The Freedom From Religion Foundation is honoring International Women’s Day today, March 8. 

The global theme, “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow,” is one that is dear to FFRF’s heart. This theme recognizes that women and girls around the world can lead the charge on climate change and help build a more sustainable future for all.

However, in order for girls and women to fully contribute to a sustainable future, it is imperative that they have full bodily autonomy. This means that we need to work toward a world that doesn’t discriminate against women and girls over menstruation, pregnancy, contraception, sex education and abortion. FFRF is committed to that future. 

Read more about these important topics and why they are foundational to secularism: 

• Menstruation is a secular issue. 
• Sex education should be secular.
• Fight for abortion rights with FFRF.
• Reproductive health is a state/church issue.
• Being child-free is not selfish.
• Let’s make contraception freely available.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has successfully dissuaded an Indiana school board from opening its meetings with an injection of religion.

The Lebanon Community School Corporation Board was beginning its meetings with a prayer. A video of the Oct. 19, 2021, meeting confirms (even though any mention is missing from the agenda) that “as is our custom, we begin our time with a word of prayer.” A prayer was then led by a board member:

Join me in prayer. Dear God, establish the work of our hands and bring to fulfillment all that you have given us to do in these uncertain days. We pray that you would make our way purposeful and our footsteps firm out of your witness and love. Give us a heart of wisdom to hear your voice and make us strong by your favor and grace. Amen.

The Supreme Court has consistently struck down prayers offered at school-sponsored events, FFRF reminded the school board. Scheduling or conducting prayer as part of its meetings is beyond the scope of a public school board and violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, FFRF Legal Fellow Karen Heineman wrote to Lebanon Community School Corporation Board President Elizabeth Keith.

In the most recent case striking down a school board’s prayer practice (a case FFRF successfully litigated), the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that Establishment Clause concerns are heightened in the context of public schools “because children and adolescents are just beginning to develop their own belief systems, and because they absorb the lessons of adults as to what beliefs are appropriate or right.”

The state/church watchdog also emphasized that prayer alienates nonreligious Americans, who make up the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population by religious identification — 35 percent of Americans are non-Christians, including more than one in four Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated. It requested that the Lebanon Community School Corporation Board immediately refrain from scheduling prayers as part of future meetings.

FFRF’s missive had its desired effect.

“After consultation with its counsel, the board has decided to open the meeting with a moment of silence instead of a prayer,” the school district’s law firm recently wrote back. “That practice has been followed since receipt of your letter.”

FFRF is always glad to lend its hand in ending constitutionally erroneous practices.

“Public schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate, a purpose that the school board must model and uphold,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We appreciate that the school board has dropped this sectarian and exclusionary practice.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 36,000 members and several chapters across the country, including almost 500 members and a chapter in Indiana. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters related to nontheism.

Click here to watch the teaser.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Freethought Matters” TV show and YouTube podcast this week spotlight humanism and its risks in Nigeria and other African nations.

Joining FFRF from Nigeria to talk about how humanism is often persecuted in parts of Africa is Leo Igwe, the founder of the Humanist Association of Nigeria who himself has been jailed for his work on “witchcraft.” Igwe has multiple degrees in philosophy and a doctorate in religious studies from the University of Bayreuth in Germany. His research focuses on witchcraft, religion and atheism in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, and he strives to foster critical thinking in schools. He’s recently been busy campaigning for the release of Mubarak Bala, a Nigerian freethinker who is in detention for alleged blasphemy.

“Many pastors thrive on imputing witchcraft or making witchcraft allegations,” Igwe explains to “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor why he got into trouble. “So if you try to challenge this, you are actually challenging what the church has used to establish its credibility among all gullible, desperate members of the population. Of course, they’ll go after you.”

If you don’t live in the quarter-plus viewership of the nation where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on the “Freethought Matters” playlist on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday. You can also receive notifications when we post new episodes of “Freethought Matters” by subscribing to FFRF’s YouTube channel.

“Freethought Matters” airs in:

• Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m.
• Denver, KWGN-CW (Ch. 2), Sundays at 7 a.m.
• Houston, KIAH-CW (Ch. 39), Sundays at 11 a.m.
• Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m. 
• Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
• Minneapolis, KSTC-IND (Ch. 45, Digital Channel 5.5), Sundays at 9:30 a.m. (Digital channel 5.2 has been dropped.)
• New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 10 a.m. Note time change!
  
