FFRF announces S.D. student as ‘strong backbone’ activist awardee

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is pleased to bestow a South Dakota high school student with its $1,000 student activist award for her objections to her school board starting its meetings with Christian prayer.

Shaye Beardsley, a senior at Stevens High School, has been granted the “Strong Backbone Student Activist Award” after she spoke up at the April 5 meeting of the Rapid City Area Schools board against its recent practice of inviting clergy to pray at meetings.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation received a complaint about the school board opening with an invocation in October of last year and sent a letter. After no reply, FFRF Legal Fellow Karen Heineman followed up with an open records request in January. She again received no response. In the meantime, a few adults in the community had voiced displeasure about the prayers in comments during the meeting.

At the April meeting, Beardsley spoke up on behalf of herself, as well as several other students, including a Christian student who said it was not only unconstitutional but unkind to force the religion on those who don’t practice Christianity. Beardsley’s testimony included a recitation of the Supreme Court decision against official school prayer. With a flourish, she ended her short testimony by adding, “Almost all of these people can vote in the next election.”

She explained the reasons for her intervention to FFRF.

“The issue that I addressed in that specific meeting was about the invocation that is recited at the beginning of every meeting,” she said. “Every time the prayer is said, it is always a Christian prayer invoked by a Christian minister. Not only does this prayer alienate students who don’t believe in Christianity, it also creates an environment that makes some people feel unsafe and/or unwelcome. This results in less communication between viewpoints as a specific group is being alienated from the place that it is supposed to go to feel seen and heard.”

Demonstrating the problem, Pastor James Moore from Journey Church was formally introduced at the board meeting on April 5 and intoned, “Lord, all authority is given by you and you’ve placed anyone in authority in their position … to make godly decisions for our children in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Beardsley’s interests include activism, reading, music and playing softball.

“I plan to take a gap year on the West Coast and get in-state tuition for college,” she tells FFRF. “My major is still undecided but will most likely be something along the lines of journalism or international relations.”

FFRF is impressed with the spirit of student outspokenness that Beardsley represents — and will persist in its work to ensure that such activism is supported.

“FFRF will continue to educate the school board on the inappropriateness of mixing prayer and public school business, especially given the fact that students are present,” remarks Heineman.

FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says, “We’re proud of Shaye. She’s the one teaching the school board what they should already know. It’s the height of ego to invite clergy who assert these particular school board members were placed on the school board by God to make ‘godly decisions’ for children ‘in Jesus’s name’! No, they were placed there by taxpayers to run an entirely secular school district, whose purpose is to educate, not indoctrinate.”

The $1,000 annual scholarship is financed by an octogenarian FFRF member who gives the scholarship on his birthday to encourage and reward activism by freethinking students.

Fla. teen activist against ‘Don’t Say Gay bill’ gets $5,000 FFRF award

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proud to be naming Florida teenager Will Larkins as recipient of its Catherine Fahringer Student Activist Award, which includes a $5,000 cash scholarship.

Larkins, a junior at Winter Park High School, Fla., is president and co-founder of the school’s Queer Student Union and one of the organizers of an impressive Say Gay Anyway walkout of 500 students on March 7. Larkins even testified in person on Feb. 28 before the Florida Legislature against the punitive measure, which passed on March 8, but which hasn’t yet been signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Parental Rights in Education bill is also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because it seeks to inhibit or outright prohibit public schools from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identify. From kindergarten to third grade, such mentions would be illegal, and would only be permitted through the 12th grade if not deemed “age-inappropriate” by any complaining parent. Additionally, the bill would encourage parents to sue districts for alleged violations, and teachers to effectively “out” students to parents.

In a moving guest essay, “Florida’s ‘Don’t say gay’ bill will hurt teens like me,” that ran in the New York Times in March, Larkins recounts being surrounded by classmates at a high school Halloween party last year, who shouted homophobic slurs, with one student threatening violence.

“When I broke down crying in class the next day, my teacher comforted me,” Larkins writes. “She told me that she had gone through something similar when she was my age . . . Had the proposed law been in effect last year, my teacher could have put herself in jeopardy by being there for me.”

Larkins adds: “From an early age I knew I was different. . . . By fourth grade, I was convinced that I was broken. I didn’t know how to defend myself when other kids made hateful comments or bullied me — I didn’t know why I was the way that I was.”

