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”
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.
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.
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”
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
We are pleased to announce that starting soon, the Glass City Humanist podcast, an outreach of Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, will be making a 1 hour monthly program that will be heard on WAKT 106.1 FM in Toledo and on the Internet.
We Act Radio is a community radio station giving the residents of Toledo a way to know each other through music, talk, and other forms of programming. The content is generated by the community and by request of the community. It provides a voice for communities that may not have a voice in the media.
Glass City Humanist, produced and hosted by SHoWLE President Douglas Berger, will use the time on WAKT to introduce Humanism and the group to a bigger audience in Toledo and by extention listeners to the radio website. The exact content won’t differ too much from the content heard on the podcast but GCH will be able to do different things that might not be possible with just the podcast.
“We plan on doing things like asking for listener questions that will be read in the next episode,” the host Douglas Berger said. “We will also be able to interview people in a proper studio instead of just on Zoom or my house.”
There also might be chance at some future point to do a live show.
Details are still being finalized and we will let everyone know when the shows will start airing.
For more information about Glass City Humanist visit https://glasscityhumanist.show and for more information about We Act Radio WAKT 106.1 check out https://toledoradio.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 21, 2022
Toledo, Ohio – The Board of Directors of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) voted to ban weapons from all meetings and events it hosts.
The resolution reads in part: “We wish to provide a safe space where, for a short time, people don’t have to worry about being shot or killed by a deadly weapon. Even if the venue where we hold our meetings and events allow weapons, SHoWLE will enforce a ban on weapons. We will also try not to use any venue for meetings or events that we know allow weapons. People who believe their right to carry a gun outweighs the safety of our community are not welcome at our meetings or events.”
The weapons ban fits in with the group’s humanist values.
“This ban aligns with our values of peace and social justice, empathy, and service and participation,” Douglas Berger, President of SHoWLE said. “We have been concerned, for sometime, about the inaction of the Ohio legislature to address gun violence and how some political leaders wild west ideas of the rugged individual strutting down the street packing heat is outdated and the inaction is terrible, on a daily basis, for many families in our community. We felt we needed to do something and the ban is what we decided.”
SHoWLE also supports evidence based actions and policies that will address the tragic cost of unchecked gun violence.
The ban takes effect immediately and exceptions will be made for sworn law enforcement officers conducting official business.
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 Contact
Douglas Berger – President
567-302-0209
The full text of the Resolution can be found on our Policies and Resolution page
Bedford Public Schools is forcing children to attend an assembly during the school day put on by a religious group in the guise of suicide prevention. Instead of allowing parents to opt-in to an event where kids will be “invited” to attend a church service after school, parents must opt-out. The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie strongly opposes these assemblies that attempt to circumvent church and state separation by disguising the religious aspect under an important issue like suicide prevention of character building.
Carry the Cure is a non-profit organization that utilizes clinical tools, cultural traditions, and faith-based methods to offer communities comprehensive suicide & abuse prevention and healthy life-choice skills. Carry the Cure doesn’t offer any science based tools that most schools don’t already know and use to help prevent children from committing suicide.
Groups like Carry the Cure offer schools a free assembly on an important topic like suicide and during the program invite the kids in the audience to another event either after school or at a local church where sermons, testimony, and other religious services not allowed at the assembly during the school day.
SHoWLE believes issues like suicide prevention and character building are important and some of that can be addressed in the school, but we object strongly to a religious group being allowed to present a fake assembly to be used to indoctrinate children in religion later. We also object that the fake assembly is mandatory and requires the parents to opt-out. Any program, especially if it involves a religious group, should always be opt-in with the parents fully informed as to purpose of the program, the group providing the program, and any other questions that arise.
Bedford Public Schools made an error is approving Carry the Cure to perform their fake assembly during the school day and to force children to attend.
Like many in this country the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie were heartbroken by the content of the Dobbs decision of the US Supreme Court when it was leaked in May. It completely guts a woman’s right to abortion under 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision.
We knew this was a possibility from the decades long effort by religious zealots to overturn the case and send us back to the time of secret back-alley abortions that led to unnecessary deaths.
To be truthful, abortions will still happen, but the abortions will be less safe. Those who are caught in poverty will be worse off and women becoming pregnant due to a rape or incest will have no other options to terminate their pregnancy.
The decision also hints at future attacks on same sex marriage, sodomy, and contraception. Religious zealots want to stomp all of that out and people like Justice Alito, Thomas, and the other conservatives on the court are more than happy to help.
Religious conservatives believe wearing masks and not being allowed to pray in a church during a pandemic is a severe violation of their religious freedom, yet they don’t think twice in using their religion to justify taking fundamental rights from all of us. With this decision, our right to privacy is in danger.
SHoWLE strongly condemns the Dobbs decision. We will never stop supporting a woman’s right to reproductive choice and everyone’s right to privacy.
We also repeat our intention not to work with ANY group that doesn’t support a woman’s right to make her own health care choices. We also will refuse to work with groups who don’t support a right to privacy.
We know it is a big ask to boycott Ohio, which is poised to end legal abortion, but if a business isn’t able to leave or refuse to do business in states that ban abortion, we at least ask those businesses to strongly express their support for a woman’s right to choose and offer to help employees obtain abortions in states where it will be legal.
Besides contacting your elected representatives and supporting any protests against taking the right to choose from women, we also ask that you donate to local abortion groups who help those with less resources to get the care they need.
The Agnes Reynolds Jackson Fund (focuses on NW Ohio and Toledo)
National Network of Abortion Funds
Updated on 06/24/2022 when the decision was officially handed down
The vote to overturn Roe was 5-4. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito’s opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the opinion. He agreed with the majority that the Mississippi abortion restriction at issue in the case should be upheld, but in a separate opinion, he argued that the court should not have overturned Roe.
The court’s three liberals, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, filed a joint dissent.
Supreme Court overturns constitutional right to abortion
The Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie urges legislators and our community members to oppose Ohio House Bill 616.
HB 616 eliminates the ability to teach on and discuss topics like sexual orientation, gender identity, and race. If enacted, HB 616 would attempt to erase discussion of the history and lived experiences of marginalized communities and students. The bill’s broad language will have a chilling effect on learning environments.
HB 616’s definition of anti-racist concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion as “inherently racist” and its explicit mentions of intersectionality and critical race theory suggest a focus on the sensibilities of a narrow group of adults, rather than deep engagement with the needs and concerns of teachers and students in Ohio’s K-3 classrooms.
Humanists “commit to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity” and “long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern” (The Third Humanist Manifesto). HB 616 directly contradicts our core values by attempting to legislate away any discussion of already marginalized groups.
Listening to people’s stories is at the heart of acknowledging each person’s inherent worth. We can only move toward a world of mutual care by cultivating empathy; empathy cannot be cultivated when the stories, experiences, and histories of marginalized groups are made unspeakable.
It is for these reasons that the Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie condemns this bill and others like it.
We also encourage our members to communicate with their State House Representative. You can find your representative by entering your address at the Ohio House of Representatives website.
Further information about the bill can be found here:
House Bill 616 @ Equality Ohio
House Bill 616 @ Honesty for Ohio Education
Tip of the hat to the Humanist Community of Central Ohio for sharing the format of their statement used above.