• Phoenix, KASW-CW (Ch. 61, or 6 or 1006 for HD), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
• Portland, Ore., KRCW-CW (Ch. 32), Sundays at 9 a.m. Comcast channel 703 for High Def, or Channel 3.
• Sacramento, KQCA-MY (Ch. 58), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
• San Francisco, KICU-IND (Ch. 36), Sundays at 10 a.m.
• Seattle, KONG-IND (Ch. 16 or Ch. 106 on Comcast). Sundays at 8 a.m.
• Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.

Upcoming shows will include an interview with Hector Garcia, author of Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression and a speaker at FFRF’s November convention in San Antonio, and Cynthia McDonald, a civil rights activist and atheist who will be part of the convention’s “Godless Gospel Choir” and a conference panel of Black freethought activists. “Freethought Matters” is now in its sixth season. To watch earlier shows, including an interview with freethinker and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, visit the “Freethought Matters” playlist on FFRF’s YouTube channel. Please tune in to “Freethought Matters” . . . because freethought matters.

P.S. Please tune in or record according to the times given above regardless of what is listed in your TV guide (it may be listed simply as “paid programming” or even be misidentified). To set up an automatic weekly recording, try taping manually by time or channel. And spread the word to freethinking friends, family or colleagues about a TV show, finally, that is dedicated to providing programming for freethinkers!

Ron Reagan’s ad on behalf of the Freedom From Religion Foundation will run Tuesday, March 1, during CBS’ post-State of the Union analysis and on Stephen Colbert’s show.

This will kick off six additional ads airing on CBS’ “The Late Show” in March. The iconic commercial with Reagan, in which he famously notes he’s “not afraid of burning in hell,” will appear Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday March 8-10 and March 15-17.

In the 30-second commercial, Reagan, who is the outspoken son of President Ronald and Nancy Reagan, says:

Hi, I’m Ron Reagan, an unabashed atheist, and I’m alarmed, as you may be, by the intrusion of religion into our secular government. That's why I’m asking you to join the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest and most effective association of atheists and agnostics, working to keep state and church separate, just like our Founders intended. Please join the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.

FFRF’s “Freethought Matters” TV show played a 30-minute interview with Reagan on Sunday, Feb. 6. He has received FFRF’s Emperor Has No Clothes Award for his lifelong identification as an atheist and his advocacy of the separation between religion and government.

After FFRF aired the ad during several Democratic presidential debates carried by CNN in 2019, Reagan was credited with “winning” and becoming the top trending search on Google.

“Ron Reagan has been invaluable to our organization’s aim of reaching more and more Americans with our message,’” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “He has ensured that skeptics and freethinkers who wouldn’t have known that we exist are now very much part of our mission.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 36,000 members across the country. It protects the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism. FFRF advertising is made possible by kind contributions from members. Donations to FFRF are deductible for income-tax purposes.

Our theme in governmental affairs this year: Going on the offensive.

We’ve already had three major victories. The first was our headline-making report that ties Christian nationalism to the Jan. 6 insurrection. The second was the reduced support of the National Prayer Breakfast in Congress. And the third was the introduction of a bill in Congress that would authorize the construction of a Thomas Paine memorial in Washington, D.C. All three of these victories are important because they push back against Christian nationalism while strengthening the separation of state and church, in addition to standing up for reason and rationality.

Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection
FFRF, along with BJC (Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom), has published a groundbreaking report on how Christian nationalism was an integral part of last year’s assault on the U.S. Capitol. The report exposes the role Christian nationalism “played in fomenting the insurrection, the buildup and dry runs that occurred immediately following Election Day up until the attack itself.” The report contains a vast amount of “photographs and links to videos of that day showing the prayers, signage and symbols of Christian nationalism.”

In addition to the hard-hitting subject of the report, how it was made is particularly significant. After the Jan. 6 attack, FFRF, led by its Director of Strategic Response Andrew Seidel, made a presentation to the Congressional Freethought Caucus and other members of Congress on the connection between Jan. 6 and Christian nationalism. Some of the other presenters were from BJC. They wanted to expand on some of the themes presented to members of Congress and collaborate with us on producing an in-depth report about the ties between Christian nationalism and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

During the production of the report, our friendship with BJC deepened. BJC is one of FFRF’s staunchest allies in Washington. We share the goal of strengthening the separation between state and church. Some of our greatest partners are from the religious community. Plus, BJC has guts. It leads an initiative called “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” and is helping to make sure that hate has no safe harbor in the Baptist community. On a personal note, I often informally ask staff members at BJC for their thoughts and guidance on how to advance some ideas on Capitol Hill. Their wisdom is always smart, thoughtful and strategic. I am much better at my job because of them.

