| Advocating progressive values and equality for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers |
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| Advocating progressive values and equality for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers |
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American Humanist Association |
Humanist Network News |
Humanist Network News
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I just finished watching a video of George Takei accepting the 2012 LGBT Humanist Pride Award, which we can’t wait to show our attendees of the American Humanist Association Conference in New Orleans in just three weeks! It’s always an exciting time here at the AHA headquarters in Washington DC, where we are busily preparing to put together an exciting four days of informative lectures and fun activities for humanists and atheists from across the country. Even though early-bird registration has ended, it’s not too late to register and get your chance to meet Gloria Steinem, Cenk Uygur, Jessica Ahlquist, and others! We hope to see you in the Big Easy!
Maggie Ardiente
Editor, HNN
Listen to famed astronomer Carl Sagan accept the AHA’s Humanist of the Year award at the 1981 AHA Conference in San Diego, California.
The American Humanist Association joins organizations in Washington DC to lobby House members against voting on Rep. Adams amendment to the Violence Against Women Act, which would allow religious discrimination in hiring practices for groups receiving federal funds.
Read the letter below:
The American Humanist Association is asking its 20,000 members and supporters to contact their Representative and oppose the House version of the Violence Against Women Act that includes Rep. Adams’ amendment to provide federal funds for religious discrimination. Our simple Action Alert system allows you to enter in your zip code and send an email to your Representative. Take action now through the AHA’s Action Alerts.
In conjunction with the 71st Annual Conference in New Orleans, the AHA and the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard’s Values in Action are partnering with the Make It Right Foundation to participate in a volunteer service project. Learn more and sign up!
By Steve Major
As a kid, I once asked my father why churches didn’t have to pay taxes. He responded vaguely, saying that churches were considered beneficial to society in a way that justified their not being taxed.
“What about theaters?” I replied. “Surely one learns more about the world, and morality, and what kinds of choices each of us would make in difficult situations from theater than we do listening to someone lecture from a pulpit about what’s good and what’s evil.”
My father, who had given up on religion in college and stopped going to church when my mother kept making fun of him for it, wasn’t particularly predisposed to defend the tax laws set in place by many generations of politicians trying to out Jesus one another in a pandering quest for votes.
My understanding of the topic has gotten more nuanced since those early days. I know now, for example, that many regional theaters are tax-exempt nonprofits, though they need to demonstrate an educational component beyond the shows they put up. That’s why virtually all regional theaters have either children’s classes or free performances for local schools.
A key component to being a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is the need to demonstrate that it represents a clear benefit for society at large. The government doesn’t give them money, but nor do they need to pay taxes on the money they raise. Even better, people who donate to a nonprofit can pay slightly less on their taxes as well.
The American Humanist Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, of course, as are a tremendous number of other very worthy organizations—groups that stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves, or feed the hungry, or rescue kittens, or fund cancer research.
Some religious organizations do those things too, but that isn’t their primary mission, in the same sense that teaching kids how to act isn’t the primary mission of a theater. As far as I can tell, a religious organization’s primary mission is to interpret that group’s holy text for its members, and to helpfully remind them that everyone except for them will be spending eternity in hell.
I am skeptical as to whether that really benefits anyone, let alone society as a whole, but since historically religion has helped fund a lot of great art, music, and architecture, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they’ve earned their nonprofit status.
The real problem is the degree to which religious organizations enjoy the largess of the government many levels beyond all other kinds of nonprofit institutions.
I’m employed by a nonprofit and still have to pay full income taxes on my salary, but anyone considered part of a “ministry” is exempt from paying taxes on their church-related income. Those nonprofit employees who own their own homes have to pay property taxes, but anyone in a ministry is exempt from that burden. Similarly, if a university owns a building which it uses for some purpose outside of its primary mission, it is required to pay property taxes on it. Not so for a religious organization.
Unlike the rest of us nonprofits, who fill out special tax forms every year detailing all of our relevant financial information, religious organizations are allowed to keep their financial activities a secret. There’s good reason to make every legal organization explain where they’ve been getting their money and what they do with it, as it goes a long way to combat fraud and illegal transactions. Right off the top of my head, I can think of several giant, obsessively secretive religions whose lack of government oversight concerns me.
But it doesn’t end there. There is a price that the rest of us nonprofits have to pay to be tax-exempt institutions: we agree to play by the same nondiscrimination laws as regular companies. Religious organizations are free to discriminate to their hearts content.
