Learn more about the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest freethought (atheist, agnostic) association in North America, founded nationally in 1978. With more than 30,000 members, FFRF, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, works as an effective state/church watchdog and voice for freethought.

FFRF's legal department of nine attorneys annually ends hundreds of First Amendment violations in our public schools and entanglements between religion and government. Read our 2017 Year in Review.

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If you’re an unabashed nontheist, you can make your own digital billboard, perfect to post, tweet, use as your Facebok or Twitter image or even as your Facebook or Twitter banner (FFRF’s app resizes it for you). You can choose your own nontheistic “appellation.” FFRF also offers the slogan as a bumper sticker, sweatshop-free T-shirt or lapel pin. 

Imagine a world in which reason, not religion, prevailed in our government and social policy. Won't you join us today in working for that goal?

Learn more about the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest freethought (atheist, agnostic) association in North America, founded nationally in 1978. With more than 29,000 members, FFRF, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, works as an effective state/church watchdog and voice for freethought.

FFRF's legal department of nine attorneys annually ends hundreds of First Amendment violations in our public schools and entanglements between religion and government.

In the past two years alone, FFRF has won 14 lawsuits, legal settlements or rounds of litigation. 

Imagine a world in which reason, not religion, prevailed in our government and social policy. Won't you join us today in working for that goal?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is challenging a Texas school district's forced Pledge of Allegiance.

On Oct. 18, San Felipe Memorial Middle School Principal Celia Zuniga-Barrera reportedly made an announcement over the school's public-address system ordering the entire student body to stand for and participate in the Pledge of Allegiance. Zuniga-Barrera has apparently similarly instructed teachers to make sure that their students stand during the pledge.

Students must not be singled out or punished in any way for choosing not to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, FFRF tells school officials.

"The Supreme Court ruled over 70 years ago that compelling a student to recite the pledge and salute the flag infringed upon a student's First Amendment rights," FFRF Associate Counsel Sam Grover writes to San Felipe Del Rio CISD Superintendent Carlos Rios. "The Barnette ruling assured students that their beliefs would be protected. The court stated, 'If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.'" And since then, multiple courts have reiterated that students have a constitutional right not to be forced to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance and that any punishment administered in reaction to a student exercising that right violates the Constitution, FFRF adds.

To the extent that Texas Education Code - EDUC § 25.082 requires schools to force students to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, it is in conflict with federal law, which trumps state law on this issue, FFRF informs the district. Almost ten years ago, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals addressed this rule in Frazier ex rel. Frazier v. Winn. (2008). The judgment held that the section of Florida's similar pledge statute, Fla. Stat. Ann. §1003.44(1), which required all students and citizens to stand during recitation of the pledge, was unconstitutional.

Students must not be singled out or otherwise penalized for exercising their right of conscience, FFRF concludes. If the district's policies are otherwise, then those policies must be changed. If Zuniga-Barrera and other employees are misinformed about the district's policies, they must be educated so that their students have a right to be free from any forced participation in the pledge.

FFRF is requesting that San Felipe Del Rio CISD investigate the situation and take steps to ensure that its policies concerning the Pledge of Allegiance respect the right of conscience of its students and that all district teachers, administrators, and students are informed of those policies.

"The school district can't force nationalism and religiosity onto students," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "It's truly practicing patriotism to teach students that they retain their freedom to dissent."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 29,000 members across the country, including over 1,200 in Texas. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional separation between state and church and to educate the public on nontheism.

A repeal on the ban on church electioneering would end up costing U.S. taxpayers billions.

The recently proposed tax reform bill includes a repeal of the Johnson Amendment as it applies to churches. This is a simple rule that prevents churches and other 501(c)(3)s from engaging in partisan politics. If the Amendment is revoked, political contributions could flow through churches and become tax-deductible donations. This would cost the American taxpayer $2.1 billion over 10 years in lost revenue, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the joint committee, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday, Nov. 6. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., asked him about the price tag of the proposed repeal. Barthold's answer is worth a listen. Here's the exchange.

