eximago:

howimetyourpadre:

msnbc:

NYT: 

CRANSTON, R.I. — She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

Image: Gretchen Ertl / The New York Times

People like her annoy the shit out of me. They weren’t forcing her to pray, she didn’t even have to acknowlege it was there but she goes and gets her panties up her ass and ruins a school tradition and takes away something that the people it was directed to found comfort and solace in. Same with the people who want to take “in god we trust” off the money, leave it alone, no ones forcing you to look at it. Leave it alone, I am so sick of hearing about stupid lawsuits like this. 

Heavy sigh…

As Jessica has stated, anyone who goes to that school and has to see that prayer everyday and isn’t a Christian gets to see that her school is a Christian one. The administration are Christians. Her fellow students are Christians. They get to see the prayer and be reminded constantly that they’re not the same as the rest of the school and that they’re ideas, beliefs, and passions aren’t welcome there— they’re not welcome there. It is her school too. A public school. That is, a school that’s funded by the government. By tax payers. The school broke the law when it put it up 49 years ago, and the “tradition” should never have started. It’s unconstitutional to have the prayer up which is exactly why she won the case.

Public schools are not the places for religious ritual in any form. If those kids who are heartbroken to see a prayer go, then they can go to a religious private school that doesn’t use tax payer dollars and have all the prayer they want.

nonplussedbyreligion:

Whose liberty, exactly?

icantbelieveitsalawblog:

NPR has a piece on the alleged infringement on religious liberty embodied in the Obama administration’s policies on issues like contraception and LGBT rights:

[Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group, Liberty Counsel] says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren’t trying to impose their religious views on others.

“What people of faith don’t want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief.”

[Rob Boston at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State] says of course religious believers want to impose their views on the world — witness the fight against same-sex marriage. But he says under the law, people can’t discriminate based on their religious beliefs, any more than a restaurant owner can cite the Bible in refusing to serve black customers. He says the solution is simple.

“If you don’t want to serve the public, don’t open a business saying you will serve the public.”

What’s happened in the past decade, [Douglas Laycock, a constitutional lawyer who argues cases on behalf of religious groups,] says, is that the culture wars have become a zero sum game. When one side wins, the other loses.

“The conservative religious groups want to take away all the liberty of the pro-choice and gay-rights people, and the pro-choice and gay-rights people want to take away all the liberty of the conservative religious groups,” he says. “Neither side seems interested in the American tradition of ‘live and let live’ and protect the liberty of both sides.”

And Laycock sees little chance of a detente, particularly in an election year.

READ MORE…

Here’s the thing: anyone who really believes this could be a simple matter of “live and let live” is either an idiot, a liar, or both.

What are the supposedly conflicting values here? If a religious person, whose job is to provide services to the public, is forced to help a gay person or distribute birth control, they have a crisis of conscience but can otherwise go about their day.

If they can practice their purportedly deeply-held religious convictions, then what happens? A gay couple cannot get legally married. An adult cannot obtain birth control. A pregnant person cannot obtain entirely-legal emergency contraception. This is a bit more than a crisis of conscience, so don’t give me any crap about the two somehow being equivalent.

On one side, we have people trying to live their lives.

On the other side, we have people claiming the “religious liberty” to interfere with those people’s lives. They are free to believe whatever b.s. they want, but if they want to claim that their religion prohibits them from doing their jobs in ways that harm other people, maybe they are in the wrong line of work.

Others’ rights should not be harmed so that you can successfully practice discrimination, whether or not a magical being in the sky told you to.

helvetebrann:

A Buncombe County mother was unhappy when her son came home from his fifth-grade class at North Windy Ridge intermediate school with a Bible. The state’s largest civil liberties group says the school overstepped its bounds.

Ginger Strivelli says her son came home from North Windy Ridge school in Weaverville on Monday with a Bible he got from a box left by the Gideons International group. Strivelli, a pagan, doesn’t think the school should offer any religious material to students.

“It’s totally inappropriate they think they can get away with this,” she said. “It’s absolutely unbelievable and their attitude is ridiculous.”

School officials contend they did nothing wrong. Principal Jackie Byerly said she got approval from the superintendent after the Gideons asked to leave Bibles at the school.

Students weren’t required to take Bibles, county schools spokeswoman Jan Blunt said. They were told by teachers that the books were available in a box in the main office.

“They don’t talk with students,” Blunt said, referring to the Gideons. “They’re not allowed to make a presentation. They quite literally drop off a box and leave them there. They are not handed out at all.”

That would be fine at a high school, according to Katy Parker, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation.