The National Prayer Breakfast
The National Prayer Breakfast is a large annual event that takes place the first week of February in Washington. The event is extremely dubious in nature and has become a nexus for religious extremism, infiltration by Russian agents, and organized anti-LGBTQ and anti-labor bigotry. The National Prayer Breakfast is an active marketplace of right-wing ideas. Despite all these facts, each year members of Congress host the event, and every president since Dwight David Eisenhower has attended it.

FFRF has been vocally organizing opposition to the shindig for years. We particularly galvanized our resources this year. We sent numerous letters and action alerts, met with several congressional offices, used our media resources and social media channels to highlight our opposition. We connected with several allied groups to coordinate activities. Plus, Jonathan Larsen at The Young Turks and Salon.com was consistently exposing the truth behind the event that helped to spark greater interest on the Hill.

This year, the results have been significant. Several members of Congress did not renew their co-sponsorship from the previous year: Reps. Charlie Crist, Emanuel Cleaver II, Val Demings, Debbie Dingell, Grace Meng, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Juan Vargas, and Sen. Tom Carper. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, notably, did not appear.

I am extremely proud of how we voiced our concerns about elected officials who often agree with us about the separation of state and church but disagree with us about the Prayer Breakfast. FFRF co-founder and Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said this about President Biden’s decision to attend the breakfast:

We are deeply disturbed that President Biden has chosen to address an event that has become a hotspot for Christian nationalists and theocrats, anti-LGBTQ bigotry and influence-peddling. It has been mired in scandal after scandal, including the FBI’s arrest of a Russian agent with ties to Vladimir Putin. Every year, more and more members of Congress walk away from this event. Why Biden still embraces it is mind-boggling.

Annie Laurie’s statement shows that when an elected official, regardless of party, does something that bolsters the separation of state and church, we will praise it. Likewise, we will also decry it when an elected official does something that harms the separation of state and church. Sometimes, I see in Washington organizations get too cozy with elected officials and lose their watchdog role. Clearly, FFRF is not going down that route.

Thomas Paine memorial bill
You may have seen the news about Congressional Freethought Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Jamie Raskin introducing a bill authorizing the Thomas Paine Memorial Association (which FFRF is a key part of) to lead the efforts for a D.C. memorial to honor Thomas Paine.

Paine was a pivotal freethinker who was far ahead of his time. He opposed slavery and favored abolition, called for a progressive income tax to pay for universal education (for both sexes), a welfare system for poor relief, pensions, women’s rights — and more. He was an eloquent advocate for equality and representative government, writing, “The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights.”

The bill must pass both houses of Congress and be signed into law by the president before the Thomas Paine Memorial Association can work with the gauntlet of federal commissions to construct and maintain the memorial into perpetuity without taxpayer funding. Politically, this bill is extremely significant for FFRF because it is the first bill where FFRF is one of the lead organizations supporting the bill.

A lot of bills have support from organizations, businesses, associations and individuals to help them advance within Congress and gain support from the public. The lead organization builds a campaign to pass the bill and increases the support for the bill with the American people. It is our responsibility to push up the number of co-sponsors, obtain support from other organizations such as historical societies, build a coalition of like-minded organizations, and use a lot of internal resources to advance the bill. It is a very big assignment — and I know we are up for it.

Conclusion
These three victories were a down payment on the offensive maneuvers we will be doing this year. FFRF will continue to skillfully deploy its advocacy tools (TV shows, social media, action alerts, press connections, etc.) to score victories for you. Look for more ways that we will be working with allies on the Hill. 2022 is going to be a year full of impact, and I cannot thank you enough for being with us. 

All the best,

Mark Dann
Director of Governmental Affairs
Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging New York City Mayor Eric Adams not only to withdraw three judgmental appointees but to cancel plans to create a faith-based office altogether.

Adams is facing criticism from the LGBTQ community for planning to fill his newly created Faith-Based and Community partnership office and another mayoral position with individuals who have extreme homophobic views.

Fernando Cabrera, reportedly appointed as senior adviser for the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, notoriously supported the Ugandan government’s bans on gay marriage and abortion in 2014. Pastor Erick Salgado, appointed as assistant commissioner for external affairs in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, has previously termed homosexuality a “mortal sin.” And Pastor Gilford Monrose has been selected to run the faith-based office because Adams says he has a “talent for building bridges between diverse communities” and yet he has compared the gay “lifestyle” to smokers, supported discrimination against LGBTQ in adoption and foster care and repeatedly opposed marriage equality.