FFRF continues to strenuously oppose efforts to repeal the Johnson Amendment and believes that it is a common-sense rule that keeps America's nonprofits nonpartisan. Without the Johnson Amendment, any mega-donor could cut the nearest church a check — for any amount — and take the tax write-off. The pastor could then spend the donation on anything, including political campaigns or attack ads. Churches would become super-PACs — unregulated, unaccountable, opaque super-PACs. Regular PACs would have to reorganize as churches because their donors would have fled, giving their donation, now tax-deductible, to churches.

Poll after poll shows that Americans want to keep politics out of their pulpits. According to Lifeway Research, an evangelical polling group whose slogan is "Biblical Solutions for Life," nearly 80 percent of Americans oppose pastors endorsing a candidate in church and 75 percent oppose churches publicly endorsing candidates.

Congress should listen to the American people and avoid a massive loss of tax revenue — as well as the destruction of our democracy.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit against the Chino Valley Unified School District board for regularly praying is entering a new stage.

On Wednesday, Nov. 8, the case will be heard before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif. FFRF is asking the appeals court to sustain a lower court ruling in its favor. 

A district court in February 2016 granted summary judgment in favor of FFRF and its 22 plaintiffs, declaring the school board prayer an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion. The decision also ruled that the school board policy and custom of reciting prayers, bible readings and proselytizing violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. After FFRF's victory, the school board voted to appeal the decision in a controversial 3-2 vote at a contentious meeting.

Chino Valley board meetings feature adults — board members, staff or clergy — nearly always Christian, delivering a prayer. For example, board member James Na told the audience at one meeting that "God appointed us to be here." Another board member, Andrew Cruz, told the audience at a meeting that the board had a goal: "And that one goal is under God, Jesus Christ." Cruz then read from the bible, Psalm 143:8.

The school board argues that it is similar to a legislative board, invoking two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court that permit, under narrow circumstances, governmental prayer. But, FFRF contends in its brief, "The meetings of the school board can only be seen as school functions. Appellant school board members here are not a legislative body but rather a specific type of governing body tasked with one and only one duty: to govern all aspects of the public schools for the benefit and well-being of the children who are students within their district." 

FFRF asserts that the board's conduct clearly violates the Constitution — and that the judicial system will concur.

"We hope the 9th Circuit will agree with our contentions," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "Public school boards can't engage in such outrageously religious behavior and get away with it."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a state/church watchdog with more than 29,000 nonreligious members and chapters all over the country, including over 3,500 and a chapter in California.

David Kaloyanides will be representing FFRF and the individual plaintiffs. The judges hearing the case will be Circuit Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Kim Wardlaw as well as Judge Wiley Daniel, a senior district judge of the U.S. District Court for Colorado.

FFRF v. Chino Valley Unified School District has Case No.: EDCV 14-2

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is strenuously objecting to an evangelical organization mentoring kids at a South Carolina elementary school.

A concerned parent informed FFRF that the Beaufort County School District partners with a religious organization, Real Champions of the Lowcountry, to provide mentors and religious instruction to students at Okatie Elementary School. The school coordinates one-on-one mentoring by Real Champions volunteers during the school day. Students are reportedly regularly removed from classrooms in the morning to participate in Real Champions activities.

Real Champions is an evangelical organization that seeks to proselytize. The Real Champions Statement of Faith includes the following:

We believe that we are called to communicate the Gospel to everyone in our generation and nurture disciples, carrying out The Great Commission that our Lord Jesus Christ commanded.

Real Champions mentors are recruited by Grace Coastal Church. The mission of Real Champions includes empowering youth "spiritually." The volunteer/mentor application makes clear the evangelical purpose of the organization:

The Christ-Centered Mentor: has accepted Christ as Lord and Savior studies and tries personally to apply GOD's word; is striving to know GOD intimately and become more like Christ; seek GOD's will for his/her life; is deeply committed to loving the members of the body of Christ; expresses that Love by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in, as well through him/her; help other become responsible followers of Christ. (emphasis in original).

