit SHoWLE to a year long effort with­out know­ing we have a sol­id com­mit­ment from vol­un­teers to pull it off. I don’t want to see us com­mit to some­thing and either fail to do it or do it half way. That would make us look bad in the com­mu­ni­ty and might hurt future chances to work with oth­er groups on oth­er projects.

I just don’t think SHoWLE is big enough to sus­tain a year long effort to help a fam­i­ly at this time but we do have the capac­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in the lim­it­ed hol­i­day pro­gram through Lucas County although I did reduce the size of the fam­i­ly we helped from 3 peo­ple to two, this year, just so as not to stretch us too far.

SHoWLE will also try to help oth­ers if an emer­gency comes up. Last Christmas we were able to help a fam­i­ly that had been sud­den­ly dropped by a com­pa­ny that had “adopt­ed” them as part of their year end “giv­ing back” to the com­mu­ni­ty that many com­pa­nies do on the hol­i­days. We were able to pull togeth­er some extra resources so that fam­i­ly did­n’t miss out because a com­pa­ny heart­less­ly changed it’s mind.

I am always open to new ideas. If some­one is enthu­si­as­tic about some project and they pret­ty much do the leg work to get it set­up and coor­di­nate it then I am will­ing to try it and pro­mote it to the rest of the group.

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We’ve Adopted A Family For The Holidays

This year SHoWLE has been giv­en a fam­i­ly to spon­sor for the hol­i­days through Lucas County Children’s Services. We will be help­ing out a 4 year old named DJ and his father Derrick.

If you would like to pur­chase a gift to donate just check out the needs and wants for the child and father and let Bev know what you plan to pur­chase so we can avoid dupli­ca­tion. (send her an email at bevzilla@yahoo.com)

Bev will also be host­ing a wrap par­ty at her house on Saturday December 12 at 1 PM to wrap the gifts in a social­ly dis­tant and safe man­ner. If you can donate wrap­ping paper or rib­bon that would be appre­ci­at­ed. Please con­tact Bev for more infor­ma­tion on the par­ty.

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Donate To Our Fall Fundraiser

For the month of August and September 2020, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie will be hold­ing a Fall Fundraiser. Our goal is to raise $1000 that will be used to sup­port the oper­a­tion of the group and edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the group and Humanism for the 2021 Fiscal Year.

If you donate at least $40, you will have a choice of one of these great gifts:

Continue read­ing “Donate To Our Fall Fundraiser”
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We Made A Mistake

Thanks to a mem­ber, we found out we had a mis­take in our trea­sury report­ing. It involved how we report­ed dona­tions com­ing from peo­ple using PayPal. No dona­tions were lost, only the sum­maries we cre­at­ed did­n’t record the dona­tions as dona­tions. Fiscal Year 2020 has been cor­rect­ed where the issue occurred and sum­maries that have been updat­ed are marked with “Corrected“on our Monthly Treasury Summary page. Fiscal Year 2019 will be checked this week­end and sum­maries will be cor­rect­ed if need­ed.

Continue read­ing “We Made A Mistake”