Does the Government Test Your Faith?

[0:02] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. We learn about the recent Ohio law that forces colleges and universities to do what many already do make accommodations for religious believers. A push for safe housing in Maumee gets a push back from landlords not wanting to spend the money to comply. And March 1st brings an end to the pandemic allotment of food stamps. People shouldn’t have to worry about paying for food. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:46] Music.

[0:55] Being that this is January here in Ohio, we have just started a new legislative session in the in Ohio legislature. It’s mainly pretty much is dominated by conservatives, dominated by a lot of Christian nationalists. So they come up with laws against abortion all the time and and laws attacking trans people and.

[1:28] Trying. Now, one of the things that they want to do is they want to make it harder to to change the Ohio Constitution because they know that there’s a couple of groups that want to put a constitutional amendment. On the ballot soon in order to protect abortion rights in Ohio. Since the Dobbs decision in the last last year, last Supreme Court term allowed the states to decide. Wrongly, of course, they wrongly decided to let the states decide whether or not abortion was against the law or not. And so that’s one thing that the Christian nationalists want to do.

[2:14] They also tried to install their own speaker of the Ohio House, Derek Marin, who is a representative from our neck of the woods, and Carlo the township. And that was not successful because the more semi moderate Republicans worked with the Democrats and chose a different guy. But one of the things that they did in what they call the lame duck session, that’s the end of the old, the old legislature before the new one starts, is they try to pass a bunch of bills that have been stalled out or sit in on the table. And one of those bills was House Bill 353, and that was the title of it. And I was reading a newspaper article, and it had a list of bills that Governor DeWine had on his desk to sign or veto. And he also has a line item veto that he can veto only certain parts of bills, etc.. And one of them was this House Bill 353. I’d never heard of it. The title gave me a pause. It was called the Testing Your Faith Act.

[3:26] And it was sponsored by Representative Gary Glick of District 88 over by Fremont. He is an ordained minister. So I knew this could not be good for for religious freedom. And technically, I was correct.

[3:45] Basically, what this this bill and it was signed by the governor. Unfortunately, testing your faith would require each state institution of higher education to adopt a policy providing students with religious accommodations.

[4:02] And what that meant was that let’s say you’re going to Ohio State University or university in your neck of the woods, University of Toledo, and you’re taking this class, and you have a high holy day on an, on an exam day because you know when the exam is going to be because in in colleges and universities, they have their syllabus and they have their class mapped out day by day. And they and, you know, when the exams are going to be, you know, when the labs if you have to do a lab, you know, when those are going to be. So you get the syllabus for this class and you see that there’s going to be an exam on on one of your high holy days, whatever holy day that is, I don’t know, Purim or celebrating the moon or whatever, that high holy day your religion follows. So basically what it would what this law under, House Bill 353 would do is require colleges and universities to have a policy where, you know, when your high holy days are and they would give you up to three.

[5:24] Days that you could take off. And be excused from class. And if there’s a test on that day, then the professor or instructor would have to make an accommodation for you, to take that test at another time or turn in your assignment, your project, or whatever it is. And so you would have three during the course of this class time. You would have three of these days, but you would have to preferably probably have a form to fill out and you would have to tell the instructor or professor ahead of time which days you needed not to be there for these high holy days. And so people are saying, But Doug, that sounds like reasonable accommodation, right? Well, yeah, because pretty much public colleges already do this. You know, if you’re taking a class and let’s say your uncle dies and you’re going to the funeral, they’ll make an accommodation. Most instructors will most colleges will make accommodations for you if something comes up, if there’s something in your life that comes up and you need to take off or you need to take an exam another day.

[6:43] They accommodate you. And I look, the University of Toledo has a policy where like funerals or jury duty or military service or all these other kinds of stuff, religious holidays, you could take off. You know, you have to give some notice. It can’t be used as an excuse. Like, why didn’t you turn your project in? Doug? Well, because I was celebrating Darwin Day. Well, you can’t do that.

