Vegan My Way

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill requiring public schools in our state to develop policies under which students will be permitted to pray at sports events, school assemblies, and even over school intercom systems. Bill, HB 638, was passed under the guise of protecting students’ religious freedom; however, it is an effort to bypass Engel v. Vitale and Abington School District v. Schempp, returning to the days before 1962 when prayer in school was inescapable.

The law was written to bypass the prohibition on formal school-sanctioned prayer. It does so by permitting students to deliver public prayers as long as they are accompanied by some sort of disclaimer from the school. But students and teachers have always had the right to pray in school, and is commonly exercised in Mississippi. What they have not had the right to do is impose their religious views on others.

David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, referred to the legislation as “an overt act of hostility against minority religious beliefs and atheists, disguised as religious freedom.” Implementing this law will further marginalize atheists and religious minorities.

American Civil Liberties Union, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are widely expected to fight this new legislation, which takes effect on July 1. These groups will need complaints in order to act, which include letters attempting to educate state officials on the law. It seems unlikely that school officials will give in to the pressure from these groups. This means that it might take the family of a child adversely affected by the law being willing to come forward as a plaintiff. Unfortunately, children will have to be harmed and complaints filed before real work can happen. 

Clearly violating the First Amendment, the law first surfaced in 2006. Since then the law, its sponsor Tom Riner (a practicing Baptist minister and the long-time Democratic state rep.), and the Kentucky state Supreme Court have refused to review the constitutionality of what became a 2008 homeland security law.

Currently everyone in Kentucky is potentially forced to assert that the safety of their state is dependent on “Almighty God” or face criminal charges, including up to 12 months in jail.

On November 13, 2012, American Atheists’ National Legal Director Edwin Kagin submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). American Atheists is asking SCOTUS to review the Kentucky Homeland Security law. The Circuit Court level ruled the law violated the First Amendment, but was reversed by the Kentucky state Court of Appeals.

The Kentucky Supreme Court refused to hear a motion for discretionary review to a state law that makes it mandatory that the Commonwealth and its citizens give credit to Almighty God for its safety and security.  This request was denied in a single line that said that “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln’s historic March 30, 1863, presidential proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy’s November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: “For as was written long ago: ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’”

You should also know…

Tom Riner is devoted to his faith even when that directly conflicts with his job as state rep. He has often been at the center of unconstitutional and expensive controversies throughout his 26 years in office. In the last ten years, Kentucky has spent more than $160,000 in string of losing court cases against the American Civil Liberties Union over the state’s decision to display the Ten Commandments in public buildings, legislation that Riner sponsored. One case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that such displays inside courthouses in two counties were unconstitutional.

To go further…

Abraham Lincoln’s views on religion were complicated, growing up in a highly religious family, but never joining any church.

Kennedy’s Roman Catholic faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president independent of the church. 

And even more info on American Atheist vs. Kentucky Homeland Security.

The trouble in Santa Monica began in 2009, when atheist Damon Vix applied for and was granted a booth in Palisades Park alongside the story of Jesus Christ’s birth.

Vix hung a simple sign that quoted Thomas Jefferson: “Religions are all alike, founded on fables and mythologies.” The other side read “Happy Solstice.”

The Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee who has put on the life-sized, 14-booth Nativity display in a Santa Monica park since 1953 sued the city after they banned the tradition rather than referee a religious dispute that began three years ago when atheists first stole the show with anti-God messages alongside the Christmas diorama.

U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins rejected a motion from the coalition of churches to allow the religious display during future seasons season.

Collins said the city was within its constitutional right to eliminate the exemption that had allowed the Nativity at the oceanfront Palisades Park because the change affected all comers – from Christians to Jews to atheists – and provided other avenues for public religious speech.

Santa Monica proved that it banned the displays not to squash religious speech but because they were becoming a drain on city resources, destroying the turf and obstructing ocean views. Churches can set up unattended displays at 12 other parks in the city with a permit and can leaflet, carol and otherwise present the Christmas story in Palisades Park when it is open.

Romney and Obama agree: the Boy Scouts should allow gay members.

Both could do more. Obama, for example, could resign as honorary president of the Boy Scouts. A former national board member of the Scouts, the Romney Campaign indicated he maintains the position he first made clear in 1994, but it would be cool if the man himself would make a statement to that effect.

Now the bad news… the Christians. Although is not only inaccurate and unfair, it can be harmful to those attacked by anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-anyone-not-like-me individuals and groups.

But when people like Bryan Fischer are the loudest Christian’s the rest of the population need to stand up and take a stand or keep their mouth compliantly shut and be shamed for it. 

Fischer made GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project list well before now, for multiple reasons, including:

“The homosexual agenda represents the single greatest modern threat to freedom of religion and conscience.”

‘… they [gay people] are Nazis … . They’ll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.”

‘Islam is a totalitarian political ideology. It is as racist as the KKK. … Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different than granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.’

- Fischer’s bullying prevention plan: ‘If We Want to See Fewer Students Commit Suicide, We Want Fewer Homosexual Students’

The fastest growing “religious” group in America is made up of people with no religion at all, according to a Pew survey showing that one in five Americans is not affiliated with any religion.

The number of these Americans has grown by 25% just in the past five years, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The survey found that the ranks of the unaffiliated are growing even faster among younger Americans.

Thirty-three million Americans now have no religious affiliation, with 13 million in that group identifying as either atheist or agnostic, according to the new survey.

Pew found that those who are religiously unaffiliated are strikingly less religious than the public at large. They attend church infrequently, if at all, are largely not seeking out religion and say that the lack of it in their lives is of little importance.

And yet Pew found that 68% of the religiously unaffiliated say they believe in God, while 37% describe themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious.” One in five said that they even pray every day.

John Green, a senior research adviser at Pew, breaks the religiously unaffiliated into three groups. First, he says, are those who were raised totally outside organized religion.

Second are groups of people who were unhappy with their religions and left.

The third group, Green says, comprises Americans who were never really engaged with religion in the first place, even though they were raised in religious households.

According to the poll, 88% of religiously unaffiliated people are not looking for religion.

Poll respondents 18-29 were also more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic. Nearly 42% religious unaffiliated people from that age group identified as atheist or agnostic, a number far greater than the number who identified as Christian (18%) of Catholic (18%).

(via atheismfuckyeah)

(via livealifethatscompletelyfree)

As well as being a way to try to penetrate the India market, if it takes off at all it’ll provide a valuable testing ground for the general concept. There are over 15 million vegetarians in the United States, for example, which is bigger than the population of Belgium, Greece, or Pennsylvania. A vegetarian fast food concept that works could have legs in many places around the world.

Rajesh Kumar Maini, a spokesman for McDonald’s India, told the Financial Times: “A vegetarian store makes absolute sense in the places which are famous as pilgrimage sites.” and Al Jazeera. “We have always been cognizant of the religion-based and other sensitivities of our customers, …We believe this endeavour of ours will also be well accepted.”

life-intact:

Fact: 99.9% of healthy, developmentally normal boys are born with a foreskin.

Fact: It is estimated that 20-30% of men worldwide have had their foreskin taken away (likely without their direct consent as adults) via crushing, ripping, tearing, slicing, or burning it off, without any pressing medical indication to do so.  When done in infancy, this procedure makes the glans into a raw, bloody surface, and creates an open penis wound in the environment of a diaper.

Fact: A 2007 study found that circumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis, and that the vast majority of remaining parts of the circumcised penis are less sensitive than the corresponding parts in the intact man.

(Taken from positivelysexypoliticsandstuff)

(Source: uncutting, via macaroni-overlord)