All You Wanted To Know About Released Time Religious Instruction In Ohio

April 19 @ 10:00 am 12:00 pm

Starting in April 2025, all Ohio public-school dis­tricts are required to have a pol­i­cy allow­ing chil­dren to be removed dur­ing the school day to attend a bible class off-campus. SHoWLE President Douglas Berger will give an updat­ed pre­sen­ta­tion on this Christian Nationalist dream and why it is “legal” and what you can do to mit­i­gate the dis­rup­tion to your public-schools.

We will be in Community Room A


Here is the link for our live stream. If you are a mem­ber and logged into this web­site you have access to the Zoom link as well.

YouTube Live Stream — click on link and select the LIVE tab.

Starting in April 2025, all Ohio public-school dis­tricts are required to have a pol­i­cy allow­ing chil­dren to be removed dur­ing the school day to attend a bible class off-campus. SHoWLE President Douglas Berger will give an updat­ed pre­sen­ta­tion on this Christian Nationalist dream and why it is “legal” and what you can do to mit­i­gate the dis­rup­tion to your public-schools …

Zoom link is restrict­ed to mem­bers only. If you are a mem­ber then login and then view this page again.

Free

Sanger Library Branch

3030 Central Ave
Toledo, OH 43606 United States
+ Google Map

Volunteer at the Seagate Food Bank

image showing Secular Week of Action logo with date for our visit to the seagate food bank

April 30 @ 6:00 pm 8:00 pm

Join us for the Secular Week of Action as we help the Seagate Foodbank. We need to have 10 vol­un­teers. We will be prob­a­bly pack­ing food box­es. RSVP on this event page to vol­un­teer.

This is the event we had to can­cel in February due to a snow storm.

Scenes from the event in 2024
Free

Sanger Library Branch

3030 Central Ave
Toledo, OH 43606 United States
+ Google Map

RSVP to volunteer to help at the Food Bank on 4/30

We want to have at least 10 peo­ple vol­un­teer

3 Going
27 remain­ing, 5 days left to RSVP
RSVP Here

Resources to help support Democracy

People protesting in support of science

SHoWLE recent­ly cre­at­ed a new resource page that has links to tools and sources to help us sup­port democ­ra­cy.

These links include links to liked mind­ed groups and news sources that actu­al­ly cov­er the real news and not the cor­po­rate white-washed ver­sion we see most often.

The title of the new page is Supporting Democracy and can be found under our Resources menu on the web­site.

Also includ­ed is links to new videos cre­at­ed by President Doug Berger that helps the view­er set­up and use the My Ohio Legislature and GovTrack.us leg­is­la­tion track­ing web­sites.

If you have any sug­ges­tions or cor­rec­tions for this new resource please let us know.

Meet The Troublemakers

Promo image for our March meeting with Toledo Troublemakers

March 8 @ 10:00 am 12:00 pm

A rel­a­tive­ly new grass­roots advo­ca­cy group is called Toledo Troublemakers and is affil­i­at­ed with Red, Wine, and Blue. The Toledo Troublemakers are a group of like-minded indi­vid­u­als in NW Ohio and SE Michigan who want to work togeth­er to sup­port one anoth­er and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ty by tak­ing pos­i­tive action on local, state, and nation­al issues.

Promo image for our March meeting with Toledo Troublemakers

The local group is co-ordinated by SHoWLE mem­ber Heather Spies and she will be our guest speak­er. Bring your ques­tions and con­cerns about our cur­rent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion.

To join the Toledo Troublemakers please vis­it:
https://redwineblue.controlshift.app/groups/toledo-troublemakers

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/toledotroublemakers/
Email: toledotroublemakers@gmail.com

About Heather:

Heather is a full time Registered Veterinary Technician. She is a Certified Compassion Fatigue Professional and an AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Board) Wellbeing Educator and plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in bring­ing well­be­ing ini­tia­tives into the vet­eri­nary hos­pi­tal she works at and to the com­mu­ni­ty. She has become more involved
in polit­i­cal activism over the past few years.

We will be in Community Room B

We will try to livestream on our YouTube chan­nel. Check back here for the details and the link

Unless oth­er­wise not­ed, our meet­ings and events are free and open to the pub­lic. In-person, in-door meet­ings and events we STRONGLY rec­om­mend atten­dees wear masks. Speakers can wear them if they choose while speak­ing. Click more infor­ma­tion about our In-person Meeting Policy. SHoWLE has a No Weapons pol­i­cy

Here is the link for our live stream. If you are a mem­ber and logged into this web­site you have access to the Zoom link as well.