[7:11] So I’m reading the text to this Testing Your Faith act, and it’s pretty, pretty detailed that it is for people who have religious beliefs. It is not tailored for secular people. It’s not telling you it’s not for people of conscience, It’s not for secular people know, let’s say let’s say I want to celebrate, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and I know this is going to be on September the 18th, and I have an exam that day. And so on the first day of class, I say, Professor, I want to take the 18th off for flying Spaghetti Monster Day. This act will not protect you for that. And that’s why that’s why I think this is a bad law. It’s not needed. And it’s once again, it’s low hanging fruit for Christian nationalists and religious, religious freedom fanatics that get it wrong, get religious freedom wrong, and think that it should be used to get things over on people.

[8:21] And so what I did was Gary Glick. He was a primary sponsor. There was a Democrat, Jessica miranda, District 28, which I think is down by Cincinnati somewhere. She co sponsored it or was one of the primary sponsors. And then there was dozens of co-sponsors, like they get all these people signing on to it and then they can use it in their their campaign literature, Hey, I supported this bill. And so there was quite a few people on here, like the usual suspects, like Jennifer GROSS, Sarah Fowler, author who is a Christian nationalist. And Jean Schmidt.

[9:02] Casey Weinstein happens to be Jewish. And then in the Senate, on the Senate side, Paula Hicks Hudson from our area and Theresa Gavron. And so what I did was I was curious and I wrote an email to Gary Glick and Representative Miranda and to Paula Hicks Hudson asking them the same question.

[9:29] And the question that I asked was that, I saw that they co-sponsored House Bill 353 Ohio’s Testing Your Faith Act, which directs higher ed institutions to develop, develop accommodations for students who need to be absent for religious reasons and was curious to know if you believe the act would cover accommodations for atheists or agnostics. Could a student who wanted to be absent on Charles Darwin’s birthday be able to have any assignments or test move to another date? Just a simple question. And I actually didn’t expect to hear back from the person that I’d heard back from. Curiously, I did not hear back from Representative Miranda, and I didn’t hear from Senator Paula.

[10:16] I heard back from Representative Glick. And I wanted to read some of what he wrote back. His legislative assistant, his legislative aide, Ben Nettles, sent me the email with Representative Glick’s comments.

[10:37] He starts out, he says, Thank you for the question. The first thing I will note is that it is not in my power to adjudicate the consequences of this bill. The implementation will be done by the institutions of higher learning, and the courts may decide any controversy. I can only speak to in ten. While we recognize the right of everyone to believe not to believe or to question the intent of the bill is not merely to celebrate and enjoy a day off, but to protect the conscience of students. Religious students may believe that a higher power requires them to observe certain days. Thus, many have been required to choose between obeying God or man, which is technically not true. The question for those who would judge the applicability of this law to atheists and agnostics may be whether or not the conscience, an atheist or a agnostic requires them to observe certain days. The absence of a higher power imposing such rituals may be problematic. While Darwin may be a hero to some, he is not viewed as a deity. Celebrating his birthday would be no different than Washington, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. While there may be value in those celebrations, there are not ritual requirements. It would have been interesting to have you present during our hearings to provide interested party testimony of how this may or may not impact your association. I would have welcomed your input in private conversations as well.

[12:06] Personally, I’m an advocate for religious liberty for everyone, including atheists and agnostics. As a Christian, this bill will honestly have less of an effect on my community than it will have on Jews, Muslims and others. But the liberty that I contend for is for everyone.

[12:23] And as I said. Says. Thus many have been required to choose between obeying God or man. That technically is not true.

[12:34] There’s been from time to time and again, this is policy set by the school. Instructors and professors have some kind. Some autonomy. But if you have a bad run in with a professor or instructor, you can get satisfaction from the administration. And most public colleges and universities are very inclusive of people of different religious values. That’s what that’s one of the things that they stress to do. So I don’t think that religious people being forced to choose between God or man is actually a problem. I have not heard. And usually these kinds of things get published in newspapers and on TV quite often when if, if it does happen. The other thing that I disagree with in his response is his view of my beliefs.

