Tag: church and state

October 1, 2015

Toledo’s ProMedica Health Picks Politics Over Women’s Health

image of a sign at the ProMedica protest on Wednesday
Sign at the ProMedica protest on Wednesday

Ohio has some of the most ridiculous and onerous abortion ‘regulations’ in the country. One of these ‘regulations’ requires a ‘transfer agreement’ between a hospital and a clinic under the guise of ‘patient safety’. ProMedica, a large private hospital group in the Toledo area is saying it won’t sign a transfer agreement with Toledo’s only abortion clinic because it doesn’t want to take sides in the abortion debate. By refusing to enter into an agreement ProMedica is in fact taking a side and it isn’t supporting women’s health.

Here is a brief explanation of Ohio abortion “regulations”:

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August 7, 2015

President Obama Takes First Positive Steps In Reforming Faith-Based Initiatives

July 17, 2015

Catholic Group Plans To Take Same-Sex Marriage Debate To School Districts

edited screencap of Kids in class learning

An evangelical Catholic group asked central Ohio Catholics to change the argument against same-sex marriage to ‘a child-focused civil institution that unites children with their mothers and fathers.’ The group wants to move the debate into the schools. It reminds one of how religious conservatives fought against abortion and real sex education by forcing schools to adopt abstinence-only sex education curriculum. We know how that turned out.

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July 1, 2015

First Amendment Overkill Or When Politicians Don’t Know The Law

old photo of a Fiery Preacher

Soon after the US Supreme Court ruled that LGBT couples could be legally married in all 50 states, many political and religious conservatives lost their minds. Some politicians, like Ohio Rep. Nino Vitale (R-Urbana) either don’t understand civil rights or they just really hate not being able to be bigots. Vitale wants to pass a law that will protect pastors from having to perform same-sex weddings which is already covered under the 1st amendment.

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June 29, 2015

Finally, The ACLU Turns Against The RFRA

logo for the ACLU

During the recent firestorm over state Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) like those passed by Indiana and the use of them to discriminate against LGBT people, one of my conservative friends pointed out many liberals and the ACLU supported the federal RFRA passed in 1993. He implied they were being hypocrites. Late last week the ACLU formally repudiated its support of the RFRA.

The ACLU provided some of the same reasons to remove their support of the RFRA that has been mentioned in previous posts about this issue:

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June 5, 2015

Coach Led Prayer At University Of Toledo Draws Response

logo for the University of Toledo sports teams

Last week I posted about a letter the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent to the President of the University of Toledo complaining about the head football coach Matt Campbell being seen, in a video, leading a prayer before a game in 2012. The Toledo Blade published an editorial, on May 29th, supporting Coach Campbell and I had a letter to the editor published responding to their wrong conclusion.

The Blade editorial seemed to say the only thing wrong was that the prayers were made public when the University posted the video on YouTube.

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