Author Archive for Hemant MehtaPage 4 of 124

Catholic School: We Forfeit the State Championship because There’s a Girl on the Other Team

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 11, 2012
.

Paige Sultzbach must be one hell of an athlete because she’s scaring away the competition.

Paige Sultzbach (Carlos Chavez - The Republic)

Her school, Mesa Preparatory Academy in Arizona, doesn’t have a softball team, so she decided to try out for the boys’ baseball team. To no one’s surprise, she made it. They went undefeated all season (with a 9-0 record) and were excited to play for the Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship on Wednesday night.

Unfortunately, her team faced the aptly-named Our Lady of Sorrows Academy… a school that doesn’t think women ought to allowed to play a Man’s Game:

But Our Lady of Sorrows, a fundamentalist Catholic school in Phoenix that lost twice to Mesa Prep during the regular season, chose to forfeit the championship game rather than play a team fielding a female player.

Our Lady of Sorrows school officials would not comment, but Sultzbach’s mother, Pamela Sultzbach, said her daughter and the rest of the team received the news after Wednesday afternoon’s practice.

“This is not a contact sport, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Pamela said. “It wasn’t that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it’s that (they believe) that a girl’s place is not on a field.”

…

“I respect their views, but it’s a bit out of the 18th century,” said Mesa Prep athletic director Amy Arnold, who is the only woman now coaching a boys high-school football team in Arizona.

Sultzbach’s team won the state championship, but not in the way they would’ve liked to. Meanwhile, the athletes on the opposing team didn’t even get a chance to play in the game they had worked toward all season.

In a statement put out by Our Lady of Sorrows, school officials didn’t seem the least bit sorry for what they did:

As a Catholic school we promote the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education.

Our school aims to instill in our boys a profound respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we choose not to place them in an athletic competition where proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty.

… and we all know the best way to treat women with respect is to avoid letting them beat the crap out of our team.

They’re not doing the ladies any favor by refusing to play a team that has one on it. What part of teamwork and practice can’t women participate in?

The school needs to issue a second statement that begins with an apology to the entire Mesa Preparatory Academy team for choosing the cowards’ way out of the game. Then they can apologize to their own students for not letting them play for the state title because of some warped policy that bans co-ed sports because boys and girls must be taught “separately” in their little world.

Sultzbach has already been way more respectful to the other team than they deserve. When they played each other during the regular season, she sat out during both of the games. But she rightly refused to do that for the state championship.

I hope college recruiters are taking a good look at her. She seems like a strong girl who has a great athletic career in front of her.

(Thanks to Dani for the link)

Reasons for Invoking God’s Name…

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 11, 2012
.

There really are no other reasons, are there?

(via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

When it Comes to Same-Sex Marriage, Those Without a Religious Identity Lead the Way

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 11, 2012
.

A recent Gallup poll asked this question: “Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?”

The headlines were all about how acceptance for same-sex couples was at 50% — it was only the second time that support for gay marriage polled higher than rejection of it.

But I can’t believe this result didn’t get more attention:

88% of the Nones support gay marriage! The people with no religious identification, including atheists and agnostics, are on the right side of history. And, it turns out, the less you go to church, the more accepting (and loving) you are.

If anyone needs a reason to build the case of why religion is bad for us, there’s Exhibit A.

(Thanks to Ben for the link!)

Who’s Criticizing Obama on His Gay-Marriage Stance?

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 11, 2012
.

(In response to Rush Limbaugh‘s criticism)

Colorado Governor’s Day of Prayer Proclamations Ruled Unconstitutional!

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

This is a big deal.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation just won a legal battle against the former and current governors of Colorado regarding their proclamations in support of the Day of Prayer.

The three-judge panel issued this unanimous ruling today (PDF):

A reasonable observer would conclude that these proclamations send the message that those who pray are favored members of Colorado’s political community, and that those who do not pray do not enjoy that favored status.

…

… the six Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations [2004-09] at issue here are governmental conduct that violate the Preference Clause [of the Religious Freedom section of Colorado’s Constitution]… [The content is] predominantly religious; they lack a secular context; and their effect is government endorsement of religion as preferred over nonreligion.

In short: We know you’re using your role as governor to endorse belief in god and you can’t do that.

The FFRF litigants wanted previous Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations declared unconstitutional and they want to prevent further proclamations from being issued. Initially, a judge said FFRF had the right to sue on behalf of Colorado taxpayers but the governor wasn’t doing anything illegal.

FFRF didn’t like that ruling and wanted to challenge it. The Governor didn’t like that FFRF had a right to sue. So they took the case to a state Appeals court.

