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After being asked to add an Islamic holiday to its official calendar, a Maryland school board instead decided to remove all religious references from the calendar. Not only was it a slap to Muslims but is actually the best solution to the problem of religious privilege in public.
Ohioan Eliot Kalman intention was good but his actions in protesting an obvious church and state violation was wrong. Kalman put large stickers over a church directory in a county courthouse. While law breaking can sometimes help draw attention to civil rights violations, vandalism is almost never a good way to protest. Damaging property doesn’t win you any friends and makes the people who are the target of the protest more defensive.
Contrary to the views of Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, who spoke at a religious freedom summit at Cedarville University last week, standing up for his form of religious freedom would be imposing his beliefs on others.
The long drawn out saga of John Freshwater, the Mount Vernon Ohio middle school teacher who was fired for injecting his religious beliefs into his science classes, is officially over after the US Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal from a 2013 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that upheld his termination. Now he can move to the Bible and Chicken Dinner circuit playing the ‘martyr’ he believes he had become.
This Sunday, October 5th, Alliance Defending Freedom’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday will take place. They claim it’s about religious freedom when in fact it’s about creating a lawsuit they can use to try and get tax regulations against electioneering by churches tossed out as unconstitutional. Finally, this year they might get their lawsuit.
Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the members of the conservative block on the United States Supreme Court, gave a speech Wednesday where he seemed to be supporting the separation of church and state. Which is odd because he has been one of the justices who wants to limit the scope of the 1st amendment so narrowly that it really means nothing. Is Justice Scalia warming to separation of church and state?
