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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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
Posted on

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.

Posted on

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”

Posted on

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.