There, the judges said FFRF still has the right to sue.

The Governor’s people didn’t want to address the Constitutionality of the proclamations — they just said it was a part of state history. But the court said that was a lie:

There [was] no indication in the record that, at the time of Colorado’s founding or at any time before 2004, Colorado’s governors had an annual tradition of proclaiming, separately from Thanksgiving, a Colorado Day of Prayer.

Furthermore, they said, it’s not a secularized day, like Christmas or Thanksgiving. It’s “avowedly religious.” The court then said “we conclude that the six Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations have predominantly religious content.”

So what would a reasonable observer think about the proclamations?

The court had an answer:

Looking through the eyes of a reasonable observer, we conclude that the Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations at issue here have the primary or principal effect of endorsing religious beliefs because they “convey[] or attempt[] to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.”

As a result of the ruling, all six of the Day of Prayer proclamations from 2004-2009 have been ruled unconstitutional. Whether the governor can issue proclamations in the future is still up in the air — they’ll figure that out next.

So will this affect the National Day of Prayer? Nope. That’s a separate issue.

What about proclamations regarding the Day of Reason? No idea… it’s likely those will be just fine… unless a religious group wants to say in court that supporting Reason is somehow anti-religious… it may be true, but I don’t think any religious group wants to say that out loud :)

FFRF’s litigation attorney Richard L. Bolton gets the credit for making this happen, as do the Colorado taxpayers who sued in the first place: Mike Smith, David Habecker, Timothy G. Bailey and Jeff Baysinger.

We Are Stardust in the Highest Exalted Way

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was born to be autotuned:

You know, for someone who doesn’t call himself an atheist, he’s kind of awesome… :)

(via melodysheep)

Another ‘Teen Mom’ Reveals Her Atheism

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

A month ago, I posted about how one of the cast members of “Teen Mom 2,” Kailyn Lowry, openly talked about her atheism on Twitter.

Yesterday, one of her followers questioned her status as a role model because of that:


Not one to shy away from the label, Kailyn not only reaffirmed her atheism, she did it while giving a shout-out to President Obama:


And a few minutes later, one of her “Teen Mom 2″ costars, Jenelle Evans, wrote back to both of them:


Again, it’s not so much that these are teenagers coming out as atheists — That happens all the time. But we don’t normally see teens already under the glare of the media spotlight willing to talk about something like religion, especially when their views put them in the minority. Maybe the fact that they’re already letting people peek into a huge part of their lives gives them the confidence to be honest about other aspects of it.

In any case, it’s welcoming to see MTV stars open up about their atheism like it was no big deal.

(via Gather)

A Message From Lori Lipman Brown to Edwina Rogers

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

When the Secular Coalition for America opened for business in September of 2005, it was led by Lori Lipman Brown, a former state senator from Nevada who managed the SCA and lobbied Congress until she left the organization in January of 2009.

(Lori was also hilariously interviewed by Stephen Colbert in a “Better Know a Lobby” segment.)

With Edwina Rogers taking the helm of the organization, I asked Lori what the thought of the new appointment — especially in light of all the ensuing controversy — and this is what she told me:

I wish the new Executive Director success as she leads the Secular Coalition for America. It is important that the person speaking to members of Congress and their staffs has good skills for the Hill. This is more important than party affiliation. While I may find it difficult to imagine working for some of her previous employers, given their theocratic views on our issues, it is my understanding that Ms. Rogers specialized in health care and economic issues when she worked for them, not church/state separation or the treatment of nontheistic Americans. Hopefully, she will bring a strong voice for OUR issues. It is also important to recognize that it may take a few weeks for the new person to become fully versed on the current issues on the table. I recall that I learned much from our partners in allied coalitions during my first few weeks. Time will tell, but I’m always hopeful that our movement will succeed.

Lori added that she’s aware that there can be overlap between health care/economic issues and nontheistic issues, but hopefully, Rogers’ focus was not on things like “pushing public money to churches or denying access to prescriptions based on religious belief of pharmacists.”

Judge to School District: Let’s Cut the Ten Commandments Down to Six

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

Last June, after a contentious battle that ended in a Ten Commandments banner being taken down, the school board in Giles County, Virginia voted 3-2 to rehang the display, surrounding it with other historical documents.

The old Ten Commandments display in a Giles County school

Is that still government endorsement of religion?

That battle is playing out in the courts right now.

During oral arguments this week, Judge Michael Urbanski offered up a possible compromise as the case goes into mediation:

“If indeed this issue is not about God, why wouldn’t it make sense for Giles County to say, ‘Let’s go back and just post the bottom six?’” Urbanski asked during a motions hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke.