The rest of us are required to pay employees a minimum wage or higher, and have to promise not to keep our workers trapped on boats for years at a time, working them to the brink of exhaustion for zero dollars an hour with the constant threat of isolation, ostracization, and torture. Certain highly litigious mega-cults feel differently.
This discrepancy came to the forefront of the media’s attention earlier this year when the Catholic Church claimed that denying women health care was part of its religious mandate, and that making them follow the same rules as everyone else was an affront on their religious liberty.
The Catholic Church clearly wanted to have its ministry cake and eat it too. Teachers and nurses working for Catholic institutions are not considered members of the ministry as far as the IRS is concerned, and are taxed normally, but they are considered ministry by the church, insofar as they as the church reserves the right to ignore antidiscrimination laws.
Nonprofits are not allowed to get involved with political campaigns. Some religious groups skirt that line as closely as they can, and others spit on that line as they cross. The Mormon church spent millions of dollars on the anti-gay marriage “Prop 8” bill in California, a very obvious flouting of the “no political intervention” laws which should have gotten their nonprofit status completely revoked if the politicians in Congress were one millionth as dedicated to the Constitution as they claim to be.
The American Humanist Association, in contrast, takes those laws very seriously, which is why I had to wait until Rick Santorum dropped out of the presidential race to say that he is a vile, bigoted badly dressed snot-globule.
If churches stopped being tax-exempt completely, then a lot of beautiful old buildings would need to be sold and demolished rather than pay their property tax, which is not something I want. But buildings not being directly used for the public benefit, like ministry homes or office buildings, should be taxed normally. Bishops and Cardinals, who are paid very handsomely, should all be paying income tax. All of these organizations should need to prove to the state that they’re acquiring their money legally and spending it responsibly, the same way the rest of us do. And just as civil laws trump religious “law” (you’re not allowed to stone your neighbor, witchcraft or not) so too must civil anti-discrimination laws take precedence over religious bigotry.
Is it really so much to ask that churches and religious organizations be held accountable to the same laws as all other nonprofits?
Steve Major is the development associate for the American Humanist Association.
By Matthew Bulger
America may have its own issues with non-believers and secularism, but atheistic Americans should be thankful that they likely won’t ever have to experience the abuse that Alexander Aan has been subjected to in the past few months.
Alexander is something of a rarity in Indonesia—a non-believer. While the Indonesian constitution does guarantee freedom of religion, the government only recognizes six official religions (Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism), and Indonesian law requires that every citizen hold an ID card that identifies that person with one of the six official religions. Almost every Indonesian identifies with some faith, with 87% of Indonesians identifying themselves as Muslim, 7% as Protestant, 3% as Catholic, 2% as Hindu, and 0.8% as Buddhist.
Unfortunately, Indonesia does not recognize agnosticism or atheism, and blasphemy is illegal, often carrying at least a 5-year jail sentence for offenders. Alexander, who works as a civil servant in Indonesia, found this out the hard way when he posted “God does not exist” on his Facebook page.
When Alexander arrived at work at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board the next day a group of men, many of them also civil servants, attacked and beat him before police arrived and took him into protective custody. Police are now holding him until his trial for blasphemy is completed, although authorities moved Alexander from his local prison after he was badly beaten by a group of inmates who knew about his case.
But his potential jail sentence is not the only punishment Alexander faces. He is likely to lose his job, and Muslim extremists have called for Aan to be beheaded. Alexander’s is the first case in which an atheist is being tried in relation to the first pillar of Indonesia's state philosophy – pancasila, which requires religious belief of Indonesia’s citizens.
The Indonesian government now faces an important decision—will they stand up to support the human rights of all Indonesian citizens to believe or disbelieve as they choose, or will they reaffirm the tyrannical and discriminatory anti-blasphemy laws? This decision will determine not only Alexander’s fate, but the fate of those who are without religion in Indonesia.
The American Humanist Association is already working on behalf atheists abroad who have been abused for their disbelief by meeting with officials from the U.S. Department of State's Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF). We are pleased to report that the IRF intends to increase its promotion of the freedom to not believe through new international program work and comprehensive reports on atheist or humanist discrimination abroad. If you are aware of discrimination against nonbelievers outside of the United States, we would like to hear from you (hnn@americanhumanist.org).
You can also join us in our effort to promote international religious freedom by contributing to Alexander’s legal defense fund. Alexander is just one of many non-believers who can’t be open with their disbelief for fear of punishment, but with your help he may be the catalyst for global change. We must remind the world that religious freedom isn’t just about the freedom to believe in a minority religion free from governmental and societal oppression. Until non-believers can feel safe in their disbelief, the world will never truly know religious freedom.
