Category: History

November 13, 2012
created image of a Secular Vote logo

President Obama carried Religiously Unaffiliated voters 70% to Mitt Romney’s 26% according to a report from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life exit poll data of the 2012 election. Although the President’s percentage was lower than in 2008, it still continued a trend of the nones supporting the Democratic candidates. The exit poll numbers were larger than a similar election poll in September when the President held a 65 to 27 lead on Romney.

November 8, 2012
created image with text 2012 US Election

The big news is that President Barrack Obama won a 2nd term as President. Three states voted to allow same sex marriage. Florida’s Amendment 8 went down to defeat but the only publicly known atheist serving in the Congress lost his race. For those of us who support church and state separation, the 2012 election turned out to be a mixed bag but better than if Mitt Romney had won.

November 6, 2012
image of Exterior view of a Church used as polling location, showing a anti-abortion sign
Exterior view of a Church used as polling location, showing a anti-abortion sign

While checking out my hometown newspaper Monday I found a listing of the voting locations for the Presidential election on Tuesday November 6th. The thing that bothered me is a majority of the voting locations are located in churches. Back when I was a kid the majority were in schools. I can understand why they don’t have them in the schools today but having them in churches is not a good idea either for a government based on secular principles.

October 22, 2012
image of the IRS logo

Alliance Defending Freedom, which sponsored Pulpit Freedom Sunday on October 7th, claimed over a 1,000 pastors would be taking part in violating the tax laws prohibiting a tax exempt group, such as churches, from electioneering at the pulpit. If the law breaking pastors had done some basic research they would have seen that having a protest now was a waste of time. The IRS suspended investigations of churches in 2009 due to a federal law suit. Basically Pulpit Freedom Sunday was a failure.

As I posted previously:

September 30, 2012
image showing protest signs in Malaysia
Protests by Malaysia Muslims over Innocence Of Muslims film September 2012

September 30th is designated as International Blasphemy Rights Day. This is when we bring awareness to efforts to censor dissent using the false cover of “protecting religious beliefs”. Although very rare in the US, jail time and even death comes to people deemed to have committed Blasphemy. In the US, public bullying sometimes results in “voluntary” self-censorship. Blasphemy laws are bad for freedom. A vibrant society needs and allows dissent in all forms so that the people are able to make informed choices in their lives. And how tolerant we are of dissent says a lot about how we view our country and our freedoms.

What is blasphemy? The dictionary says:

September 25, 2012
image of President Obama speaking to UN 9-25-2012
President Obama speaking to UN 9-25-2012

President Obama spoke to the United Nations on September 25th and the topic of the anti-Muslim video that was posted to the Internet came up as well as the strong protests, some violent riots, that happened in Egypt, Libya, and even in Australia. His message was to reinforce the US Constitution protection of speech and the need to meet dissent not with censorship but with more speech.