“But if it’s really about God, then they wouldn’t be willing to do that.”

Interesting theory. Here are the Commandments that would get cut if both sides accepted the deal:

  • I am the Lord thy God, Thou shalt not have strange gods before me
  • Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image
  • Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
  • Remember to keep holy the sabbath day

And there are the ones that would remain:

  • Honor your father and your mother
  • Thou shalt not kill
  • Thou shalt not commit adultery
  • Thou shalt not steal
  • Thou shalt not bear false witness
  • Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s wife

Stephen Hirtle from the Steel City Skeptics doesn’t think this revised version would be any better:

As rules for the students to live by, this list is very odd. How about “Study hard” or “Do not cheat on exams”. More to the point, the Ten Commandments are there not because of what they say, but because of what they imply. They are an arbitrary list of rules that are important to the religious, as they establish the precedent that certain rules transcend humans and come directly from a god. To accept the Commandments is to accept your god as the ultimate decider. The judge even mocked the school board in their disingenuous comments:

He’s right. The revised version isn’t any better than the original. You might as well cut the bits about coveting a neighbor’s wife and committing adultery since it doesn’t directly apply to them. Good luck telling high school students to obey their parents. And it’s more than a bit dispiriting that anyone would have to tell high school students not to kill each other.

If mediation doesn’t work out, the same judge will have to decide the case. From his comments so far, it sounds like he understands this is all about sticking god into the public schools — not showcasing a display of historical documents for students — and he will likely vote it down. Let’s hope that’s the case anyway.

If the school board loses the case, they run the risk of having to pay over $100,000 in court costs to the ACLU.

…

Incidentally, an anonymous student from Giles County’s Narrows High School is the plaintiff:

In court documents, the Associated Press reported, the student spoke of feeling compelled to “hide participation in this lawsuit from my closest friends and the person I am dating.”

“Filing this lawsuit has not been easy, and I would not have done it if I were not genuinely disturbed by the Ten Commandments in the school,” the student said in the court statement…


More Stories from Atheists in Christian Workplaces

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

Over the weekend, this was posted at Postsecret:

I’ve heard from a few of you who are in that type of predicament right now. Turns out the secret’s owner isn’t alone.

From one reader:

Five years ago, after growing up in and being educated in church institutions, I lost my faith. Trouble is, I’m married to a pastor and have since entered church employment myself — I lost my non-church job early in the economic crisis and a number of months later was finally offered a job at a church institution. I keep the job because it provides education benefits to my children and will for some time to come.

The only scenarios in which I can imagine coming out are these: a) my husband also loses his faith, and b) divorce. Every other one involves both of us losing our jobs and those education benefits.

In the meantime, I view church and my workplace as an anthropological expedition while maintaining authentic relationships. I try not to do both things at the same time.

Another noticed a secret of his own at the church he works at:

I was an agnostic when I started working at church, grew to an atheist while working there. I think it’s probably more common than you think.

I have a few stories, like how the head preacher puts an envelope into the offering bucket faithfully every service and it’s always empty. He gives once a year, on 12/31, probably after consulting his tax accountant.

Also, staff meetings suck. As with any place, people often disagree on how things should be done. But inevitably some idiot is going to chime in and say “Well I believe God wants us to….” or even better, “I prayed about this last night and
God told me we should…”

HOW THE HELL DO YOU REASON WITH THAT?

I can’t quite say “That’s just bullshit.”

And that is why so many bad decisions are made in the church business.

One reader worked in a religious non-profit group for a long time:

You asked about atheists working in religious organizations. I did for 15 years and it was interesting. At the start, about 20% of the money came from the US Government and 80% came from private donations. Being an older Christian organization, the main donors were also older. Between this core group starting to die off and the general economic downturn, the funding started to shift until it was about 50/50. Total budget was about $80 million, at least as of two years ago when I left.

Now, the fun thing about federal grants is that they explicitly cite that the money has to go to the designated project (no surprise), but in our case, it also said we had to not be using it for religious purposes. I don’t know if this is standard federal contract language (I hope it is) but it was in ours.

As the shift in funding sources progressed, I got more and more requests to find ways to move some of my funding ($10 million of the government money) over to the more religious side. I will admit I took some delight in draping myself in the constitution and contract and regretfully telling them I couldn’t. I am not American, which made it a bit more fun. In any case, I had that legal support, which helped a lot. My direct boss, also an atheist, was in charge of the full $40 million and worked in head office. He faced much more constant pressure on the topic of funding and was the one who taught me to reach for the contract every time it came up.

