Some years ago in an e-mail list about Humanism, I made the argument that religion indoctrinates children to carry on the faith to the next generation. At that time, some on the list took me to task for using the word “indoctrinate” as if the parents and religious leaders were doing something criminal. I think religious training is child abuse just like when parents try to maintain that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny are real. The recent documentary “Jesus Camp” proves my point if in a more hyper way.
Category: Religious Intolerance
A religious right front group that is against same sex marriage is going to air a commercial that not only has actors giving fake personal stories but the stories have nothing to do with same sex marriage. The group, the National Organization for Marriage, instead is smearing gays by using made up problems. The Human Rights Campaign found the audition tapes and responds to the fake ad.
On Wednesday, February 25th, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling on a Utah monument case that involved the city of Pleasant Grove and religious group which tried to donate a monument to their Seven Aphorisms to be placed near an existing one with the Christian 10 Commandments. Unlike most cases like this, it was considered on Free Speech grounds rather than on religious establishment grounds. The court ruled that a government can pick and choose what gifts to receive and in doing so seemed to open them up to establishment challenges in the future.
During the campaign President Barack Obama promised to change how the federal government gave money to religious groups. While he did change the title of the office created under President Bush, he has yet to remove the rules and regulations that allowed religious groups to discriminate when getting federal grant money.
Secular Left shouldn’t ignore respect
Having a blog can be very interesting sometimes, specially when a post is linked to worldwide and you get tons of visits. When a post of mine sees a lot of hits I follow the referral and see what it was that sparked the interest. Most times it doesn’t bother me because it is a positive link – someone liked what I wrote. This time it was negative because another person made claims about some people called “secular far left” and linked to a category on my blog implying I spoke for these people. I needed to respond.