Okatie Elementary School sent home permission slips seeking student participation in the Real Champions program. Those permission slips say:

Real Champions is a faith based program encouraging your child to excel following the school's character development platform. Being a faith based mentor program Real Champions will use Bible passages and prayer to encourage your student to achieve success.

The permission slip requests permission for children to participate in a "weekly faith based mentor program" and also for Real Champions to have access to the child's school records.

The district cannot allow its schools to be used as religious recruiting grounds, FFRF contends.

"It is well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion," Senior Counsel Patrick Elliott writes to Beaufort County School District Superintendent Jeffrey Moss. "It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district to offer religious instructors unique access to its students. The partnership between a religious mentorship program and the Beaufort County School District impermissibly advances religion, communicates a message of school district endorsement of religion, and excessively entangles the school district and religion." 

It is irrelevant that permission forms were provided to parents, FFRF informs the district. Courts have summarily rejected arguments that voluntariness excuses a constitutional violation.

Given how young and impressionable these students are, this violation of the Constitution is particularly egregious, FFRF declares. The school system must immediately stop this violation to avoid unnecessary and costly legal action.

"We're shocked that the school district doesn't realize the inappropriateness of this program," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "Religious organizations should never be allowed access to such young public school children."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 29,000 members across the country, including hundreds in South Carolina. Its purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.

A federal judge has ordered a Pennsylvania county to get rid of its seal that prominently features a Latin cross. The order follows up on a major court victory the Freedom From Religion Foundation obtained against Lehigh County in September.

"The Lehigh County seal adopted by the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners on Dec. 28, 1944, and all subsequent adaptations and versions of it that are currently being used or displayed and that feature the Latin cross (collectively the 'Lehigh County Seal') violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," says the order issued by U.S. District Judge Edward G. Smith. 

Smith prohibited any use or display of the seal by Lehigh County after 180 days. However, the 180-day timeline will not start until any appeal by the county has concluded.

The judge also awarded nominal damages to each plaintiff in the amount of $1. During the appeal, the county is prohibited from implementing any new uses of the seal beyond those that are currently being practiced.

In his September decision in favor of FFRF, the same judge noted that the Christian cross, which both parties agree is "the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity," dwarfs other symbols on the seal and therefore shows unconstitutional county endorsement of a particular religion. 

"The undisputed facts demonstrate that the county's original purpose for including a cross on the seal is not secular," Smith added. "The county's stated reason for retaining the seal in 2015 was to honor its original settlers who were Christian."

The federal lawsuit was filed in August 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The co-plaintiffs with FFRF are four of its local members who've objected to encountering the religious symbol on county property. The seal is on documents, letterhead, many official county forms and reports, the county's website, in a display in the Board of Commissioners meeting room and even on flags displayed prominently at the entrance of county buildings.

The board adopted the imagery that appears on the seal in 1944. Allentown, the third-largest city in Pennsylvania, is located in Lehigh County, with a population of about 350,000.

After FFRF complained, creating a minor firestorm, the Board of Commissioners sent a reply averring: "The cross, one of more than a dozen elements, was included to honor the original settlers of Lehigh County, who were Christian."

In his initial ruling, Smith granted FFRF's motion for summary judgment and requested that the plaintiffs provide a proposed injunction. With this legal action, that step has been fulfilled.

In response to FFRF's legal triumph, the Board of Commissioners voted 6-3 to appeal the case, unnecessarily prolonging the proceedings.

"We are fighting on behalf of the Constitution — and we shall prevail," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

The litigation is being handled by Marcus B. Schneider of Pittsburgh, with assistance from FFRF Staff Attorneys Patrick Elliott and Elizabeth Cavell.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national organization dedicated to the separation of state and church, with more than 29,000 nonreligious members and chapters all over the country, including almost 900 and a chapter in Pennsylvania. FFRF warmly thanks its four local plaintiffs who made possible the lawsuit: John Berry, Stephen Meholic, David Simpson, and Candace Winkler.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has ensured that an evangelical organization will not be able to spread its message in an Indiana middle school.

