religious discrimination

June 5, 2017April 18, 2020

Imprecise Labeling Of Terrorists Hurts Us All

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester UK

Terry Firma over at Friendly Atheist, got in a thither because an elected official in the UK tried to claim the bomber in the suicide attack in Manchester wasn’t a Muslim. Firma falls into the trap most people do when they react to terrorism by people who don’t look like them. While the bomber’s religion probably did play a part in the motivation in the attack, Firma misses the point that using such a wide brush to label religious people doesn’t make sense and can cause more collateral damage.

September 23, 2014April 18, 2020

Openly Secular: A Needed Project With A Vague Name

I’ve been part of the non-religious community for 20 years and one thing is constant, we have many different groups to support us and it seems new ones show up regularly. Case in point is ‘Openly Secular’, a ‘new’ coalition of several large secular groups. Its mission of drawing attention to discrimination of non-religious people is needed but I’m disappointed in the fact that they named the group ‘Openly Secular’ instead of ‘Openly Non-religious’.

July 19, 2014April 18, 2020

Anti-Discrimination Executive Order Won’t Include Religious Exemption

President Obama promised to issue an executive order that would prohibit Federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT people. It was announced on Friday that the order, to be signed on Monday, won’t include a broad religious exemption as some faith groups had requested. This is good news.

The call for a broad religious exemption in the coming order started after the Hobby Lobby court decision:

December 13, 2013April 18, 2020

Symbolic Deference To Religion Is A Problem In The US

cover to The IHEU Freedom of Thought Report 2013

This week the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) released a report titled ‘The IHEU Freedom of Thought Report 2013’ which focused specifically on discrimination against Humanists, atheists and the non-religious in every country in the world. While the worse result of being a freethinker could be death, there was some kind of discrimination in most countries including the United States.

May 2, 2013April 18, 2020

Today Is The National Day of Reason

graphic with words National Day of Reason

National Day of Reason: May 2nd 2013

Thursday May 2nd is the National Day of Reason in the United States. The day is a secular celebration for humanists, atheists, and other secularists and freethinkers in response to the National Day of Prayer, that is unfortunately a legal holiday in the United States. Our government shouldn’t be giving official sanction to a particular religious belief. It should spend its time trying to solve issues of concern to all Americans.