To read the full article, click here. Your thoughts?
We tend to post things that highlight the intrusion of religion into government, but it's good to remember that the door swings both ways. With the exception of referring to the Liberty Institute as an organization that "defends religious liberty", this all seems pretty sensible. "'TXDOT agreed to revise its rules and regarding non-commercial signage on private property to protect individuals' rights to freedom of speech,' the Website stated. 'Once the new rule becomes final, Texans like Mrs. Golden will be allowed to freely express their religious beliefs on their private property.' Before the rule charge, commercial signs were the only ones allowed on private property near TxDOT-maintained roads, and then it was only if they had a license, a bond, and a permit, the Website stated."
To read the full article, click here. Your thoughts?
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"Once again, the folks over at Fox News demonstrate their poor understanding of the First Amendment and how it works. Fox News contributor and Catholic priest Father Jonathan Morris said on a segment called The Fight for Faith on Sunday that officials in Oklahoma City needed to put a stop to a Satanic black mass, claiming that the event is “inciting violence” by mocking Christians, The Raw Story reports."
What do you think? Click here to read the full article. Update on the story posted by Eric last week: the Air Force has done the obvious thing and allowed re-enlistment without religious coercion. This piece ends with a statement worth sharing on the eve of Amanda Knief's discussion of how to be a citizen lobbyist:
"Remember: All of this started with one service member, who still remains anonymous, who refused to sign an oath he didn’t fully agree with. Because he spoke up, the Air Force changed its ways." What do you think? Read more here. I've just learned that the ISU Atheist & Agnostic Society will be hosting FFRF Co-President of the Dan Barker, on Thursday, October 16 @ 7 PM. The event will be held in the Great Hall at Iowa State's Memorial Union.
The topic of the night is going to be The Battle Between Church and State: the struggle to maintain separation. Mr. Barker will talk about this topic, and the FFRF's work on the front lines to keep religion out of government. -Josh PS: We can assist in coordinating rides and carpools if people are interested in attending this event. Defend Freedom for Non-Christians, All Benefit From Religious Liberty, Evangelical Experts Say9/11/2014 "[Russell] Moore, [president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission] stated that evangelicals should bring back the use of the term 'separation of church and state,' but in a different context.
'It doesn't mean that church and government should be apart,' Moore said. 'But that the state is limited and doesn't have lordship and direction over the church.' Moore purported that evangelicals should champion the religious freedoms of all religions..., otherwise evangelicals are 'not only willing to be persecuted, but willing to be persecutor.'" I'm not really sure I understand quite what he means by "the state is limited", but historically it has been religious groups that advocated for the separation of church and state - Catholics, in particular, who were at a disadvantage in the face of coercive Protestantism. It's unfortunately unusual to hear a religious leader support real religious liberty in this day and age, but this is encouraging. Real religious liberty is maintained by separating religion and government. What do you think? Read more here. I admit that this is as far from tasteful as one can get but I also think that if this were a statue of any other character then the teen would not be facing prison time.
What do you think? Read more here. At a meeting of the Winter Garden City Commissioners in Florida, Mayor John Rees had an atheist forcibly removed by uniformed police officers for refusing to stand during an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. Before the removal, he drew attention to the man and criticized him for failing to adhere to the norms of the city leaders - singling him out as an "other". There is video of the incident.
The City Commissioners have since voted to strike the invocations from their agenda, opting for a moment of silence in its stead. Rees, incidentally, voted against the change. That's a great step on the part of the City Commissioners, but what strikes me is that in the time between the initial incident and the new policy, there was little news coverage outside of atheist blogs. Can you imagine the media coverage if a person of practically any religious faith were forcibly ejected from a government meeting for expressing his or her beliefs - through inaction, no less? I have to suspect it would be front-page news. Yet this story came and went with relative silence, from what I can tell. It's disheartening to think that explicit discrimination against nonbelievers isn't newsworthy. Part of the goal of the Drake Secular Legal Society is to increase the visibility and presence of the secular community. We mustn't resign ourselves to being ignored or mistreated by our government representatives. What do you think? Read the full article here. "An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada has until November to change his mind and swear a reenlistment oath to God, the Air Force said."
What do you think? Read the full article here. Thinking about ceremonial deism, a major component of religion/government conflict.
"[A] reference to religion is not more likely to be harmless merely because it is 'ceremonial.' In many circumstances (such as in schools, as we see in the Ahlquist scenario), ceremonies are where citizens learn how to define patriotism. If we are defining patriotism according to religious language and beliefs, how can we say that the 'ceremony' is harmless, or that the language has 'lost its ...significant religious content'?" The Preamble to the Iowa Constitution reads: "WE THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF IOWA, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings, do ordain and establish a free and independent government, by the name of the State of Iowa..." The Preamble doesn't really do much. Does the wording bother you? Is it harmful? Is it something that ought to be changed? Would it be different if it specifically referenced Jesus? Why or why not? Maybe this is a conversation worth having in our first official meeting this year. What do you think? Read the full article here. "For its part, the city vigorously rejects accusations of bias. 'We believe that there was no discrimination. This is really a very simple matter,' Jay Lindgren, city attorney, told KARE. 'This is about St. Anthony only allowing religious uses in the parts of the city that are not industrial zoned.'...Given the city’s willingness to approve a permit for a union meeting hall in the same industrial area, it’s a bit suspicious that they would deny a permit for a mosque, which wo...uld have hosted assemblies of similar size."
It sounds as though Lindgren is saying that the city is excluding religious uses, specifically, from industrially zoned areas. Does that exhibit religious discrimination if the mosque could be constructed without complaint in a non-industrially zoned area? (There's always way more information needed to form a clear picture of the situation than are included in these news articles and press releases. Without a better understanding of their "industrial" zoning policy, it's hard to understand exactly what's going on. Still, it's a thought-prompt.) What are your thoughts. Read the full article here. |