A concerned community member contacted FFRF to report that the Noblesville East Middle School administration allowed Michael Redding, a representative of the evangelical organization Young Life, to attend the school's lunch hour to speak with students. Redding leads a religious group for middle school students called "Wyldlife."

It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district to offer religious leaders unique access to befriend students, and invite them to religious events during the school day on school property, FFRF informed the school district. No outside adults should be provided carte blanche access to minors — a captive audience — in a public school.

"It is well settled that public schools may not advance or promote religion," FFRF Staff Attorney Ryan Jayne wrote to Noblesville Schools Superintendent Beth Niedermeyer. "Allowing church representatives regular, or even one-time, access during school hours to recruit students for religious activities is a violation of the Establishment Clause."

When a school allows church representatives to recruit students for the church, it has unconstitutionally entangled itself with a religious message — in this case a Christian message, FFRF contended. Parents should be able to trust their public school not to introduce their children to religious recruiters without parents' knowledge or consent. Middle school students are young, impressionable and vulnerable to social pressure, particularly pressure exerted from an adult.

FFRF's exhortation had the desired effect. The school district has promised changes to its mentorship program, under the aegis of which Redding apparently operates, to make certain there's no proselytization.

"Going forward, the superintendent would like to help alleviate any concerns with a formalized process where mentors are specifically told that they are not allowed to discuss religion, not to solicit any participation in religion and not to wear any clothing that identifies any religious affiliation," the school district's legal counsel has replied.

FFRF is elated at the positive change it brought about.

"Public schools should not be allowing evangelizing, especially in a middle school," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "We're delighted that by bringing it to the notice of Noblesville Schools, we put an end to this."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 29,000 members across the country, including 400-plus in Indiana. FFRF's purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

A leading freethought charity is disbursing fresh grants to fight natural and man-made catastrophes currently afflicting our world.

Nonbelief Relief, a charitable organization created by the executive board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has announced an additional donation for hurricane-besieged Puerto Rico and new funding to aid the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Nonbelief Relief has also extended a $5,000 stipend to a Bangladeshi atheist who is stranded in Nepal with his wife and child after fleeing for his life from his native country in 2015. 

Generous donations from nonreligious Americans to Nonbelief Relief in October have made possible the new $10,000 grant to Americares, earmarked for Puerto Rican relief. Additionally, Nonbelief Relief has redirected $2,500, rejected by Boca Helping Hands to aid its work after Hurricane Irma hit Florida, to Atheists of Puerto Rico, for direct aid to Hurricane Maria victims.

Nonbelief Relief this week also gave $10,000 to Doctors Without Borders, to help its ongoing efforts with the Rohingya refugees, who are suffering on a "scale that we couldn't imagine," according to Kate White, the medical emergency manager for Doctors Without Borders in Bangladesh. 

"What is happening to the Rohingya is a result of religious persecution," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, who as FFRF's co-president acts as administrator of Nonbelief Relief. "There should not be official or de facto national religions. In an ideal world, all governments would be secular, and religion would be an entirely private matter of conscience."

The grants are in addition to approximately $100,000 in donations given out by Nonbelief Relief earlier this fall to secular charities, many of them providing relief to North American flooding, hurricane or earthquake victims, as well as $10,000 to the nonprofit ConPRmetidos specifically for Puerto Rico. 

Nonbelief Relief is aiding a persecuted atheist teacher whose story will appear in the December issue of FFRF's newspaper, Freethought Today. He was relocated to Nepal by Forum-Asia and has been helped by several groups, including Amnesty International, but those grants have run out. He is not considered a legal immigrant in Nepal and is trying to relocate to another country with the help of some human rights organizations.

Nonbelief Relief Inc. is a humanitarian agency for atheists, agnostics, freethinkers and their supporters to improve this world, our only world. It seeks to remediate conditions of human suffering and injustice on a global scale, whether the result of natural disasters, human actions or adherence to religious dogma. Such relief is not limited to but includes assistance for individuals targeted for nonbelief, secular activism or blasphemy.

