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.
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.
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?
President Obama gave a speech about his plans to deal with the latest Middle East based terrorist group called ISIS or ISIL depending on how much fear mongering you need. While ISIL is based on a perverted version of Islam, the President shouldn’t be using a ‘No True Scotsman’ argument to point it out. It isn’t his job to decide if a group is following a particular religion correctly or not.
The President spoke on September 10th in a nationally televised address about his plans to “to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.” However one part of his speech really bothered me.
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.
The plaintiff in the precedent setting US Supreme Court case, Town of Greece v. Galloway, recently developed and adopted guidelines in choosing the person or people who could give invocations at the start of their meetings. Unfortunately it looks like the town ignored the courts prohibition on discrimination. The guidelines seem to exclude the nonreligious from being chosen to lead their pre-meeting invocations.
