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.
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is starting a new project that I can get behind. Called ‘Don’t Say The Pledge’, the project highlights the original pre-1954 Pledge of Allegiance and argues for the removal of the words ‘Under God’. The AHA is asking people to not say the pledge until it is restored to the original version and I will not be saying the pledge.
Today marks the opening of the Secular Majority project. Secular Majority is ‘an independent, non-partisan, grassroots network of organizers, activists, and voters with the mission of identifying, supporting, and aiding in the election of qualified candidates committed to secular government and civic equality for Secular Americans’. The time has come to have an independent grassroots group who’s goal is to let secular voters know which candidates support their values.
It is well known that some fundamentalist Christians, like their Muslim counterparts, The Taliban, don’t want democracy. They want to impose biblical law as the law of the land and be able to opt out of any laws that ‘conflict’ with their religious beliefs. The Ohio Christian Alliance is one such group. They want to see photo IDs be mandated for voting in Ohio while making it harder in general to vote. It seems their agenda is really typical undemocratic conservatism covered with fake religious trappings.
This week a group called ‘Ask a Muslim’ put up a billboard on the North side of Columbus that stated ‘Jesus is Muslim’. Of course some evangelical Christians got the vapors. They plan on holding a rally and prayer vigil against the billboard this Saturday. Really. The Christians plan on protesting a billboard. And ‘Coach’ Dave Daubenmire is involved.
On January 28th, a bitterly cold Tuesday morning, approximately 20 people gathered for the second annual Secular Summit in the Museum Gallery in the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. The summit was organized and hosted by the Center for Inquiry Northeast Ohio (CFI NE Ohio) but included people from the various secular groups in Ohio. In the morning we had several speakers, some training in lobbying, and then the afternoon was when participants visited their Representatives and Senators to introduce themselves and the issues of importance to seculars in the state. The extreme cold couldn’t keep us from talking to the legislature, most of whom have completely opposite views.
The Secular Summit was held in the Museum Gallery on the ground floor of the Ohio State House.
