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.
Category: Positive
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.
Outside of certain government officials, Ohio state law requires other people who want to officiate marriages to be ‘ordained’ in their religious society or congregation. A bill introduced on June 30th would remove the requirement and make it easier for secular people to perform marriages and have non-theistic weddings.
Representative Mike Foley (D-14) and Representative Robert F. Hagan (D-58) introduced the bill, which would reduce religious entanglement with what is actually a civil act between two people.
Today is Religious Freedom Day and President Obama issued a Proclamation to honor the day. The text included atheists as part of the religious diversity and cultural fabric of the United States. He also mentioned the important thing isn’t someone’s faith but that we all should support freedom, equality, justice, and separation of church and state.
Religious Freedom Day marks the day in 1786 when the first religious freedom law – Statute for Religious Freedom – was passed in Virginia.
On Friday, November 22nd, a Federal judge in Wisconsin ruled that the ‘parsonage exemption’ which allowed churches to provide housing allowances to ministers tax free was a violation of the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. In the ruling the judge said since the tax exemption had no secular purpose and excluded the non-religious, it was unconstitutional. If the ruling holds up on appeal it would bring some fairness to the tax code for nonprofits and might make some of the televangelists, who own many homes, more accountable for their lavish spending.