[13:42] It says the absence of a higher power opposing such rituals may be problematic. While Darwin may be a hero to some, he is not viewed as a deity. Celebrating his birthday would be no different than Washington, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. While there may be value in those celebrations, there are not ritual requirements. But. Celebrating Washington, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. People get a day off.

[14:06] They don’t schedule tests on those days. Presidents Day. Some universities they sell, they shut down or or have a day off that day. Some do. Martin Luther King’s birthday, we just got done celebrating and schools were out. So, you know, the thing is that just because you believe in a higher power doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to get accommodations. You know, they do accommodations for all kinds of things. You know, just as long as you’re not abusing it like this bill, this law, as it is written, says that you have to submit the days off you want at the beginning of the semester or whenever the classes start. So, again, you can’t use it as an excuse for not doing the work. So it can’t be abused. And when I saw a, television report about this on my local TV, they talked to representatives of the University of Toledo and Bowling Green, and both of them have similar policies. So they’re not going to change a thing. So this is just a pro forma, what I call a pro forma masturbation, as it were.

[15:29] Of virtual signaling to conservatives. So this is just like any other any other of these these cultural war laws that are trying to address an issue that doesn’t exist. And reading in the record of the committee meetings, I looked at the. They had a lot of proponent testimony. They had I don’t think I saw one opposition testimony written or otherwise. And they were all from Muslims and Jewish groups which tend to get discriminated against sometimes by certain instructors and professors, especially Muslims. A lot of a lot of people still have issues with Muslims. You know, they shouldn’t be. But, you know, so but I also saw a lot of, proponent testimony from a group that is going around the country and getting laws similar to this passed in all the states.

[16:41] So unfortunately, Representative Glick makes it sound like he’s solving a problem that actually exists when instead he is responding to a religious conservative, lobby group that is getting laws like this passed around the country for no other reason than to get it passed. And try and trying to get special privileges for religious people. The thing about it is, if you’re going if if you’re paying money to go to a college. And you know that they’re going to have class or a test on your holy days. That’s a choice that you make.

[17:25] You shouldn’t get special treatment. Because your religious.

[17:31] Because it’s not like they’re springing it on you all of a sudden again. A lot of these a lot of these classes, these college classes, you know, ahead of time what the dates are. And this is this is the choice that you make that you’re going to take this class or you’re going to go to this school. If you want a college or university to conform to your, religious beliefs and philosophies and rituals, then you need to choose a college or university that is catered to your religious beliefs. So if you’re a Catholic and you want to have Mother Teresa’s day off, then you need to go to Catholic University, or Notre Dame or one of these places where they shut down for Mother Teresa’s birthday or whatever, whatever saint or or bishop they’re celebrating. But if you go to a public college or university. You can ask for accommodations and in most cases you’re going to get it. You’re not being discriminated against if you don’t. And if it’s that much of a problem, then you have to reassess yourself whether or not you are going to attend that college or university.

[18:50] You know, that’s all up to you. For college and university, you don’t have to attend that college or university. That’s a choice that the individual makes. And when you make choices, sometimes you have to compromise your values sometimes.

[19:07] And you just have to decide for yourself if that compromise is enough or if you want to make that compromise or you don’t. But you shouldn’t have to have the state pass a law to allow somebody to make an accommodation for you just so you don’t have to make that choice because you’re allowing the state to make that choice for you. And I know a lot of these conservative Christian nationalists don’t want the state making your making your religious choices.

[19:41] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at Glass City Humanist Dot Show.

[19:54] As we move further out of the pandemic time of 2020 to 2022. One of the things, one of the problems with economics and and society in general is affordable housing.