Our half of the office worked with refugees and he came to the US as a refugee. He was ideologically motivated to work with refugees, so he was willing to deal with the churchy part of things. In my case, we were in Kenya and did direct service, so the churchy part never came through, at least until I was promoted to more senior levels. By then, I ran our office and could set the tone, so I didn’t have to deal with constant churchy-ness. In both our cases, there were a lot of “fellow travelers” who wanted to help refugees, but for religious reasons. Given how limited aid to refugees is, we could usually find enough common ground to work with the church groups.

Writing this, I realize that it may impact on the recent “Catholic hospitals getting government money and refusing to give staff birth control.” It might be rather interesting to see the contract, agreement, or cooperative agreement that the government gives those hospitals. I wager there are a number which have language about keeping things secular and where the terms of the contract are being breached. I wonder if they can be accessed with FOIA or some other public transparency method.

There have to be more of these… keep sending them!

Thoughts About Barack Obama, Sean Faircloth, and Edwina Rogers

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

In the wake of President Obama saying he supported same-sex marriage yesterday, most people were thrilled. I was. And why not? No American president has ever said that before and symbolic affirmation is significant. Yeah, some people weren’t impressed, but what else is new?

Here’s a hypothetical: Regardless of what Obama said, what if it was Mitt Romney who had come out in support of marriage equality instead?

What if he figured out that most of the people voting for him are going to support him regardless? They’re not about to vote for Obama. What if Romney decided to make a play for the youth vote? What if he was the one who made news by saying he was in support of marriage equality — despite what others in his party want him to say — and he hoped states would follow in that direction? What if he said his marriage was strong and wonderful and he wanted all couples, both gay and straight, to experience that as well?

Implausibility aside, a Republican nominee for president voicing an opinion like that could arguably do more to get bigoted voters to think differently about gay marriage than anything Obama could do. (I mean, it’s not like they’re going to change their mind because of what he said.)

So, I’ve been reading the conversations about Edwina Rogers and listening as everyone goes out of their way to find reasons to discredit her. She recently gave money to Republicans like Rick Perry. She wasn’t a vocal atheist before now. She’s not realistic about what the GOP is like these days.

None of these things concern me very much.

I wasn’t part of the hiring conversations but it looks like the Secular Coalition for America made a strategic decision based on everyone who applied. They took on someone who had significant lobbying experience, knew how to manage a staff, and believed in our mission. The fact that she was a Republican was seen as an asset — a way to get through to the people least sympathetic to our cause — not a liability.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that Sean Faircloth, who is now working for the Richard Dawkins Foundation and has been an outspoken advocate for our issues, had virtually no knowledge about our movement until he read an article quoting SCA President Herb Silverman in the New York Times. He was surprised to find an organization that promoted his non-belief and he soon applied for the Executive Director position.

The article came out on April 29th, 2009. The SCA publicized Sean’s hiring as Executive Director on June 3th, 2009. In other words, it was about a month between discovering our movement existed and taking the reins of the SCA.

Did he know everything about our cause beforehand? No, but he self-identified as an atheist. He just never really did much with that label before his new job compelled him to make a big deal about it.

Is anyone doubting his sincerity and dedication to our cause now?

Edwina Rogers is only different in that she’s coming from a party that actively opposes our values. Still, she has said time and time again that she doesn’t align with the party on those fronts. If she’s a Republican, it’s for different reasons.

She also says she believes (“100%”) in our mission.

Now, we have to give her time to figure out what makes our movement tick. I know we want her to be well-versed in it already, but that’s not going to happen overnight.

People are threatening to stop donating to the SCA because of her — to that, I’d say, “Stop acting prematurely.”

Yesterday, when the SCA denounced Catholic CEO group Legatus for filing a lawsuit because they didn’t want their insurance plans to cover contraceptive care as the Department of Health and Human Services mandated, Rogers offered a statement that sure as hell sounded like it would come from “one of us”:

“Legatus is asking the government to place the religious beliefs of the employer over the individual religious beliefs of the employees, and they are doing it under a smoke screen of religious persecution,” said Edwina Rogers, Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for America. “True religious freedom allows for individuals to make personal moral and health decisions for themselves.”

Doesn’t sound like a “typical” Republican to me.

If Rogers works out for the SCA, it could help us *considerably* in the long run. A lot of people are being way too myopic about her hiring. Give her time to learn her job and advocate for us well. If she can’t, there will be plenty of time to complain.

Are You Starting Facebook Flame Wars?

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

Alright, how many of you see a Facebook status update regarding religion… and feel the urge to response with snark?