YouTube Live Stream — click on link and select the LIVE tab.

Member Only Zoom Link

A rel­a­tive­ly new grass­roots advo­ca­cy group is called Toledo Troublemakers and is affil­i­at­ed with Red, Wine, and Blue. The Toledo Troublemakers are a group of like-minded indi­vid­u­als in NW Ohio and SE Michigan who want to work togeth­er to sup­port one anoth­er and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ty by tak­ing pos­i­tive action on local, state, and nation­al issues …

Zoom link is restrict­ed to mem­bers only. If you are a mem­ber then login and then view this page again.

Free

Sanger Library Branch

3030 Central Ave
Toledo, OH 43606 United States
+ Google Map

Humanist Values Demand We Stand Up For Marginalized Groups

Image about our monthly meeting on February 8th

February 8 @ 10:00 am 12:00 pm

Image about our monthly meeting on February 8th

Recently President Trump signed an Executive Order that tried to dis­miss the exis­tence of Trans peo­ple and he has tak­en action to exclude the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty from the nation­al scene. Sixteen sec­u­lar groups includ­ing the AHA signed on to a let­ter sup­port­ing the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Some peo­ple don’t believe LGBTQ rights are a church state issue. We will dis­cuss this impor­tant issue and dis­cov­er why LGBTQ rights and oth­ers are a church and state issue.

This dis­cus­sion will be led by SHoWLE President Douglas Berger

FREE and open to the pub­lic

*Weather Update*: Snow is expect­ed in the after­noon after our meet­ing but if that looks like it might change we may need to switch to Zoom and not meet in-person. Be sure to check this page again before you leave for the library.

Free

Sanger Library Branch

3030 Central Ave
Toledo, OH 43606 United States
+ Google Map

Here is the link for our live stream. If you are a mem­ber and logged into this web­site you have access to the Zoom link as well.

YouTube Live Stream — click on link and select the LIVE tab.

Some peo­ple don’t believe LGBTQ rights are a church state issue. We will dis­cuss this impor­tant issue and dis­cov­er why LGBTQ rights and oth­ers are a church and state issue …

Zoom link is restrict­ed to mem­bers only. If you are a mem­ber then login and then view this page again.

Resolution In Support Of The LGBTQ+ Community And Opposing Bigotry

The SHoWLE Board of Directors adopt­ed the fol­low­ing state­ment in sup­port of the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty and to oppose big­otry. This state­ment can be found in our Policies and Resolution page of the web­site.


The Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie vot­ed on January 21, 2025, to “sign on” to a state­ment issued by a major­i­ty of the sec­u­lar, Humanist, and freethought groups in the coun­try affirm­ing our com­mit­ment to sup­port and pro­tect the rights of the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty in this coun­try.

In a state­ment titled “Statement from American Atheist, Humanist, Freethought, and Secular Groups Affirming Commitment to Protecting LGBTQ+ Rights” 16 nation­al sec­u­lar groups affirmed:

“We will not per­mit reli­gious extrem­ists to foment a moral pan­ic, encour­age harass­ment or vio­lence, and enact dan­ger­ous poli­cies that seek to force LGBTQ+ Americans generally—and trans Americans in particular—out of pub­lic life and out of exis­tence. Nor will we sit silent­ly or ignore when the talk­ing points, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and out­right fab­ri­ca­tions of anti-LGBTQ+ extrem­ists are laun­dered and giv­en a veneer of legit­i­ma­cy or accept­abil­i­ty by those who hold them­selves out as voic­es of rea­son or sci­ence.”

The SHoWLE Board agrees 100% with the state­ment and we intend that our group will con­tin­ue to be a wel­com­ing place for all peo­ple no mat­ter who you are or who you love. Our Humanist val­ues demand it.

We need more com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing and much less irra­tional hys­te­ria. We need laws and poli­cies based on data and actu­al real­i­ty and not bias­es, reli­gious indoc­tri­na­tion, or tabloid anec­dotes.