“We share the outrage of the LGBTQ community, who feel understandably betrayed that you would make these appointments,” write FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor to Mayor Adams. “We also must emphasize your apparent betrayal to the secular community by creating a religious office within your administration.”

They note that this is an office modeled after those in the White House and at the cabinet level created by President George W. Bush, which FFRF sued over. While the constitutionality of the offices was ultimately never ruled on, FFRF calls them unconstitutional and notes they have been abused to reward churches that support political candidates and conflict with “our country’s proud secular heritage.” Setting up such an office sends a message to nonreligious New Yorkers that they are not favored members of the community, and that faith leaders in the city have outsized influence.

“Creating a faith-based office and packing it with anti-LGBTQ individuals is alarming and unacceptable,” FFRF concludes.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization working to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It represents 36,000 members across the country, including almost 2,000 members in the state of New York.

Watch the teaser here. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Freethought Matters” television show and YouTube podcast focus this week on the lamentable prevalence of bad thinking — and how we can emerge from it.

The guests on the show are both professors of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who have co-written a new book called When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us From Ourselves. On the cover of the book, it warns: “Something is seriously wrong. An alarming number of citizens in America and around the world are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas.”

Professor Lawrence Shapiro has previously written books such as Zen and The Art of Running: The Path to Making Peace with Your Pace and The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified. Professor Steven Nadler’s many books include Spinoza: A Life, God and Evil, and an FFRF favorite, Heretics: the Wondrous and Dangerous Beginnings of Modernity.

“I would not want to be in a position of having public policy, say, tailored to a belief in God,” Shapiro tells “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It’s a belief and belief in God is based on faith, and it shouldn’t be used to justify social policies that would be imposed on people who don't believe in God.”

If you don’t live in the quarter-plus viewership of the nation where the show broadcasts on Sunday, you can already catch the interview on the “Freethought Matters” playlist on FFRF’s YouTube channel. New shows go up every Thursday. You can also receive notifications when we post new episodes of “Freethought Matters” by subscribing to FFRF’s YouTube channel.

“Freethought Matters” airs in:

• Chicago, WPWR-CW (Ch. 50), Sundays at 9 a.m.
• Denver, KWGN-CW (Ch. 2), Sundays at 7 a.m.
• Houston, KIAH-CW (Ch. 39), Sundays at 11 a.m.
• Los Angeles, KCOP-MY (Ch. 13), Sundays at 8:30 a.m. 
• Madison, Wis., WISC-TV (Ch. 3), Sundays at 11 p.m.
• Minneapolis, KSTC-IND (Ch. 45, Digital Channel 5.5), Sundays at 9:30 a.m. (Digital channel 5.2 has been dropped.)
• New York City, WPIX-IND (Ch. 11), Sundays at 9:00 a.m.
  
• Phoenix, KASW-CW (Ch. 61, or 6 or 1006 for HD), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
• Portland, Ore., KRCW-CW (Ch. 32), Sundays at 9 a.m. Comcast channel 703 for High Def, or Channel 3.
• Sacramento, KQCA-MY (Ch. 58), Sundays at 8:30 a.m.
• San Francisco, KICU-IND (Ch. 36), Sundays at 10 a.m.
• Seattle, KONG-IND (Ch. 16 or Ch. 106 on Comcast). Sundays at 8 a.m.
• Washington, D.C., WDCW-CW (Ch. 50 or Ch. 23 or Ch. 3), Sundays at 8 a.m.

Upcoming shows will include interviews with Nigerian humanist and atheist leader Leo Igwe and atheist Cynthia McDonald, who makes the secular case for reparations for slavery. “Freethought Matters” is now in its sixth season. To watch earlier shows, including an interview with freethinker and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, visit the “Freethought Matters” playlist on FFRF’s YouTube channel. Please tune in to “Freethought Matters” . . . because freethought matters.

P.S. Please tune in or record according to the times given above regardless of what is listed in your TV guide (it may be listed simply as “paid programming” or even be misidentified). To set up an automatic weekly recording, try taping manually by time or channel. And spread the word to freethinking friends, family or colleagues about a TV show, finally, that is dedicated to providing programming for freethinkers!

In a chilling development, the Supreme Court has announced that it will hear a case in which an evangelical woman is asserting a religious exemption to discriminate against a protected class of citizens.

