This is a bit late notice but we finally know who the family is we will be sponsoring this holiday season. We have a caregiver and two children — a girl and a boy. See details below.
Due to some generous donors last year we have plenty of cash to purchase items on the list but we still need people to donate actual items on the list if you can. The deadline is December 13 and please reach out to Bev (bevzilla@yahoo.com) to let us know what you purchased so we can limit duplication.
REQUESTED: Microwave, Bath towels, Vacuum cleaner, Walmart gift cards, Kroger food cards and gas cards.
Child #1: My’Onna – age 9 female Clothing: Large Jr. teen tops, 16 Jr. teen bottoms, 5 1/2 size shoes
REQUESTED: Clothes, Shoes, Hygiene products, Barbie dream house, Headphones, Art supplies, and gift cards to decorate her room.
Child #2: Marshawn – age 7 male Clothing: Size 10–12 tops, 10–12 bottoms, 3 1/2 size shoes
REQUESTED: Clothes, Shoes, Marvel action figures, Trucks, Sports equipment, and gift cards to decorate his room.
The family has just moved into their own housing and need furniture, washer/dryer and any help with food.
We will be having a wrap party at Bev’s house (2133 Copley) on 12/13 @ 1 PM. We need wrapping paper and tape if you have some you would like to donate.
Join us for a Screening of The Last Class at Cinemark Franklin Park 16 and XD: The Last Class is a nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich teaching his final course and reflecting on a period of immense transformation, personally and globally. It is a love letter to education. The former Secretary of Labor might be famous for his public service, best-selling books, and viral social media posts, but he always considered teaching his true calling. Now, after over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, Reich is preparing for his last class.
Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality, and his own aging, with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He displays a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, “Wealth and Poverty,” to offer us all a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s, and why this poses dangerous risks to our society.
One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation’s ability to take on the fight is inspiring.
Humanists support education based on the truth, facts, and data. We also support social justice issues that Robert Reich talks about and we are also concerned about income inequalities.
Even if you can’t attend, you can buy a ticket for someone who wants to attend but can’t afford it. Feel free to share this event with your friends, family, and social circle. Being a member of SHoWLE or a Humanist is not required. The film is open to all who buy a ticket.
Petitions to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 1 have started to be distributed. SB 1 as it is known that was quickly passed at the start of the year, over the objection of many universities and protests by students, would censor university classes and is anti-union. It is also known as the higher education destruction act and many of the points in the law scratch conservative biases about colleges such as the power of unions, not teaching how great capitalism is, and hate towards diversity, equality, and inclusion.
For a break down of what is in SB 1 check out this explainer sheet from AAUP Ohio and Honesty for Ohio Education:
Our friends at Toledo Troublemakers is hosting a petition signing event on May 14th from 5:30 to 7 :30 PM at Earnest Brew Works Westgate 3134 W. Central , Toledo.
Findlay Forward Together will be holding a SB1 Repeal Petition Signing Drive-Thru Thursday May 15th from 5 to 7 PM at 111 3rd St in Findlay.
When we hear about other signing events we will share them on social media accounts.
The conservatives will be very picky about signatures so here are some basic rules:
You must be a registered voter to sign
Make sure you sign the petition that matches your county
You are only allowed to sign a petition once
“With the title and summary language approval, petitioners can now start gathering signatures. About 248,092 signatures are needed — 6% of the total vote cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election. The signatures must be from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. The signatures would likely be due at the end of June. ”
*Update 06/30/2025* - Even with a strong effort, the petition drive fell short by 50,000 signatures. The group behind the effort ran a truly grassroots drive and didn’t use paid petition signature collectors. SB 1 is a very unpopular law so hopefully those opposed to it will try again soon.
The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference, which is put on by the University of Toledo, Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute, recently reached out to us to ask if we could sponsor this years conference that will be held virtually in September. This is a great opportunity for SHoWLE to have our name out publicly in support of an event that fits in with our values.
