Tag: social justice

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Do We Really Need To Teach Young Kids About Human Sacrifice?

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?

LifeWise does­n’t have an answer for that.

If you are inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion about the prob­lems with LifeWise, check out our recent episode of Glass City Humanist.

Click on the image for link
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Another Old West End Fest In The Books

SHoWLE enjoyed anoth­er Old West End Festival on June 1st and 2nd this year. We had sev­er­al peo­ple join our email list and we talked to many more who stopped by. New this year was a dona­tion col­lec­tion box and we brought in $9.18.

The Prize Wheel was just as pop­u­lar with the kids and the young at heart but it did suf­fer some dam­age from overnight rain between Saturday and Sunday. We will have it restored and bet­ter than ever for the Maumee Summer Fair in August.

SHoWLE wants to thank the vol­un­teers that spent their week­end help­ing staff the booth — Ed, Michaelene, Anne, and Shawn. We also thank the donors that fund­ed the booth space and much of the swag we hand­ed out this week­end.

Here are some snaps tak­en dur­ing the event:

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A Released Time Religious Instruction FAQ is now available

We were con­tact­ed recent­ly by some­one who lives in the Sylvania Public school dis­trict. She said that LifeWise had a pre­sen­ta­tion sched­uled for the next school board meet­ing and want­ed to know if we had any infor­ma­tion about the group.

Released Time Religious Instruction is allowed under Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022. The big take­away is that school dis­tricts aren’t required to adopt RTRI poli­cies.

Other points from the law:

(1) The student’s par­ent or guardian gives writ­ten con­sent.

(2) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty main­tains atten­dance records and makes them avail­able to the school dis­trict the stu­dent attends.

(3) Transportation to and from the place of instruc­tion, includ­ing trans­porta­tion for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, is the com­plete respon­si­bil­i­ty of the spon­sor­ing enti­ty, par­ent, guardian, or stu­dent.

(4) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty makes pro­vi­sions for and assumes lia­bil­i­ty for the stu­dent.

(5) No pub­lic funds are expend­ed and no pub­lic school per­son­nel are involved in pro­vid­ing the reli­gious instruc­tion.

(6) The stu­dent assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for any missed school­work.

LifeWise Academy is a large reli­gious group based in Columbus that works with local groups to install Bible class­es in school dis­tricts. In 2022, LifeWise brought in over $6 mil­lion in dona­tions, enrolls near­ly 30,000 stu­dents from more than 300 schools across more than 12 states. LifeWise has a strong pres­ence in Ohio. LifeWise will be in more than 170 Ohio school dis­tricts by next school year — more than a quar­ter of the state’s school dis­tricts.

LifeWise only teach­es Christianity and only hires Christians to be instruc­tors and staff.

The oth­er issues we have is that chil­dren are being removed from school grounds for an hour more by peo­ple who don’t work for the school dis­trict and who the dis­trict does­n’t vet. The class­es have absolute­ly no con­nec­tion to any­thing being taught in the pub­lic school. It is basi­cal­ly a Sunday school dur­ing the week. LifeWise claims it is teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues but you can learn those val­ues with­out reli­gion.

We have cre­at­ed a FAQ page about Released Time Religious Instruction with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the class­es and LifeWise.

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Toledo Humanists Condemn Override of HB 68 Veto

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Toledo Humanists Condemn Override of HB 68 Veto

TOLEDO — The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie con­demn the over­ride of the veto of House Bill 68 that will now allow the ban on gender-affirming care and ban on Trans women in school sports to become law.

The major­i­ty ignored med­ical sci­ence and the pleas of the Trans com­mu­ni­ty and dis­missed their very exis­tence. Several Senators dur­ing the vote claimed Trans kids don’t exist and that their God assigned the child’s gen­der at con­cep­tion. Rep. Gary Click, in a state­ment on X called for resources for indi­vid­u­als who regret their tran­si­tion “as they realign with their authen­tic selves.” We reject Rep. Click’s call as mis­guid­ed and tinged with reli­gious big­otry.

We don’t believe that laws and pub­lic pol­i­cy should ignore sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus or be irra­tional­ly sup­port­ed by moral pan­ic. It is clear to us that some leg­is­la­tors believe their reli­gion is above basic human decen­cy and com­pas­sion. Bullying chil­dren is not a good look.

It was also iron­ic in the same ses­sion the same peo­ple who vot­ed to harm Trans kids over­rode a veto on a bud­get item that pro­hibits local gov­ern­ments from enact­ing their own reg­u­la­tions on tobac­co, par­tic­u­lar­ly bans on the sale of fla­vored nico­tine prod­ucts, which are typ­i­cal­ly mar­ket­ed toward minors.

The action by the Ohio Legislature to force HB 68 into law also denies the right of par­ents to sup­port their child’s health care needs what­ev­er that maybe.

We hope that the ban is chal­lenged in court and ends up like oth­er sim­i­lar bans by being ruled uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

We will do what we can to sup­port the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing these unwar­rant­ed and inde­fen­si­ble attacks from the gov­ern­ment.

Media con­tact: Douglas Berger, President

More infor­ma­tion:

‘Cowardly, self-serving vote’: Ohio Senate over­rides DeWine’s veto; bans health­care for trans youth

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Donating Cash to Food Banks

At our November meet­ing, it was men­tioned that food banks could use cash dona­tions in addi­tion to the usu­al food dona­tions. Cash dona­tions can actu­al­ly help more clients of the food bank than direct food dona­tions.

We also acknowl­edge that the need for food banks last all year and not just for the hol­i­days. SHoWLE will be arrang­ing some vol­un­teer time at a local food bank ear­ly in 2024.

This is just a list of the two main food banks in Lucas coun­ty.

Toledo Northwestern Ohio Food Bank
Seagate Food Bank

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SHoWLE Disappointed Some Local Legislators Want To Subvert The Will Of The Voters

Image showing districts that have pro-life members

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”
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We Oppose HB 183: The Bathroom Ban For Trans People

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.

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SHoWLE Disappointed By 303 Creative Court Decision

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

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.

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PDF of Statement Available Here

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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.