[20:14] We’ve had we’ve seen a lot of rental increases in rent we had during the pandemic. There was a moratorium on evictions and that’s gone away and a lot of landlords are now evicting their tenants. There’s been a lot of speculation on apartment housing, so much so that that, quite a few places have been bought up by either not local owners or out-of-state owners. And then they let the complex go. They don’t maintain it or anything like that.

[20:57] And so there’s just this been this and it’s been a problem for quite a while, even before the pandemic. Affordable housing, where I’m from, my home town, they had news new reports, luxury apartment complex here, luxury condominiums being built on the east side and etc., etc.. But we had a problem with with affordable housing. My sister was developmentally disabled, but she wanted to live on her own. She was functional. It wasn’t like she needed somebody to help her to live or anything like that. She was functional. She was just developmentally disabled. And so we looked into getting her housing for in the local housing authority and the local government housing authority. Back in the day, we called it Section eight, where you would go and find a place that was that was would. Had market rent and they would accept this voucher. So you only paid a percentage of your income and not the full market rate.

[22:02] Well, a lot of that housing stock doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist anymore. There’s just been a lot of problems. So we try to get my sister. Into government housing and there was like a waiting list, a three year waiting list. And this was this was in the late eighties. There was a three year waiting list in my hometown south of Toledo. Still has a problem with affordable housing. They had a lot of housing stock that low income people lived in that was near the river. They got wiped out during the flood in 2007 and not rebuilt because you couldn’t rebuild in a floodplain. But and so I always look for when they when they announce new housing, that there’s going to be affordable housing. There was a senior living senior age housing complexes built on the south end of Finley. And it was required to have because it received government assistance in building the building, that they had to have a certain percentage of the units.

[23:14] That would be affordable. And the rest of them would be market rates. And so the market rate at that time was six, $700 a month. And the affordable ones were 404 50. Not too much different, but affordable. Well, this particular senior complex on the south end of Finley, they had three units that were affordable out of probably 100 units. Only three.

[23:48] So that’s just ridiculous. You know, if you’re talking about a percentage, if you have 100 units and you want a good percentage, it should be it should match at least the poverty level of the area that you build in. And so if it’s ten or 15% poverty rate in in that community, then you should have 10 to 15% of your units should be affordable. And so housing affordable housing is something that I feel is important as a humanist. It’s important to have for people to have affordable, safe, affordable housing. So the other day reading The Toledo Blade, and they had a story about, some housing, zoning for four apartment housing that they’re going to want to revise in the city of Maumee, which is a suburb south of Toledo. Mommy rental registration proposal draws residents to council. They had a large number of people who. And and and I’ll tell you why this is odd in the TV coverage of this meeting. They call these landlords housing providers, air quotes. Housing providers. No, they’re landlords. They’re just trying to put slap lipstick on a pig. Trust me.

[25:14] Most most landlords, I have a feeling are pretty good. But usually the ones that complain about regulations are the ones that need the regulations. From my past experience, my vast experience of renting from people, I know that somebody who complains about having to spend money on their on their apartments for regulation purposes, they are the ones that need the regulations.

[25:44] And so what they were going to do was they were going to start a rental registration, city rental registration, which means any existing rental properties need to be put on a list or they will be in violation. A rigorous inspection system will also be imposed every two years with hourly fees for the inspectors to be charged to the rental owners. An application system for owners would also be put in place in addition to source of income rules and a requirement that property owners residing more than 75 miles out of town hire a local agent. The reasoning and you can see the city of Maumee. They’re concerned about affordable housing, not only affordable housing, but they’re concerned about absentee landlords. That’s a big problem. Big problem in the city of Toledo, a big problem everywhere. And again, are these housing speculators, Because you see the signs sometimes they say we buy houses and things like that. There’s a housing speculation. So you have like these investment groups that get together, they go into an area and they buy up all the housing stock.