In learning “how common the experience of falling outside the gender binary was . . . I grew to understand and love myself,” Larkins writes. “Education made me hate myself less.”

Larkins cites statistics from the the Trevor Project, which show that LGBTQ teenagers — who are four times more likely to attempt suicide as straight counterparts — are far less likely to attempt suicide if they learn about LGBTQ issues in school.

“People in support of the bill always ask, ‘Why do these subjects need to be taught in schools?’ To them I would say that if we understand ourselves, and those around us understand us, so many lives will be saved,” Larkins concludes.

“We are so impressed with Will Larkins’ courage and activism, for so bravely sharing personal experiences and for speaking out at school and in his state Capitol against this pernicious legislation,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.

Thank you, Kansans, for restoring the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “faith” in our nation’s commitment to individual liberties. Kansas voters yesterday resoundingly rejected the anti-abortion referendum on their ballot.

Voters were put to the task to either preserve the 2019 Kansas Supreme Court decision that declared abortion to be a fundamental right under the state’s Bill of Rights or reverse it. If the voters agreed to overturn the constitutional amendment that protected abortion, there would have been a clear path for abortion restrictions and/or an outright ban in the state.

Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected the anti-abortion constitutional amendment, however. This is not only significant to the people of Kansas, but also to the thousands of people from other states who go to Kansas for abortion care. Even before Roe was reversed, nearly half of the abortions performed in Kansas were for people traveling from other states. And now that Oklahoma and Missouri have virtually banned all abortions, Kansas is even more of a safe haven in an abortion desert.

It is also significant because Kansas is the first state to put abortion rights to a vote after the U.S. Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in June. This major support for abortion access in a largely conservative state reveals the value of voter activation. FFRF members in Kansas were active in showing their support for abortion rights.

To no one’s surprise, the Catholic Church was a major player in promoting the anti-abortion referendum. According to Catholic News Agency, the Archdiocese of Kansas City committed $2.5 million, the Wichita Diocese gave $551,000, the Salina Diocese at least $100,000 and the Kansas Catholic Conference at least $275,000. Additional parishes spent money to pass the anti-abortion measure, including St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Leawood, which gave $100,000. According to reports, many other Catholic churches, Knights of Columbus councils and Protestant churches gave donations to imperil the right to abortion. The amendment was also supported by the Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. More than 450 pastors and religious leaders signed a letter backing the campaign.

“Kansas citizens demonstrated that voters even in red states can be persuaded to support reproductive rights,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “Compassion, reason and our secular ideal to keep religion out of social policy have prevailed. This shows the necessity of grassroots activism.”

Sign up for action alerts so you can take steps to support abortion rights in your area.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the largest association of freethinkers in the United States, representing more than 37,000 atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious Americans nationwide, including in Kansas. Its two primary purposes are to educate the public about nontheism and to defend the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.

In honor of one of secularism’s many talented voices, the poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) — whose birthday is today, Aug. 3 — the Freedom From Religion Foundation is sharing the animated music video we produced featuring his charmingly irreverent poem, “Heaven.”

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, an accomplished piano player and songwriter, has set the poem to music and ubertalented young artist Kati Treu has captured the song with painstaking animation. Click on the embedded video above or click here to watch.

Rupert Brooke is only one of the numerous freethinkers featured in the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s online archive of famous nonbelievers, Freethought of the Day. Read more about Brooke here. You can also sign up to start your day with these short bios and featured freethinking quotes by famous or celebrated atheists, agnostics, humanists and heretics.

It’s been a hard summer for those of us who value the separation between state and church and the individual liberties this separation protects. We hope you will enjoy this secular interlude as a change of pace.

The words of the poem are embedded in the video, and also reprinted below for your enjoyment.

Heaven

By Rupert Brooke

Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must see
A Purpose in Liquidity.
We darkly know, by Faith we cry,
The future is not Wholly Dry.
Mud unto mud!--Death eddies near--
Not here the appointed End, not here!
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,
Is wetter water, slimier slime!
And there (they trust) there swimmeth One
Who swam ere rivers were begun,
Immense, of fishy form and mind,
Squamous, omnipotent, and kind;
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,
But more than mundane weeds are there,
And mud, celestially fair;
Fat caterpillars drift around,
And Paradisal grubs are found;
Unfading moths, immortal flies,
And the worm that never dies.
And in that Heaven of all their wish,
There shall be no more land, say fish.