They have sponsorship levels with the lowest package being $500 which would have our name and logo in the program and website and would provide three one day tickets we could give out to donors.
Our goal is to raise $500 by June 30th for our sponsorship. If you donate and want to attend we will have the tickets available on a first come first serve basis. The largest sponsorship package is $5000 and each package comes with more free tickets but our goal for now is $500.
We will donate any funds we raise to help with the conference.
To donate for our sponsorship follow the link below:
Here is information about the conference from their website:
“Human trafficking is one of the most prevalent and active criminal enterprises affecting our local, national, and international community. Responses to combat trafficking include prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnership. The International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference is proud to be the host of the oldest and largest academic conference on human trafficking in the world. As the world’s leading academic conference on this topic, we serve as the hub through which practitioners, policy makers, researchers, criminal justice professionals, businesses, healthcare professionals, social workers, and more become educated and equipped to provide the best local and global responses possible. We remain committed to educating the community and we need your help!
The 22nd Annual International Human Trafficking & Social Justice Conference will be hosted virtually on September 17–19, 2025 and will highlight a variety of skilled presenters at the forefront of both human trafficking and social justice issues. This year’s conference will feature over 100 presentations and thousands of attendees tuning in from all corners of the world. Attendees will learn how to identify risk factors, improve responses for victims, and learn how we can collectively move forward with an agenda for change.”
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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:
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:
Public schools all over the country and especially in Ohio are being invaded by a Christian Nationalist group called LifeWise. They claim to be teaching character values using Bible stories but in reviewing some of these Bible stories, we have to ask, Do we want to be teaching young kids about Human sacrifice for example?
LifeWise sets up in a local school district and with parental permission take kids off-campus for some Bible learning disguised as Character and value education. They refuse to let the public review their curriculum and is in fact suing someone who legally obtained a copy and posted it online.
Maybe this is why LifeWise refuses to let people outside of LifeWise see their curriculum:
In the Elementary curriculum, that is noted for Kindergarten through 3rd grade, Lesson 8 is about the character trait “sacrifice”. One segment of the lesson talks about God testing Abraham. For those who don’t know the story, God tells Abraham to take his son up into the mountain and sacrifice him to show his loyalty to God.
God wants Abraham to murder his own son to show much he “loves” God.
Abraham does what God says and takes his son up the mountain, builds an alter, and is just about ready to do the deed and an Angel stops him and lets him know that since he was ready to murder Isaac he knew he feared God (ie. would do what God Wanted).
Side note: Isaac had no clue his father was prepared to murder him.
So, not only is LifeWise teaching little kids that human sacrifice can be a good thing as long as it is for God, here is this tidbit
Example of a LifeWise Lesson about Human Sacrifice
The lesson is to have 2nd and 3rd graders act out the Abraham story and for the other kids to provide sound effects. Have the kids act out human sacrifice for God? Some kids have issues with what is real and what is not so should we be teaching this particular story? We don’t think so.
That isn’t the only problematic story. Here is a lesson about the trait submission:
Submission means learning to be a good follower. Instead of doing our own thing, we can do what we are asked. We don’t talk back or demand our way. We choose to “follow the leader,” whether that is God, our parents, our teachers or other good authorities God puts in our lives.
LifeWise Lesson Example
In an ironic twist, the title of the lesson is “Jacob’s New Name” and some of the activities are kids choosing a new name as a game. Yet, Joel Penton, the founder of LifeWise is against kids choosing their own name to socially transition at school. Also LifeWise training documents make clear that the order of authority for children is God then their Parents.
If this was a secular lesson about submission (it wouldn’t be called that in the first place), the teacher would also talk about caveats like are you being hurt or ‘has an adult asked you to keep a secret.’ Unlike this Bible story we don’t teach kids to never question why an adult or parent is asking them to do something. There will be things a kid must do that they don’t want to do — like their homework or mowing the yard, but typically they need to “submit” as long as it won’t hurt them in some way that typically is illegal if uncovered.
And what if a child actually murders their classmate and they say they did it because God told them to do it?
