After our successful annual convention last weekend in Denver (check out local radio coverage of the gathering here), we plunged back into regular work this week.
We’re sure you’ve all seen the news that our longtime nemesis, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, is seeking bids on the purchase of 55,000 bibles to distribute to state schools. Rest assured, FFRF is on this, and we’ll be keeping you posted.
A coalition of organizations that includes us is requesting records related to Walters’ move. FFRF Senior Counsel Sam Grover notes, “Every Oklahoman, whether Christian, nonreligious or part of a minority religion, should be outraged at Walters’ attempts to push his personal religious beliefs onto other people’s children.”
Our hometown paper in Madison, Wis., noticed our pushback against Walters.
“Teaching religion in public schools violates the First Amendment’s prohibition from government enacting laws respecting an establishment of religion, which the Freedom From Religion Foundation and others like to point out,” Capital Times Editor Emeritus Dave Zweifel writes in a column. “The Foundation and several other separation-of-church-and-state organizations are fighting [Walters’] decree.”
Victory in our home state
A Wisconsin police department yanked a religious job posting due to a joint letter from the ACLU and FFRF. After a concerned resident of Germantown brought the organization’s attention to the social media post on Sept. 13, the two groups sent a letter of complaint on Sept. 26.
“The separation of church and state is a bedrock principle of our Constitution and identity as a nation,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi stated. “Favoring religious viewpoints sends an improper and exclusionary message in the hiring process and alienates individuals who do not share those religious beliefs. We hope this serves as a reminder to all government institutions to refrain from promoting religion in any official capacity.”
Mississippi governor’s unconstitutional proclamation
We expressed our strong opposition to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ recent “Christian Heritage Week” proclamation, which twists American history to paint a false narrative perpetuating the myth that America is a Christian nation, using deceptive, distorted and debunked quotes. “Gov. Reeves is misconstruing U.S. history to shape a narrative that pushes his Christian nationalist beliefs,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor remarks.
Our denunciation of an Alaska Ten Commandments exhibit
We denounced an officially approved proposed Ten Commandments exhibit in an Alaska borough assembly (Alaska’s equivalent of a county board) building. “Displaying the Ten Commandments in the Assembly chambers in this manner is not only an unconstitutional display of favoritism towards religion, it needlessly alienates and excludes borough residents who do not share the religious beliefs that the Ten Commandments embody and represent,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line has written to the Matanuska-Susitna mayor.
Catholic threat to women’s health
We also emphasized how Catholic threats to pregnant women are growing with the pope’s targeting of abortion doctors. The effects of the Church’s global war against reproductive rights were brought home this week by a new state of California lawsuit revealing that pregnant women facing the need for emergency termination of pregnancies are no longer safe anywhere in the United States — so long as Catholic hospitals are allowed to turn them away.
FFRF TV show guest sheds light on Black nonbelief
The guest on this week’s episode of our TV show, “Freethought Matters,” provides a highly informative primer on freethought in the Black community. Anthony B. Pinn is a distinguished professor of humanities and religion at Rice University. “Black humanism is a philosophy of life that questions, at the very least, and more typically rejects ideas of the divine that is committed to science, region, reason and logic, but also understands that race has been a significant element in the life of the United States,” Pinn explains to co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. You can already watch the show on our YouTube channel. Or find out where and when to catch it on television Sunday.
A takedown of Anthony Comstock
Due to our national convention over the past weekend, we missed sending out a notice on last week’s episode with Amy Sohn, author of the impressive recent book, “The Man Who Hated Women,” about Anthony Comstock. You can watch her takedown of Comstock on our YouTube channel to learn more about why this Victorian-era statute threatens reproductive rights.
How you can make a difference
Due to so much going on legislatively, FFRF Senior Policy Counsel Ryan Jayne and State Advocacy Specialist Ryan Dudley joined in on the latest episode of Freethought Radio to tell us how FFRF’s legislative arm (the FFRF Action Fund) tracks and influences legislation affecting the rights of nonbelievers — and how you can make a difference in your community.
A congressional excoriation of Project 2025
The Fund recently issued a statement spotlighting a new video issued by Rep. Jared Huffman, co-chair of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, exposing the titular policy agenda as a deliberate, extremist strategy to undermine democracy and impose a Christian nationalist ideology on the United States. “Christian nationalist extremists have infiltrated every level of government, from local school boards to the Supreme Court,” warns Huffman.
If you’d like to know what else the Fund has been up to, please visit here.
How Project 2025 threatens our Sundays
Annie Laurie has written a fun column warning about Project 2025’s proposed threat to our normal existence on Sundays.
“Who has the time to plow through 900-plus pages of the bureaucratic authoritarianism that is Project 2025?” she concludes her piece. “Not many of us — and that’s what its creators are banking on. The dire political consequences of Project 2025, such as eliminating checks and balances and amassing all regulatory power in the White House, may seem like remote threats. But the threat to our Sundays is personal. Please help the Freedom From Religion Foundation get out the word about what will happen to our weekends if we fail to stop Project 2025.”
It’s with your support that we’re fighting back against the religious right in order to be free from religion on Sundays — and every other day of the week.
2 Responses
You see unless I possess free will you cannot even be aware of my existence nor my responsibility of the creation of life
Why is free wil necessary? Because the truth cannot be estabished unless there is a bond of trust free will estabish how since judgement cannot be rendered unless the receptant has free will and thereby establishes the reasons for judgement – God cannot judge if you don’t possess the free will for your choice