Cradle of Liberty [Boy Scouts] officials have said they could not renounce the scouts’ long-established policy of not opening membership to atheists or openly gay people without running afoul of their charter with the scouts’ National Council.
City officials have said they could not legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a dollar a year to a private organization that discriminates.
The land belongs to the City of Philadelphia but has been leased since 1928 for that token sum to the scouts, who built the landmark Beaux Arts building.
That lease came into question only after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2000 in a New Jersey case involving an openly gay scout who was barred from serving as troop leader.
The high court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale ruled, 5-4, that the scouts, as a private organization, have a right of “expressive association” under the First Amendment to set their own membership rules.
The scouts have long required members to swear an oath of duty to God, and their rules prohibit membership by anyone who is openly homosexual. For that reason, scouting officials initially greeted the Supreme Court’s ruling as a victory.
That mood quickly evaporated, however, as local government officials around the nation began reexamining long-standing preferential relationships with scouts.
Unlike the scouts, public officials are also bound by a line of Supreme Court opinions barring taxpayer support of any group that discriminates.
It’s going to cost the Boy Scouts an additional $199,999/yr to continue excluding gays and atheists from participating in their organization. Is it really worth all that?
I don’t think the Boy Scouts are going to suddenly see the light here, and begin to allow scouts of all beliefs (or lack thereof) and sexual identities. After all, if the scouts are discriminating on the basis of divine principle, so what’s $199,999 to them?
And realistically, how many atheists or homosexuals are eager to join the scouts? And how many of said atheists or homosexuals do you think aren’t already in the scouts, but just keeping their personal business to themselves? I’m not saying that they should have to do so, but I am saying that it’s kind of silly to believe that there are absolutely NO atheists and NO homosexuals among the boy scouts just because the organization officially prohibits them. It’s not like these factors manifest themselves in primordial physical traits.
So if the Boy Scouts of America was to say, not discriminate on the basis of religion (or lack thereof) and sexuality — something that it cannot do with 100% efficacy anyway — it could save itself nearly $200,000 and teach young men about the virtues of tolerance and acceptance.
Back in April I attended a conference on “The New Humanism” at Harvard and the big buzz at the time was that California Congressman Pete Stark was coming to speak at Harvard in five months. Congressman Stark is the highest ranking elected official in the U.S. to publicly identify himself as a nontheist, which requires more guts to do than it ought to — after all, there is still a clause in Article VI Section 3 of our U.S. Constitution which states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Yet the religious beliefs of candidates and elected officials matter to voters. And for the most part, voters are least likely to vote for atheists or nontheists.
Which tells me that Congressman Stark may not be the highest-ranking nontheist in government, but rather the only one whose seat is safe enough that he can admit it.
OK, seriously. It’s not an idea that would work well. The feeding people part is admirable and it alone would have gone swimmingly, but the bit about preaching over the loudspeaker would have been…let’s say ineffective…at best. Assuming that most people are believers (not such a leap) and assuming that most of the believers go to church every Sunday (kind of a leap), just think about the sermon you go to hear on Sunday. Why do you go to the church that you go to, and not another one? Probably because you are cool with one philosophy over the other. Would you want to hear the other church’s message broadcast on a loudspeaker that’s sound penetrated your living room? Not likely.
This guy’s proposal was to give food to some but to force his sermons on many, and the many are likely to already be believers who know the message or seek it out on their own each Sunday morning. The message won’t be what drives up attendance at his church, the free food will.
That’s the problem I have with this proposal, and that’s why I’m glad it was denied. I am an atheist, but I live down the street from a big church. The bells are quite nice, but if I woke up on Sundays to the sound of a preacher instead…yuck! From what I can tell, the church is well attended (though nobody has to park near my place and walk except on Christmas and Easter) and I don’t think that broadcasting sermons on loudspeaker would increase the attendance or the effectiveness of the message. Besides, no preacher’s loudspeaker is going to be outdone by the car stereo systems of New Britain, which keep me up to date on popular music in brief snippets that find their way from the intersection to my apartment.
Praise be to the Board of Police Commissioners for rejecting the proposal!
That’s the conclusion reported in a Daniela Altimari article from the Hartford Courant yesterday about the results of a recent UConn poll. It turns out that nearly half of nutmeggers polled believe that religion has too great an influence on politics, and that 68 percent don’t care for politicians who make policy decisions based upon their religious beliefs.
Each person quoted in the article (aside from the research director at UConn’s polling center) indicates that he or she is religious, most of them stating that religion and government/politics should be separate. Even those who disagree are represented, as one believer is quoted saying that “politicians need to vote based on what they believe.”
Walt Ezepchick, a 46-year-old auto mechanic and former Marine from Milford, attended Catholic schools and says his faith remains “somewhat important” to him, even though he doesn’t attend regular church services. He sums up his religious philosophy this way: “I believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, to be good to one another.”
However, he said he doesn’t believe religion belongs in the realm of public policy.
“The Founding Fathers had it right,” said Ezepchick, one of several respondents who agreed to a follow-up interview. “I believe in secular debate.”
[...]
Angela Campos, an 18-year-old Catholic from Bridgeport who attends church twice a week, said the nation would benefit from a greater mingling of politics and religious teachings. “I do think the world would be a better place if more politicians and people in general were religious,” she said.
I’m guessing that there are way more people in this country like Mr. Ezepchick than there are people like Ms. Angela Campos, and that gives me hope for the future.
Saturday I drove to Boston to attend a small part of The New Humanism conference. Though I wish I had been able to attend the events on Friday and Sunday, it seems that the best of what I missed was a Saturday morning panel entitled “Toward an Abrahamic Humanism?” featuring Salman Rushdie, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, and Rev. Dr. William Murry. I’m just taking Skepchick at her word:
One thing I love about these events is that there’s always at least one surprise speaker who blows you away, and Rabbi Wine was mine. He was hilarious, down to earth, engaging, and he made a ton of sense. There’s a very large number of humanistic Jews who find solace in the social aspects of their culture and wish to preserve that while also safeguarding their dignity by acknowledging their non-belief. Wine really helped me understand the use of humanism, while previously I was unsure that it was anything more than a dolled up, neutered term for atheist.
The first panel that I did catch was called The Future of Organized Humanism. Here’s the line-up of speakers:
The second panel was, in my opinion, more entertaining. Probably because they were all born within 10 years of me. Speakers included the names below, plus at least one more who wasn’t listed in the program:
The Expo of National and Local Humanist and Secular Organizations would have been nicer in a room rather than in the only passable hallway. Still, I’m 1/3 of the way through Imagine No Superstition, copies of which were given away by the Secular Student Alliance during the expo. In fact, you can get a free copy of the e-book here.
Later, Woody Kaplan introduced Ned Lamont, who was at the conference to talk about his great uncle Corliss Lamont. Below is my video of Woody and Ned from the Saturday evening Gala:
Saturday I drove to Boston to attend a small part of