If you do, is it even worth it?

(Also, how the hell does a pig type on a computer?)

(via The Atheist Pig)

A Christian Rock Band Fired Him for Being an Atheist; Now, He Tells His Story

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 10, 2012
.

Back in 2008, the popular Christian rock band Haste the Day kicked out one of its guitarists, Jason Barnes, because he was an atheist.

When I posted about it then, I had no idea what prompted his deconversion.

Roy Culver recently caught up with Barnes and asked him about what made him walk away from his faith (and, therefore, his band) and what it was like telling the people close to him:

And what began that journey to begin thinking more objectively about Christianity? Did that present a crisis for you?

Well, for me it was just bound to happen. I am the kind of person who needs good reason and evidence to believe something, and it became increasingly difficult to square my Christian worldview with reality. The amount of mental gymnastics I had to put myself through to keep rationalizing my religious faith started to get really old. There seemed to be a mental mechanism that I was employing that felt dishonest and didn’t allow me to really address challenges and questions about faith. Once I decided to be completely honest about what I believed to be true and where the evidence pointed, religion naturally dissolved for me.

…

How has your family dealt with your departure from Christianity?

That was actually the most unpleasant conversation — nobody wants to make their mother cry. The bizarre part of it is, I didn’t do anything wrong, you know? I was just being honest. I would imagine gay people deal with a similar coming out process.

The good news is that Jason has moved on and he’s with a new band (called, appropriately perhaps, On the Shoulders of Giants). Check out the rest of Roy’s interview here for more of the details.

There’s a Way To Help Nonbelieving Clergy Members

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 9, 2012
.

Ex-Pastors Teresa MacBain and Jerry DeWitt appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Monday to discuss how and why they left their faiths. The audio and transcript are now available. Here’s one of the happier moments:

[Host] Neil Conan: Was there a moment when you decided you had to come clean about your beliefs?

Jerry DeWitt: Yeah, there actually was. It came for me — I began to realize that there was no way that I could live a satisfying life without ministering to someone. I had been in the ministry for 25 years, growing up in the Pentecostal Church, and as I tried to take on just a secular lifestyle, I realized that being a minister is who I am.

And so I had made connections through the Clergy Project and had a connection with an organization called Recovering from Religion. And I said that’s the people I’m going to minister to now, fellow clergy who don’t believe, people who are trying to move out of their religious experience. I’m going to minister to them, and that’s going to require a public commitment.

So at that moment, things begin to really get exciting.

…

While we’re on the subject, the Freedom From Religion Foundation is now allowing people to tag The Clergy Project when they make donations. The money will go specifically toward help ministers and clergy members who don’t believe in god anymore and who need a way out of the pulpit.

Funds donated to The Clergy Project will help meet many needs, including:

  • Scholarships for educational retraining. It is hard for someone with a divinity degree and a history of preaching to find new employment, especially in today’s economy. Without an exit strategy that allows a minister to continue to provide for their family, it is nearly impossible to consider leaving the pulpit.

  • Temporary hardship grants. Some of the clergy in the project tell heartbreaking stories of being unceremoniously thrown out into the street (literally, in one case!) and locked out when their nonbelief became known. Others who have voluntarily “graduated” to civilian life are finding it immensely difficult to land on their feet.

  • Maintenance of the forum. The Clergy Project forum is a secret, invitation-only online sanctuary where former and active nonbelieving clergy can talk freely, comparing stories, suggesting resources, sharing concerns, asking for help, and finding a sympathetic nonjudgmental community of others who have wrestled with this unique situation.

If you’d like to contribute, you can do that here — just click on “Clergy Project” from the dropdown menu.

A Farewell to Beloved Children’s Author (and Atheist) Maurice Sendak

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 9, 2012
.

The great Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, died yesterday at the age of 83.

The Illini Secular Student Alliance reminds us of this excerpt from an interview he did with NPR’s Fresh Air in 2003:

“I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I — it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. … You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson — she’s probably the top — Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.”

It’s sad to see him go, but what a legacy of stories he left behind.

Security Expert Bruce Schneier Responds to Sam Harris

Published
by
Hemant Mehta
on May 9, 2012
.

Security expert Bruce Schneier has taken Sam Harris to task on his proposal to profile Muslims at the airport. I don’t have time to analyze the back and forth right now (it’s late; I’m tired) but I still think it sets a good example when Harris offer up his own site for a guest post that includes this opening:

Why do otherwise rational people think it’s a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.”

This is a bad idea. It doesn’t make us any safer — and it actually puts us all at risk.

Harris says he’ll respond to Schneier soon.