Your donation will make a difference by furthering Nonbelief Relief's work, in the name of atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers. Nonbelief Relief has no overheard costs and all donations go for charitable purposes. Nonbelief Relief is a separate entity from FFRF, but donations can be given via FFRF, making your donation deductible for income-tax purposes. Choose the "Nonbelief Relief" designation in FFRF's "donate" dropdown. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has persuaded a West Virginia school district to deny the Gideons permission to hand out bibles to students.

A concerned local resident and parent informed FFRF that Gideons International distributed bibles to fifth-grade students at Follansbee Middle School in the Brooke County Schools system this past spring. The Gideons or school staff reportedly visited classrooms to tell students that bibles would be available.

Gideons International is a self-described interdenominational association of Christian business and professional men who are members of Protestant and evangelical churches. The organization's members, according to its website, "personally witness and distribute God's Word to ... students in the fifth grade and above."

The district was flouting the law, FFRF informed the school district.

"Courts have held that the distribution of bibles to students at public schools during instructional time is prohibited," Senior Counsel Patrick Elliott wrote to Brooke County Schools Superintendent Toni A. Paesano Shute in July. 

When a school distributes religious literature to its students, or permits evangelists like the Gideons to distribute religious literature to its students, it entangles itself with that religious message, FFRF reminded the school district.

At first, school officials were unyielding. Follansbee Middle School Principal Greg Rothwell responded that the bible distribution would be allowed to continue. "This has been the practice since I have been an administrator at Follansbee Middle School, since 2015, and will continue to be the practice followed," he said. 

FFRF then asked for authorization to give away its own literature alongside the bibles in schools where the Gideons had been permitted.

"If Brooke County Schools allows bible distributions, it is obligated to distribute FFRF materials and any censorship of nonreligious materials would violate the free speech rights of FFRF," Elliott wrote in an October letter. "We previously sued and secured the right to distribute freethought literature when it was censored by a school district."

FFRF's follow-up missive caused a change of heart.

"Mr. Rothwell misspoke when he stated that schools would continue to allow Gideon Bibles to be placed on a table in the hallway," Shute said in a recent email. "Our Brooke County Board of Education makes those decisions, not Principal Rothwell. We will not be permitting Gideon bible placement in our schools."

FFRF is glad that its powers of persuasion had the intended effect.

"Adult male missionaries cannot be allowed to target a captive audience of 10- and 11-year-olds," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. "We're pleased that Brooke County Schools officials finally realized that they must protect the rights of parents to decide on their children's religious instruction."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 29,000 members across the country, including in West Virginia. FFRF's purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

FFRF is currently suing the school system in West Virginia's Mercer County over fundamentalist bible instruction during the school day, in a federal lawsuit attracting national attention.

The Trump administration knows how to add injury to insult.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that it has made many scientists ineligible to serve on the agency's three major advisory groups. The EPA is apparently no longer interested in receiving advice from qualified experts. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is dismayed but unsurprised by this move, given that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is notoriously anti-science. 

What does both infuriate and shock FFRF is that Pruitt is using the Old Testament story of Joshua to justify the dubious rule change. Pruitt reportedly stated: 

Joshua says to the people of Israel: Choose this day whom you are going to serve. This is sort of like the Joshua principle — that as it relates to grants from this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or chose the grant. But you can't do both. That's the fair and great thing to do.

Joshua is a dreadful role model, FFRF contends. The Old Testament shows him to be nothing but a mass murderer.

The story of Joshua at Jericho is not about a battle, but a slaughter:

And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord.. . . . the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword . . . . And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord . . . . Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it. Joshua 6:17-26 KJV.

Joshua murders "both man and woman, young and old," and pronounces a death sentence on the children of any who dare to rebuild the city he just destroyed. The complete slaughter of an entire people falls under the category of genocide. Chapters 9 through 12 of the biblical book of Joshua detail many other genocides committed by Joshua and commanded by his god. He's not a figure that the head of the EPA should be using as an ethical frame of reference.

It's unconscionable that the federal government is declaring a war on science. Pruitt should confine himself to his mandate of protecting the environment — instead of utilizing a questionable religious figure to destroy it.