Parker said Tuesday that a 1998 federal court decision in a West Virginia case called Peck vs. Upshur County Board of Education determined that religious literature can be left for high school students, but not at elementary schools.

I feel like I have to repeat this quite frequently, but here we go:

Religion should be kept out of schools because schools are inherently influential.  Schools and school officials possess a position of power and influence.  Providing religious material to students immediately makes them more influential because of that inherent authority possessed by the school.

In short, even providing elementary aged students with the option to pick up a religious text immediately crosses a line.  There’s a reason that it’s illegal.

atheistfeed:

Al Qaeda has filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming that current airline regulations regarding what passengers can bring onto an airplane violates its constitutional right to religious liberty.

According to lawyers fir Al Qaeda, the first amendment prohibition on Congress impeding the free exercise of religion implies that it has no authority to prevent Al Qaeda operatives from hijacking American airplanes for destructive purposes. These acts constitute the religious practices of a sect that demands that its members attack and destroy infidels.

Lawyers for Al Qaeda argue, “This is our religion, and Congress is impeding our free exercise of that religion.”

Okay, there is no such lawsuit.

However, there are religious organizations in this country that are trying to defend a concept of religious liberty that, if we take them seriously, would make this type of argument appear sound. These organizations say that anything that can be defined as a “religious practice” - even if it is hurtful or harmful to the interests of those who are not members of that religion - must be respected by the government. Since attacking infidels fits this definition, the logical conclusion that this religious practice must be provided with constitutional protections.

The current form of the argument is one in which Catholic bishops in Illinois claim that “religious freedom” means that the government must turn a blind eye to the organization’s practice of actions hurtful and harmful to the interests of other citizens when acting as agents of government policy.

The current policy prohibits money spent on organizations that facilitate adoptions and foster care from going to organizations that discriminate against homosexual couples. Because these Catholic organizations are all about hateful bigotry against homosexuals, they have been forced to make a choice. They can continue to act as government agents and give up the practice of conducting their affairs in ways harmful to the interests of homosexual citizens, or give up the practice of acting as government agents (and the government money that comes with it).

This, they say, is a violation of their religious liberty.

( See New York Times Bishops Say Rules on Gay Parents Limit Freedom of Religion)

The fact is that their religious liberty is not being interfered with.

Nobody is going to arrest members of this sect simply because they are members if a hateful and bigoted religious sect. No attempts are being made to outlaw the sect or make membership a crime. The right to freedom of religion protects sect members from this type of action.

Nobody is going to arrest members of this sect for preaching their brand of hateful bigotry to the public. While the potential victims of their primitive superstitious hatreds may have a vested interest in shutting them up, the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech prohibit this. Those prohibitions are not being threatened.

Nobody is going to prohibit members of this sect from engaging in private actions that express their primitive, irrational bigotry. In their private actions, they remain free to refuse to shop at businesses that are owned by gay couples and to refuse to watch shows with gay actors or that have pro-homosexual themes. They may freely use their hateful bigotry as a criteria in determining who gets their vote and who gets the benefits of their acts of private charity.

As citizens, they have a right to vote and to have a say in determining what government policies are. They have an opportunity to support candidates and to lobby the legislative and executive branches to get a permission for their agents to act on their primitive bigoted superstitions while serving as government agents. These rights are not being threatened.

However, there is no right to act in ways hurtful or harmful to the interests of other citizens while acting as government agents. The “right to religious liberty” does not provide this right. Those other citizens have a right to demand that the government treat them with the dignity due to peaceful citizens, even if certain primitive superstitious refuse to do so.

If these types of religious practices are given constitutional protection, then why not the Al Qaeda operative who wants to fly an airplane into a building filled with infidels? Or the anti-abortion opponent who thinks it is permissible to kill a doctor that performs abortions? Is it because these acts, unlike the acts of the anti-gay bigot are harmful to the interests of others?

Interfering with a gay couple’s opportunity to adopt a child may not be in the same category as shooting them or blowing them up, but it is in the same category with respect to being hurtful and harmful to their interests. As such, it is not something that deserves special protection as a religious practice - at the expense of those citizens who would be its victims. Particularly when these sect members are being paid to act in the capacity of government agents. http://dlvr.it/12gtkj

I’m not down with slippery slope arguments, but this is quite reasonable- considering that religious exemptions are already being used to deny women equal treatment in healthcare and gays in marriage. 

divineirony:

Especially liberty of thought, speech and autonomy. Your freedom to make money is highly regarded though.

artoftheunbeliever:

Religion vs. Free Speech, art by OnePieceOfSHiTaKE