SHoWLE also will not tol­er­ate big­otry from our state leg­is­la­ture, gen­er­al com­mu­ni­ty, or our mem­ber­ship. We will call out that big­otry when need­ed. We will not sup­port or work with any group that sup­ports big­otry of any kind espe­cial­ly toward the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty.

Some peo­ple have said that recent attacks on the Trans com­mu­ni­ty have been only about dis­cussing sci­ence and biol­o­gy and that by not allow­ing that dis­cus­sion we are cen­sor­ing sci­ence. We reject that argu­ment.

Free speech argu­ments should nev­er be used to jus­ti­fy hurt­ing peo­ple and whether a group should have basic dig­ni­ty, and worth should nev­er be debat­ed.

No one should live in fear for sim­ply exist­ing.

Adopted January 2025

SHoWLE To Move Away From Facebook

Facebook logo

Starting on February 1st, 2025, SHoWLE will reduce our use of Facebook. We will put in a sta­t­ic post point­ing vis­i­tors to our web­site but we will not update our pub­lic page, boost any posts, or cre­ate any new events.

We don’t make this deci­sion eas­i­ly but the change in polit­i­cal views of the CEO and oth­er actions tak­en by Meta, the own­er of Facebook, make our con­tin­ued use of the plat­form prob­lem­at­ic. If you are not aware of these issues check out the links at the end of this post for some details. In gen­er­al:

  • Donated $1 mil­lion to Trump’s inau­gur­al fund, while Zuckerberg dined with Trump at Mar-A-Lago
  • Ended its fact-checking pro­gram to cater to the right-wing
  • Relaxed its rules on hate speech to allow hate­ful rhetoric against LGBTQ peo­ple, includ­ing as part of “reli­gious dis­course”
  • Deleted Facebook Messenger themes that used the col­ors of the trans­gen­der and bina­ry flags
  • Ended its DEI work and elim­i­nat­ed its chief diver­si­ty offi­cer posi­tion
  • Called for com­pa­nies to dis­play more “mas­cu­line ener­gy” (Zuckerberg) despite the over­whelm­ing dom­i­nance of men in the tech indus­try.

The fact-checking mod­er­a­tion was put into place a decade ago because Facebook was used to facil­i­tate eth­nic cleans­ing in a cou­ple of coun­tries. Not to men­tion now there will be more irra­tional posts about the harm of vac­cines and oth­er pro­mo­tion of woo.

We will keep our pri­vate group page for now but we intend to pro­mote a more open com­mu­ni­ty forum in the future off Facebook.

We rec­om­mend that our mem­bers also move away from Facebook but that deci­sion should be left up to each indi­vid­ual. In the links below is an arti­cle from EFF.org that shows how to block use of your data for prof­it mak­ing by Meta.

If you have any ques­tions about this new pol­i­cy, feel free to reach out to Doug or oth­er Board mem­bers.

For further information:

Meta ends its DEI pro­grams as Zuckerberg blasts Biden on Joe Rogan

Mark Zuckerberg Preps for More Ethnic Cleansing

Mad at Meta? Don’t Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data

You can also find us on Bluesky as Toledo Humanist Community

Darwin Day Volunteering at Seagate Foodbank 2025

February 12 @ 6:00 pm 8:00 pm

*Update* Due to a snow storm arriv­ing about the time this event was to hap­pen, and con­sult­ing with the Food bank, we have decid­ed to post­pone this event to a lat­er date — might be in April or May for the Secular Week of Action. Thanks to all who vol­un­teered

Join us for Darwin Day as we help the Seagate Foodbank. We need to have 10 vol­un­teers. We will be prob­a­bly pack­ing food box­es. RSVP on this event page to vol­un­teer.

Scenes from the event in 2024
Free

Sanger Library Branch

3030 Central Ave
Toledo, OH 43606 United States
+ Google Map

Help Us Sponsor A Family This Year

One of our com­mu­ni­ty out­reach­es we’ve done, real­ly since SHoWLE was found­ed, is spon­sor­ing a fam­i­ly through the Lucas County Children’s Services. They match us with a fam­i­ly and we donate gifts to help make their hol­i­day sea­son a mer­ry one. Now through December 8th we are col­lect­ing gifts. Check out the details below.

Thank you to all the donors for anoth­er excel­lent gift dri­ve. Here is the result of our work:

We intend to par­tic­i­pate in 2025.

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