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Why Women Need Freedom From Religion

Organized religion always has been and remains the greatest enemy of women's rights. In the Christian-dominated Western world, two bible verses in particular sum up the position of women:

"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." By this third chapter of Genesis, woman lost her rights, her standing—even her identity, and motherhood became a God-inflicted curse degrading her status in the world.

In the New Testament, the bible decrees:

"Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." 1 Tim. 2:11-14

One bible verse alone, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18) is responsible for the death of tens of thousands, if not millions, of women. Do women and those who care about them need further evidence of the great harm of Christianity, predicated as it has been on these and similar teachings about women?

Church writer Tertullian said "each of you women is an Eve . . . You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law."

Martin Luther decreed: "If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it."

Such teachings prompted 19th-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton to write: "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of woman's emancipation."

The various Christian churches fought tooth and nail against the advancement of women, opposing everything from women's right to speak in public, to the use of anesthesia in childbirth (since the bible says women must suffer in childbirth) and woman's suffrage. Today the most organized and formidable opponent of women's social, economic and sexual rights remains organized religion. Religionists defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. Religious fanatics and bullies are currently engaged in an outright war of terrorism and harassment against women who have abortions and the medical staff which serves them. Those seeking to challenge inequities and advance the status of women today are fighting a massive coalition of fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic churches and religious groups mobilized to fight women's rights, gay rights, and secular government.

Why do women remain second-class citizens? Why is there a religion-fostered war against women's rights? Because the bible is a handbook for the subjugation of women. The bible establishes woman's inferior status, her "uncleanliness," her transgressions, and God-ordained master/servant relationship to man. Biblical women are possessions: fathers own them, sell them into bondage, even sacrifice them. The bible sanctions rape during wartime and in other contexts. Wives are subject to Mosaic-law sanctioned "bedchecks" as brides, and male jealousy fits and no-notice divorce as wives. The most typical biblical labels of women are "harlot" and "whore." They are described as having evil, even satanic powers of allurement. Contempt for women's bodies and reproductive capacity is a bedrock of the bible. The few role models offered are stereotyped, conventional and inadequate, with bible heroines admired for obedience and battle spirit. Jesus scorns his own mother, refusing to bless her, and issues dire warnings about the fate of pregnant and nursing women.

There are more than 200 bible verses that specifically belittle and demean women. Here are just a few:

• Genesis 2:22 Woman created from Adam's rib
• 3:16 Woman cursed: maternity a sin, marriage a bondage
• 19:1–8 Rape virgins instead of male angels

• Exodus 20:17 Insulting Tenth Commandment
• 21:7–11 Unfair rules for female servants, may be sex slaves
• 22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"
• 38:8 Women may not enter tabernacle they must support

• Leviticus 12:1–14 Women who have sons are unclean 7 days
• 12:4–7 Women who have daughters are unclean 14 days
• 15:19–23 Menstrual periods are unclean
• 19:20–22 If master has sex with engaged woman, she shall be scourged

• Numbers 1:2 Poll of people only includes men
• 5:13–31 Barbaric adulteress test
• 31:16–35 "Virgins" listed as war booty

• Deuteronomy 21:11–14 Rape manual
• 22:5 Abomination for women to wear men's garments, vice-versa
• 22:13–21 Barbaric virgin test
• 22:23–24 Woman raped in city, she & her rapist both stoned to death
• 22:28–29 Woman must marry her rapist
• 24:1 Men can divorce woman for "uncleanness," not vice-versa
• 25:11–12 If woman touches foe's penis, her hand shall be cut off

• Judges 11:30-40 Jephthah's nameless daughter sacrificed
• 19:22–29 Concubine sacrificed to rapist crowd to save man

• I Kings 11:1–4 King Solomon had 700 wives & 300 concubines

• Job 14:1–4 "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one . . ."

