Tag: Humanism

How is the American Humanist Association team working to empower humanists across the country? with Jake Via

October 11 @ 10:00 am — 12:00 pm

We will be joined by Jake Via, the new orga­niz­er for the American Humanist Association. He will be talk­ing about the new ini­tia­tives and oth­er activ­i­ties the AHA is doing to empow­er human­ists across the coun­try.

You can watch the meet­ing on our YouTube chan­nel start­ing at 10 AM

The speak­er will be join­ing us via Zoom and we will try to livestream it on our YouTube Channel. Questions and com­ments will be from those who attend in-person.

Also this is a change from our usu­al meet­ing place — we will be meet­ing at the Heatherdowns Branch Library Community Room B

Our Speaker

Jake Via

As the Organizing Director for the American Humanist Association, Jake Via is ded­i­cat­ed to build­ing and mobi­liz­ing a strong grass­roots net­work to advance human­ist val­ues across the coun­try. With near­ly two decades of expe­ri­ence in com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, pro­gram devel­op­ment, and lead­er­ship at the YMCA and Playworks, Jake has a deep under­stand­ing of how to bring peo­ple togeth­er around shared val­ues.

A firm believ­er in the pow­er of con­nec­tion, Jake spe­cial­izes in empow­er­ing indi­vid­u­als and local groups to take mean­ing­ful action, whether through com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, advo­ca­cy, or acts of ser­vice. He is cur­rent­ly lead­ing efforts to expand and acti­vate AHA’s mem­ber­ship base, ensur­ing human­ists have a strong net­work and voice in their local com­mu­ni­ties and on the nation­al lev­el.

Jake holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Thomas Edison State University. He is pas­sion­ate about the pow­er of play, believ­ing that shared play expe­ri­ences fos­ter empa­thy, strength­en com­mu­ni­ties, and break down bar­ri­ers. Throughout his career, he has cham­pi­oned play as a tool for engage­ment, inclu­sion, and per­son­al growth.

Jake lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife, Anabel, and their three dogs. When he’s not work­ing to orga­nize human­ists, you can find him explor­ing new ideas, writ­ing, or dream­ing about sail­ing.

Free

Heatherdowns Branch Library

3265 Glanzman Rd
Toledo, Ohio 43614 United States + Google Map

If you are a SHoWLE mem­ber and logged in on this web­site the Zoom link should be seen below:

We will be joined by Jake Via, the new orga­niz­er for the American Humanist Association. He will be talk­ing about the new ini­tia­tives and oth­er activ­i­ties the AHA is doing to empow­er human­ists across the coun­try …

Would you like full access to this con­tent? Then Join our Group

If you are a mem­ber then log-in to see the con­tent.

For In-person, in-door meet­ings and events, feel free to wear a mask. Speakers can wear them if they choose while speak­ing. Click more infor­ma­tion about our In-person Meeting Policy. SHoWLE has a No Weapons pol­i­cy. Unless you noti­fy us in advance, atten­dance at one of our meet­ings or events gives us per­mis­sion to take pho­tos of you to use to pro­mote our group. We will ask to use your name if need­ed.

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Our President will host a webinar on speaking out publicly

Our President, Douglas Berger, will be host­ing a work­shop about speak­ing up for Humanism in pub­lic — from print to invo­ca­tions. There will be three con­nect­ed ses­sions start­ing on January 16, 2025 via Zoom.

The work­shop is being put on by the American Humanists Association’s Center for Education

Seats are lim­it­ed. To reg­is­ter and for more infor­ma­tion vis­it

https://bit.ly/SpeakUpHumanists

This is not an offi­cial SHoWLE pro­gram.

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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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Toledo Blade Underplayed Bigotry Toward The Trans Community

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.

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Secular Humanists Make The Newspaper

screenshot Front of the Religion section Toledo Blade 06/02/2018

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie had a nice write up in the reli­gion sec­tion of the Toledo Blade. The print ver­sion took up near­ly half a page and was above the fold. We could nev­er afford adver­tis­ing that good.

To ques­tion whether morals and val­ues can exist apart from the­ol­o­gy cuts to the heart of sec­u­lar human­ism. While athe­ism sim­ply denotes that an indi­vid­ual does not believe in God, sec­u­lar human­ism “kind of takes that a step fur­ther,” Ms. Meagley said; it answers the “now what” ques­tion that, for some, fol­lows when a per­son comes to terms with a dis­be­lief in God.

Secular humanism’s affir­ma­tion of an eth­i­cal life sug­gests par­al­lels between the ways that a con­sci­en­tious reli­gious adher­ent and a con­sci­en­tious human­ist would live. But a human­ist, sig­nif­i­cant­ly, would do so with­out tying these views and val­ues to the­ism or the super­nat­ur­al.

“Good Without God”

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A New Dawn For Humanism In Toledo

A new day is dawn­ing over Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. From Monroe to Findlay and from Sandusky to Defiance, a new group is form­ing to give a safe space and com­mu­ni­ty to peo­ple who are sec­u­lar human­ists.

Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie (SHoWLE) val­ues peo­ple, empha­sizes rea­son, and focus­es on this world. Our pur­pose is edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about Humanism and build­ing a Humanist com­mu­ni­ty in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. Membership is open to all Humanists in sub­stan­tial agree­ment with our prin­ci­ples and val­ues. Our reg­u­lar meet­ings and sched­uled events will be free and open to the pub­lic.

SHoWLE will be hav­ing an orga­ni­za­tion­al meet­ing on May 5th, 2018 at 1 PM in the meet­ing room at the Washington Branch of the Toledo Public Library 5560 Harvest Lane Toledo OH 43623. The plan is to hold reg­u­lar month­ly meet­ings and become a chap­ter of the American Humanist Association.

Humanism is a demo­c­ra­t­ic and eth­i­cal lifes­tance which affirms that human beings have the right and respon­si­bil­i­ty to give mean­ing and shape to their own lives. It stands for the build­ing of a more humane soci­ety through an ethics based on human and oth­er nat­ur­al val­ues in a spir­it of rea­son and free inquiry through human capa­bil­i­ties. It is not the­is­tic, and it does not accept super­nat­ur­al views of real­i­ty.

For most, human­ism is an alter­na­tive to reli­gion. In many cas­es and sit­u­a­tions there is a human­ist alter­na­tive to prob­lems we see in the world. We feel that in the Toledo area, that alter­na­tive isn’t being heard. or at least being addressed.

We are look­ing to build a strong core of indi­vid­u­als who share Humanist val­ues and who want to build a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty for Humanists

If you have any ques­tions, or for media inquiries, feel free to use our con­tact form.

Visit our Facebook and Twitter pages too.

If you want to help people who had SNAP delayed due to the government shutdown we have some resources you can use https://humanistswle.org/community-outreach-resources-and-education
If you want to help people who had SNAP delayed due to the government shutdown we have some resources you can use https://humanistswle.org/community-outreach-resources-and-education