[26:51] And it’s investment. So they want to pull as much money out of it as they can to get a return on their investment. They don’t want to spend money on it. All right. So they just do the bare minimum just to make it kind of safe. But it’s not. And if it’s inspected, they would probably condemn some property sometimes because they let them go so bad. And then when a city.

[27:20] Gets a complaint about some housing and they go to contact the owner. They can’t get a hold of the owner because he lives out of town or the investment group is in a different country or something like that. And so they have a hard time making somebody accountable. And so there was a lot of these, quote, housing providers, unquote, that were very upset.

[27:46] Actual idea of having a list, a rental list, and having inspections every two years. Which is funny because I did not know that having having. Safe, affordable housing was such a burden to the property owners. You know, and my thinking is, is if you can’t bother to make even basic maintenance fixes on your on your rental properties because you think that your tenants are going to ruin it, because a lot of these people were talking about that, that their tenants just trashed the place. If that’s your reasoning, then you are in the wrong business. You need to sell your properties and go do something else. It’s like, why are you providing housing for somebody for $400 a month if you don’t even give them the basic appreciate their basic worth and dignity as a human being?

[28:53] You know, you just see them as a burden. You know, that’s just ridiculous. I can’t I can’t fathom somebody like that. You know, I’ve been pretty lucky in the last few years of having a landlord who actually cares about me. You know, and he personally comes to the property to fix things. And he’s always asking, how’s it going? And sometimes it gets a little nosy. But, you know, I see that his heart’s in the right place.

[29:27] And so I just wish that everybody could have have that. So, like, for example, in this Toledo Blade article about this ordinance, the discussion about this ordinance, oh, and the other part of the ordinance was that these rental properties had to meet current building codes, which just doesn’t seem like that seems like should be debated or should be said. You know, you’re providing. A property to someone to rent and you want it to be as safe as possible. And you you should abide by the current building codes.

[30:10] And so this one housing provider.

[30:17] Mr. Temple, He said there’s a house on Wayne Street that was built in 1898. This is not a house with a lot of insulation. This is probably a house with knob and tube wiring. It’s got all kinds of issues in terms of its age, but it is a well kept house. It has running water, it has heat, and it is habitable. Mr. Temple said that according to the regulations and the current ordinance, he thinks an inspector could come in and order a house of the age in his example, to put in a lot more insulation. This would require a huge step of tearing out the walls and redoing the wiring. You’re talking about a very costly upgrade. Not really.

[30:56] There’s ways of retrofitting older houses for for insulation and and, you know, and if your your house is not your building that you’re providing to renters is not well insulated. You’re costing the renter in utilities. So it’s costing them more to live there than it should. All because you wanted to save a buck with this old house. I commend I commend Mommy for doing it. Of course, the other the other side of it is to that Mayor Carr believes that having stricter regulation would keep the blight which we keep the crime, which means keep poor people out. So that’s a whole other story that I’m probably more doing, more speculating than I should be on that. But again, I think affordable housing is important and I commend Mommy for at least trying to get that done.

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[32:13] Music.

[32:19] Since we were talking about the pandemic earlier, when we were talking about housing, and wanted to make mention for people out there that the pandemic emergency food stamp program is going to be ending.

[32:41] At the end of February. And what that means is that during the during the pandemic, they had instituted an emergency payout. That took place each month. Which was the maximum amount. Maximum allotment.

[33:02] Allowed by law. For people that were on SNAP or food stamps, as we call it, called it in the old days. And so it was meant to help people. Who may have lost their jobs because of the pandemic or or got sick and couldn’t work and had no. Income because SNAP generally is a. It’s not supposed to pay for all your food. It’s supposed to be a supplement. That’s why they call it a supplement nutrition. I disagree. I think it should pay for everybody’s food that are that’s needing that are low income or disabled. The government should pay for all your food.

[33:49] But so they had this program during the pandemic that people that receive SNAP got a full allotment. Now, what this means is I know an older individual who was in their in their seventies on Social Security. She was before the pandemic, she was getting $20 a month.