The case — involving LGBTQ individuals in Colorado who wish to marry — is already being dubbed “Masterpiece II,” following the 2018 “Masterpiece Cakeshop” case concerning a Colorado baker who declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

By agreeing to hear the challenge during its next session, the court has signaled a clear intent to allow individuals and businesses to discriminate based on religious belief. The case is being framed, incredibly, as a “free speech” issue, with the precise question being “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.”

“This is phony,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “It’s really a religious privilege case dressed up as ‘free speech.’ If religious business owners can discriminate against one protected class, LGBTQ citizens, what’s to keep them from discriminating against Americans based on race, color, national origin or sex? No one should be above the law.”

Not surprisingly, the case is being brought by the extremist Christian nationalist legal outfit, Alliance Defending Freedom.

The owner of 303 Creative, the proposed website design company that would create websites celebrating weddings, claims that creating websites for LGBTQ people who wish to marry “would compromise my Christian witness and tell a story about marriage that contradicts God’s true story of marriage.” This blatant dicrimination violates the anti-discrimination law in Colorado, but the company wants a religious exemption.

Anti-discrimination laws are crucial protections for LGBTQ people, and granting religious exemptions to such laws clearly undermines them because religion is by far the main driver of anti-LGBTQ bigotry.

FFRF calls it bizarre that this claimant has been granted standing, since she has not even opened the wedding business or posted the proposed statement refusing LGBTQ wedding customers that would run afoul of Colorado’s law. The Supreme Court’s decision to ignore this procedural hurdle further suggests that it is willing to bend over backward to grant special privileges to Christian plaintiffs.

In 2018, the high court missed an opportunity to strengthen the U.S. Constitution by declaring that religious bigotry is no justification for discrimination. In that case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court considered similar facts but dodged the central issue. The court implausibly declared that an off-hand comment from a civil rights commissioner tainted the case by demonstrating anti-religious animus. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had a history of stemming the religious crusade against LGBTQ rights, wrote the opinion. Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Since Masterpiece was decided, Kennedy and Ginsburg have been replaced by ultraconservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, leaving little doubt that the court intends to approve of the religiously motivated discrimination.

In recent years, a string of Supreme Court cases has privileged Christianity over other religions, at the expense of marginalized communities around the country. This case seems likely to continue that trend. As FFRF wrote in its amicus brief in the Masterpiece case, in the past the Supreme Court has consistently noted that religion cannot exempt people from general laws, ranging from an 1879 case where a Mormon claimed a religious right to polygamy to a 1990 case where archconservative Justice Antonin Scalia rejected a religious exemption to anti-drug laws. The current court’s supermajority seemingly is willing to sacrifice this sound logic and clear precedent to advance its own agenda, this time under the guise of protecting free speech.

FFRF warns that this is the beginning of the Supreme Court’s campaign to dismantle hard-fought LGBTQ rights, reproductive health care rights, and the wall between state and church. Unless Americans demand that Congress take action to correct the broken federal judiciary, the court seems intent on granting a tiny minority of Christian fundamentalists, evangelicals and nationalists everything they want.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation will continue to work diligently to counter these judicial threats and to defend the American principle of separation between religion and government.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is challenging an egregiously unconstitutional Christian program being offered at a middle school in the Charleston County School District.

Northwoods Middle School is about to start a program for students that contains Christian lessons and materials. The program is called ARISE and was created by Angela Henderson, a Christian “prophetic journey coach” whose Facebook page describes her Christian motivations:

Align your plan with God’s plan and overcome any challenge life can throw at you. I help people connect the dots of their life story, see how God has always been at work and discover what He is speaking now and for their future.

The first “session” of the ARISE program includes Christian materials and messages. Students are asked to identify the meaning of the date of their birth. Some of the options are: “Singleness of mind; like the mind of Christ, Divine Unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, Grace, Perfection of God, Distress, given the strength of God during times of spiritual growth…” Students are also asked to identify the month of their birth with similar Christian messages.

The Charleston County School District cannot endorse religion by hosting programs or assigning lessons to students that teach or promote Christianity, FFRF emphasizes.

“It is well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes to Interim Superintendent Donald Kennedy. “Assigning students lessons that include Christian lessons and messages promotes Christianity.”

Public schools have a duty to ensure that instructional materials do not promote a particular religious viewpoint, FFRF stresses. Just as federal courts have routinely ruled that creationist instruction in schools is unconstitutional, religious endorsement presented via school lessons is likewise unconstitutional. The use of this program is completely inappropriate, the state/church watchdog concludes, and asks that it be immediately investigated and ended. FFRF has also included an open records request related to the district’s communications regarding the ARISE program.