• Proverbs 7:9–27 Evil women seduce men, send them to hell
• 11:22 One of numerous Proverbial putdowns

• Isaiah 3:16–17 God scourges, rapes haughty women

• Ezekiel 16:45 One of numerous obscene denunciations

• Matthew 24:19 "[woe] to them that are with child"

• Luke 2:22 Mary unclean after birth of Jesus

• I Corinthians 11:3–15 Man is head of woman; only man in God's image
• 14:34–35 Women keep in silence, learn only from husbands

• Ephesians 5:22–33 "Wives, submit . . ."

• Colossians 3:18 More "wives submit"

• I Timothy 2:9 Women adorn selves in shamefacedness
• 2:11–14 Women learn in silence in all subjection; Eve was sinful, Adam blameless

Why should women—and the men who honor women—respect and support religions which preach women's submission, which make women's subjugation a cornerstone of their theology? When attempts are made to base laws on the bible, women must beware. The constitutional principle of separation between church and state is the only sure barrier standing between women and the bible.

For more information about the treatment of women in the bible, read the books Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So and Women Without Superstition: No Gods-No Masters by Annie Laurie Gaylor and The Born Again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible by Ruth Hurmence Green (each available from the address below). Join the Freedom From Religion Foundation to help educate about the root cause of women's oppression, and to enforce the absolute seperation of church and state. Send your $40, tax-deductible memebership to Freedom From Religion Foundation, P.O. Box 750, Madison WI 53701. 

© 1993 by A.L. Gaylor
All Rights Reserved.

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The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed an amicus brief in the famous case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court about whether a baker can refuse a cake to a gay couple. 

Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission seeks to radically redefine "religious freedom" as the right to impose one's religious beliefs on others. Commercial businesses seeking exemptions from anti-discrimination laws are a prime example of this alarming argument. A Colorado baker refused to bake a cake for a gay marriage, contending his rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment let his place of public accommodation discriminate against gay customers.

The Supreme Court has historically rejected free exercise challenges to neutral laws that regulate action, especially actions that harm other citizens. Interpreting a free exercise right to be exempted from anti-discrimination laws would have no practical limits, inviting discrimination against all protected classes not only in places of public accommodation, but many other contexts, FFRF asserts. This interpretation would also violate Establishment Clause principles by singling out religiously motivated action for special exemption from civil laws.

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others," Thomas Jefferson remarked. "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." If one's religion, however, mandates picking pockets and breaking legs, that conduct comes under the purview of our secular law, FFRF contends. To do as the bakery asks would grant a license to pickpockets and leg-breakers, so long as they themselves believed that license to be divinely inspired.

There is no logical or practical way to draw a line between religiously motivated racial discrimination and racial discrimination motivated by nonreligious beliefs. In the 1960s, Maurice Bessinger, refused to let a minister's wife enter his South Carolina barbeque joint because she was black. Bob Jones, the televangelist and founder of an eponymous religious school, infamously declared that segregation was scriptural in a 1960 Easter sermon.
The state of Colorado has sought to prevent harm by including sexual orientation as a class protected by law against discrimination in places that sell goods and services to the public. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment does not mean that anyone with a religious objection be permitted to disregard this religiously neutral anti-discrimination law.

Elevating religion and actions based on religious beliefs above the law by granting them exemptions to general and neutrally applicable laws will create chaos and have far-reaching effects, FFRF maintains.

Discrimination against Jews will increase, for instance. If there is a right to refuse service to a protected class because one's religious belief demands it, Jews may be among the first to feel the sting of this massive redefinition of the law. But they will not be the only ones.

Discrimination against atheists will increase, too. The bakery admits that its owner refuses to design custom cakes that "promote atheism," along with those that promote "racism, or indecency." Given that the company regards selling any wedding cake to a gay couple as "promoting gay marriage," it's easy to see how a desire not to "promote atheism" might similarly result in a refusal of service based on a customer's atheism.
"The Free Exercise Clause cannot be interpreted in a way that would undermine the Establishment Clause," FFRF's brief states. "A ruling in the bakery's favor would create an interpretation that prefers, favors and promotes religion over nonreligion. Such a decision would undermine long-settled and critically important principles under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause."

The U.S. Supreme Court has never held that the Free Exercise Clause requires an exemption from neutral laws regulating conduct. It should decline to do so now and uphold the decision of the Colorado Court of Appeals, FFRF argues to the Supreme Court in its brief.

