Secular Left Posts

December 17, 2014
photo of Ohio Gov Kasich
Ohio Governor John Kasich

A new Ohio law gave tax money to groups who mentored public school children, which is a good thing. However Gov. Kasich decided to force mentoring programs to partner with faith-based groups. Kasich believes, wrongly, that the public school should be where children get their religious education.

House Bill 483 was ‘legislation that makes appropriation changes and minor policy changes as part of the Mid-Biennial Review (MBR), a package of bills that strives to initiate reforms to state spending, agency operations, and state policies and programs.’ Tucked inside HB 483 was a new program called “Career Advising And Mentoring Program” that would grant tax payer money to groups who helped mentor public school children.

November 21, 2014
image of Bible and stethoscope

Did you know that many states, including Ohio, have religious exemptions for child abuse written into law? Short of killing the child, parents and people having custody of children can harm the health or safety of the child, by violating a duty of care, protection, or support – like refusing to get proper childhood vaccines or in the extreme, refusal of medical treatment for the child – as long as the abuse is due to the person’s religion. There is a new group collecting signatures on an online petition to get that exemption removed.

Here is one of the religious exemptions:

November 16, 2014
November 13, 2014
image of the Athens County Ohio Courthouse

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.

October 15, 2014
October 6, 2014
photo of John Freshwater
John Freshwater

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.