“We’re in favor of bona fide support programs for middle schoolers, but not in forms that are overtly proselytizing and exclusionary,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 36,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in South Carolina. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

An analysis of this year’s National Prayer Breakfast — a “Christ-centered” private event that Congress and a shadowy group co-organize each February — shows that progress is being made.

The National Prayer Breakfast, the brainchild of the nefarious Fellowship Foundation also known as “The Family,” for generations has been a knee-jerk, political “gotcha” event. Show up with religion on your sleeve — or else! It has been promoted as an “ecumenical” event and over the years has featured high-profile feel-good speakers such as Bono and Mother Teresa.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation and our membership last fall began asking members of Congress and the president not to give their “blessings” to this divisive, theocratic event. We pointed out it’s a “pay-to-pray-to-play” event with an unsavory history that has often included undemocratic and anti-LGBTQ guests of honor. It was even crashed in 2017 by a Russian spy who was later convicted. Gay rights groups have long protested it over a history that includes the sponsoring group’s ties to legislation in Uganda calling for imprisonment and execution of gays.

Our work has yielded dividends. FFRF is pleased that only five House Democrats and 11 Republicans were this year listed as “honorary House Committee” members. Notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not appear. Although she did not make a comment about it, her absence spoke for itself.

Those who lamentably attended this year formed a diverse group, ranging from Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Chris Coons (who told CNN he attended so that conservative members of Congress would know he’s a “decent Christian”) to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Five House Democrats reportedly served as “hosts” and were given a shoutout from the stage, while Rep. Lucy McBath read from the bible. And President Biden attended again as he did last year, giving a speech that insultingly urged Americans to “Let’s go spread the faith.”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have over the past many decades willingly attended and utilized the event to pander, check off the “I’m religious” box or otherwise put on a public halo. Even President Obama, one of the many presidents since 1953 delivering an address at the National Prayer Breakfast, said during his 2011 Christian-testifying talk: “It’s a tradition that I am proud to uphold, not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader.”

However, traditions are thankfully changing. It’s high time for members of Congress — and the president — to realize they’re being exploited for political purposes by The Fellowship Foundation. FFRF has urged members of Congress to stay away for decades and has called attention to Jeff Sharlet’s exposé, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which was also turned into a Netflix series.

Back in 2010, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit FFRF has jointly filed lawsuits with, called on congressional leaders and the president not to attend. As CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan put it then: “It is a combination of the intolerance of the organization’s views and the secrecy surrounding the organization. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed to hold their breakfast; of course they should. The question is, Should American officials be lending legitimacy to it, giving their imprimatur by showing up.”

The answer is an obvious “NO.”

It goes without saying that the real behind-the-scenes lobbying and influence-peddling takes place privately over four days around the time of the breakfast. Who knows what mischief was concocted? The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its allies will continue to call out politicians who lend credence to this creepy theopolitical event.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation cheers the fact that abortion is no longer a crime in the predominantly Catholic country of Colombia – the third most populous in Latin America.

On Feb. 21, Colombia’s highest court decriminalized abortion until 24 weeks of gestation — a major victory for abortion rights activists, who have regularly taken to the streets wearing or waving green scarves to signify their support for legal abortion. While activists aimed for a total decriminalization, this is still a historic step for a country where roughly 400,000 women receive clandestine abortions every year. Prior to this court ruling, women who received illegal abortions faced up to three years in prison. In fact, prosecutors in Colombia open roughly 400 cases per year against women who have had abortions and people who have helped them end unwanted pregnancies. According to the attorney general’s office, at least 346 people have been convicted since 2006. 

“The U.S. Supreme Court should take note of this reform,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “It mustn’t turn the clock back to the bad old days when abortion was illegal in the United States. We have a secular Constitution, and religion is not supposed to rule the state — or determine what women do with their own bodies.”

Colombia is only the fourth Latin American country to decriminalize abortion. Aside from Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba, abortion has been almost universally restricted throughout the predominantly Catholic region. Some nations, such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, prohibit abortion without exception. In fact, El Salvador is notorious for imprisoning women who miscarry; some women have been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Perhaps most heartening about Colombia’s high court decision is that the ruling recognized the right to human dignity, freedom and equality despite the fact that the country is extremely religious. In fact, nearly 70 percent of the country’s population identifies as Catholic and 15 percent as Evangelical Christian. Nevertheless, the court favored women’s bodily autonomy over religion. Hopefully other Latin American countries will soon follow suit.

Photo via Shutterstock by Damian Basante.