FFRF's interest in this case arises from the fact that most of its members are atheists or nonbelievers, as are the members of the public it serves as a state/church watchdog. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national nonprofit organization based in Madison, Wis., is the largest association of freethinkers in the United States, representing more than 29,000 atheists and agnostics, 10 percent of whom identify as LGBTQ. A ruling that state and local governments must tolerate religiously motivated discrimination in places of public accommodation would invite discrimination against atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers, severely impacting FFRF's members and FFRF's work to uphold freedom of conscience under the First Amendment.

FFRF's Managing Staff Attorney Rebecca Markert is the Counsel of Record on the brief, with principal writing by FFRF Staff Attorney Elizabeth Cavell, and help from FFRF attorneys Andrew Seidel, Patrick Elliott and Sam Grover.

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The country's leading secular organizations are alerting the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to the indefensible nature of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' recent "religious memo."

Sessions' "Memorandum on Religious Liberty" was released on Oct. 6.

"This is a brazen attempt to pervasively privilege religion over the rights and liberties of all Americans," the Freedom From Religion Foundation and several other like-minded organizations write in letters primarily drafted by the Secular Coalition of America. "In our estimation, the memorandum amounts to nothing less than the federal government granting a legal privilege to discriminate." 

The Establishment Clause, the bedrock of American secular government, which for years has prohibited government funding of religion and mandated government neutrality on religious matters, has been relegated to a mere footnote by this memorandum, the groups assert. Religious organizations, individuals, and even for-profit corporations are to be granted special treatment unavailable to the nonreligious in the form of exemptions from laws and requirements other citizens must obey.

If fully implemented, the memorandum will result in the creation of a religiously based license to discriminate, the secular organizations contend. Religious individuals, organizations, and even for-profit corporations where the owners or management claim religious affiliation, will be permitted to claim exemptions from a whole swath of federal, state, and local regulations and laws. In addition, entities that discriminate on a religious basis will be entitled to taxpayer funding on an equal basis with groups that do not discriminate, and government will be powerless in funding decisions to prioritize inclusive groups that serve their whole community.

Furthermore, the memorandum expands the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in ways Congress never intended when it enacted the law in 1993. With this memorandum, Sessions seeks to extend RFRA's reach even beyond the actions protected by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case. The memorandum emphasizes that religiously motivated actions, not just religious beliefs, must be protected without regard for the impact of such actions on third parties. It further notes that to satisfy the least restrictive means test of RFRA, Congress may be required to expend taxpayer funds to replace an action that religious corporations have refused to undertake, essentially permitting for-profit corporations to transfer that responsibility onto the public purse.

In their letters, the secular organizations maintain that Sessions' Oct. 18 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee has only heightened their concerns. When asked if the guidelines would grant religious exemptions from the Affordable Care Act to employers who practiced faith healing or held religious objections to vaccination, the attorney general failed to answer the question. When asked if a federal employee could refuse to provide social security survivor benefits to a same-sex spouse, or if a federal contractor could refuse services to LGBTQ people in an emergency, Sessions claimed that he could not provide a verbal answer and admitted that he had not considered that possibility. "It is deeply disturbing that the attorney general is unaware of, or refuses to acknowledge, that this memorandum will open the door to as many forms of discrimination as there are religious beliefs," the letter says.

"This memorandum is tantamount to a declaration of war on the LGBTQ community, women, nontheists and religious minorities," the groups assert. "The secular community will stand opposed to this administration's continued attempt to pervert the words 'religious liberty' in an effort to circumvent the United States Constitution and promote the religious interests of a select few."

The organizations encourage members of the Judiciary Committees to question the Department of Justice, as well as the Trump administration, on the harms that will arise if this memorandum is implemented, and ask that they pay close attention to these continued efforts to thwart the freedoms afforded to all Americans by elevating sectarian beliefs above the law.

Among the more than a dozen groups signing the letters, in addition to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, are American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Center for Inquiry and the Secular Students Alliance.