Matthew Bulger is the legislative and program assistant for the American Humanist Association.
By Timothy Cichon
The North Carolina ban on equal marriage has caused another round of discussions to crop up on television and the Internet, and also provided President Obama with the perfect opportunity to state his personal support of equal marriage. Mitt Romney took the chance to polarize the issue by stating his stance against equal marriage. I recently discussed the issue with a friend on his Facebook wall.
He stated that he supported equal rights for same-sex couples, citing his experience with gays and lesbians as “great and ordinary [people]” but that it shouldn't be called marriage. When I asked him what it should be called and why, he told me:
Civil Unions. Because, in my eyes, marriage is a sacrament that I hold as a matter that should be held in the [same] eyes that the Lord has judged [it] to be. A same-sex marriage is not described by the Word of God.
Our conversation didn't last much longer, but I did respond to him with a brief suggestion of the following, which actually prompted me to write this article.
Proponents of equal marriage are consistently demanding that same-sex couples be allowed to get the exact same legal union opposite-sex ones do, namely a “marriage.” There is a lot of opposition from churches and individuals who believe that homosexuality is a sin or that their holy book does not provide for same-sex marriages. But our founding father, Thomas Jefferson, called for a “wall of separation” between church and state. Jefferson understood that religious persuasions would impede an unbiased interpretation of the Constitution.
So the church does not want gays and lesbians to receive marriages? The church only wants to perform heterosexual marriages? That's fine by me. But the church better be prepared to make the necessary compromises. If “marriage” is to be treated as a religious or god-evoking term, then it has no place in the government. This has big implications for churches.
First, churches should be willing to relinquish their tax-exempt status if a constitutional law makes them practice something they refuse to. Specifically, if a minister refuses to perform a legal marriage on discriminatory grounds, he should gladly let go of his tax privileges. He can chalk it up to suffering for the gospel.
Alternatively, since some people want same-sex unions which have the same privileges as marriages to be called “civil unions,” let’s call all types of unions just that, opposite and same-sex alike, and only allow government officials to legally administer them. If a couple wishes to receive divine sanction on their legal union, they could then go to their church and get married before the eyes of their minister and their god. Then they could have their marriage certificate which would hold as much legal weight as a certificate of water baptism. Religious gay and lesbian people would then find out which churches are truly loving and accepting, and could receive marriages from such institutions.
Of course, some religious folk in America will tell you that there are scientific studies which indicate that a child with two committed, loving, opposite-sex parents is the best situation. Don't back down, because the actual science overwhelmingly confirms the equal marriage position. Two parents are good, regardless of the parents' gender and/or orientation. One study indicates that children of lesbian parents are even better off, even if it is just because they chose to be parents and are typically more dedicated than unplanned parents.
Our LGBT brothers and sisters are consistently under attack and subject to discrimination. This is not just their fight; it is all of ours. To fight against and overturn the ingrained discrimination against LGBT people in America, it's going to take more than heterosexual people saying they support LGBT rights. It takes a vote, a letter, a conversation. It takes making every opportunity to say, “I love my LGBT brothers and sisters and will not tolerate their second-class treatment.”
Timothy Cichon is a Sergeant in the United States Army currently stationed in California. He joined the army in 2007 and has deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Can you name all of the skeptics that appear on the cover of the Humanist magazine's May/June 2012 issue? (If you’re not receiving the Humanist, become a member of the American Humanist Association today!)
Write the person's name next to their corresponding number, then submit your answers by email to hnn@americanhumanist.org, by fax to 202-238-9003, or by mail to American Humanist Association, 1777 T Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. Be sure to include your name, address, and a contact phone number or email.
All entries must be received at the AHA office by May 21, 2012. The winning entry will have all 24 skeptics correctly identified and will be randomly selected by a drawing held on May 22, 2012. The winner will be announced on May 23, 2012 in Humanist Network News.
Download the contest rules and outline of the magazine cover below!
New crossword puzzle this week! Our special thanks to Dan Mason, creator of this puzzle! Dan creates puzzles for the Williamsport Guardian, a bimonthly newspaper promoting awareness, arts, culture and education in north-central Pennsylvania.
The answers will appear in the next issue of Humanist Network News (May 23).
New comics by Jesus and Mo, Ape Not Monkey, and The Bad Chemicals!
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