June 26, 2015 was an important day in the United States for both Equality Under the Law and Freedom of Religion due to the Obergefell vs Hodges Supreme Court Decision legalizing marriage equality in the United States.

The full text of the Obergefell vs Hodges Decision can be found at the link below.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf

By their nature, religion and humanism are largely seen as foes. But this is not always true in every respect. In fact, parts of Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on human ecology and the environment, Laudato Si (Praise be to you), share elements of humanist philosophy.

Nous sommes EAME

by Groff Schroeder

Another mass murder. Another "lone nut."  Another brilliant upcoming objective Public Servant who dared to serve the People (instead of The people) dead - along with many others who dared to associate with him.

Why in America are guns beloved far above true Public Servants?  Why are the taxes that pay their salaries - and fund the sewers, emergency services, public infrastructure, and public welfare we all depend upon - hated, reviled, and evaded in a way that was once illegal but now has become a way of life?

Correctly performed and logically interpreted statistics play essential roles in science, engineering, and medicine, providing information about objective (verifiable) aspects of the system under study. Statistical analyses in materials science and design engineering ensure the wheels of your car do not fly off into the distance when you hit a pothole at 15 miles per hour. Logic, the scientific method, and statistics helped scientists to show that smoking causes heart disease. Because most smokers also drink coffee, the same series of scientific studies showed coffee drinking is associated with (only appears to cause) heart disease. 

In December of 2014, Chancellor Jack Hawkins sent an email to the faculty, staff, and students of Troy University in Alabama containing a video warning that morality can come only from religion

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has uttered some odd, if not downright scary, views on any number of topics, including his firm belief in the devil. He claims a commitment to “originalism” in judicial philosophy, which basically means using historical inquiry to discern the original intent of the Constitution’s framers. This once led him to argue that flogging in the 21^st century would be allowable because the framers did not specifically prohibit it.

But these examples aside, it is Scalia’s church-state views that really give one pause.

It appears that a small number of extremely well funded Christians and Christian groups have been relatively successful in buying (from our "elected" "representatives") the legal precedent that Christian "freedom of religion" does not exist unless Christians have the ability (special right) to deny a wide variety of freedoms from everyone else. Non-Christians and non-believers already have to put up with frank religiousity in government settings such as government sponsored prayer favoring a single religion, religious statements favoring judeo-christian religion on currency, state sponsored religiously motivated limits to reproductive freedom, unequal treatment of minorities based on religious beliefs, state support of religion through tax free status, etc., etc., etc.

In September 2013 and again in May 2014, courts rejected lawsuits brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) to remove the motto “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency. The courts said the phrase does not impose a substantial burden on unbelievers and does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Plaintiffs, represented by lawyer and atheist Michael Newdow, had argued that they were “forced to proselytize -- by an Act of Congress -- for a deity they don’t believe in whenever they handle money.”

by  Andrew Seidel, Freedom From Religion Foundation

The satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo is the latest target for religiously-motivated violence. Three Muslim men didn't like the way the authors, journalists, and cartoonists thought, so they murdered them. Twelve lives ended. Families shattered. Children parentless. And Bill Donahue of the Catholic League says, "Muslims are right to be angry." Donahue sided with the murderers, condemning only their method but saying that we should not "tolerate the kind of intolerance that provoked this violent reaction" and that it was "too bad" Charlie's editor "didn't understand the role he played in his" own death. Isn't it just like religion to blame the victim?

Ballwin officials voted Monday to reject a plan to to put up an "In God We Trust" sign on city property.

The Holy Infant Knights of Columbus had pledged $750 to putting the motto on a sign in this St. Louis suburb. All the plan needed was the approval of the city's board of aldermen.

The aldermen voted 6 to 2 against displaying the motto "In God We Trust" in four-inch letters behind the dais, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Faithful to the Founders?

by Ken Burrows

The May 5th Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway concluded that the practice by the Greece, NY, town board of opening its meetings with predominantly Christian prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. This ruling greenlights a certain religious imposition on those citizens attending the town board meetings who see themselves as excluded or at least marginalized by being subjected to official governmental prayer, sectarian in nature, that effectively endorses a faith they do not themselves subscribe to.

Government and employers capture the employee bedroom

by Groff Schroeder

The stunning Burwell v. Hobby Lobby et.al. Supreme Court Decision grants "closely held" corporations newly created "religious freedoms" that trump the religious freedoms of living breathing human beings.  This creates a special class of "corporate personhood" with the power to nullify the human freedoms and Constitutional Rights of its Human employees.

More than 200 years ago, the founding fathers of the United States of America created a unique system of government Constitution based on Enlightenment principles and a series of Amendments called the “Bill of Rights.” Although designed to protect individual citizens from government overreach and dedicated to equality under the law, their original Constitution perpetuated slavery and guaranteed equality only to male land owners.

In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis indirectly coined the phrase, “laboratory of democracy” to describe America's state legislatures by writing, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Since the 2010 midterms, it appears that these metaphorical laboratories have initiated numerous experiments with America's most basic ideals.

Two states now prohibit state employee's unions from participating in collective bargaining, apparently denying American citizens in those states the right to enter into contracts if they choose to exercise their freedom of association and freedom of speech at the same time. America's challenging economic climate has led nineteen states to allow state government to forcibly intervene in local finances. Michigan even allows transferring the power and duties of municipal representatives elected by the People to an “emergency manager” appointed by the governor. Angry citizens soundly revoked this law at the ballot box by citizen initiative, but a “lame duck” session of the state legislature that originally passed the law reinstated it. When a US District Court failed to issue an injunction, Detroit's approximately 700,000 citizen's came to live under the “orders” of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, rather than a democratic government of their own, duly elected representatives.

Around Italy, Researchers Rally to Defend Science