[34:14] And that was because she was getting Social Security and and her Medicare. And so she was getting $20 a month to spend on food. Now, we know we’ve been through this inflation and and the supply chain problems and and eggs are $5 a dozen now and some stores higher in some places. $20 is not going to go that far. $20 didn’t go far before the pandemic, to be honest with you. You take $20 and just take $20 next time you go to the store. Just take $20 and just try to get food for your family just on $20. Now, again, people are saying, but Doug, it’s supplemental, so you need to pay for some of it out of your own pocket. That’s true. But $20.

[35:10] It’s it’s almost not worth it now. Now, she was a her family unit was just her. So that’s why it was $20 now. Family of four. I think they get their standard allotment is probably more than 100 bucks or whatever. But during the pandemic, this older person that I knew was getting $232 a month in addition to the $20 that she got as her regular allotment. And so she did not want for food for the entire pandemic. She was able to buy at the meat market. They had freezer boxes, so they had like collections of meats in a freezer box. And she brought it home, put it in her freezer. So she had meat all month.

[36:04] Fresh meat all month. And it didn’t go spoil because it was frozen. Hamburgers and hot dogs and not steak, but pork. Steak and pork chops know basic stuff. So she was able to get that that she normally wouldn’t get because these freezer boxes were like 100 bucks, 120 bucks. All right. She is also didn’t have to worry about pinching pennies, getting her other food. You know, if she wanted if she needed sugar, she got sugar. If she needed brown sugar, she got brown sugar. She needed eggs. She bought eggs and she didn’t have to worry about it.

[36:46] You know, and I know I was reading an article that some families, depending on what their assessment was, they were probably getting five to 600 to $800 a month for family of four or five people. That you can make that go a long way, and that’s how it should be. You know, food security is an issue. It’s a it’s a problem. And now it’s going to get worse because these these emergency allotments are ending. And just like what we saw when the free lunches, the free meals at schools ended. You know, because they were the USDA was providing money for free lunches for all students in all the public schools. You know, not just little Timmy who’s low income. You know, they were doing everybody. And that’s how it should be. And and the same with the with the food stamps. People shouldn’t have people that that are wanting for money, either their disability or Social Security or whatever they shouldn’t have to spend. Their money, their income, their little income on food.

[38:09] You know, that’s just too much. You know, because you had the rents, the rents went up, other things went up. And when the inflation went up and so did the food prices, you know. So yeah, you’re getting to three and 400 and $800 a month, but you’re spending a lot more on on food.

[38:30] So that program is ending at the end of February. So if you know some people if you have some friends or family that are on SNAP, and and you know that they have been getting these larger allotments, you might want to check, check on them, in March and make sure that they’re finding the resource, because I know, I know even even with those allotments that that there was there’s strain on the, charity network of food, food banks and things, because people that didn’t qualify for SNAP still needed food.

[39:09] When they weren’t working. And so a lot of a lot of these food banks have had had rough times, too. So that’s something to keep in mind. Like I said, you know, I think that that kids at school should get free lunches, free breakfasts. They shouldn’t have to pay anything for milk or food. So we don’t have any of these these stories about kids getting baloney and cheese because their parents didn’t put more money on their account. And then grandma and grandpa shouldn’t have to spend 30% of their income on food. We as a country, we can do that. We can make that happen. And it’s not and it’s not about whether or not they deserve it because they’re human. They deserve to have food, safe food, safe, fresh, reliable food that’s cost effective for them.

[40:07] Everybody that, you know, I don’t know how much of a more of a natural right that is than it should be. There shouldn’t be anybody that goes hungry. There shouldn’t be anybody that has awful food to eat. There shouldn’t be anybody that has to make a decision between cat food or or food or or make a choice between their medicine and food. That’s just implausible. And we saw during the pandemic.

[40:41] That we can do it and the economy doesn’t collapse. You know, that was the argument from conservatives, from cheap labor conservatives.

[40:51] Whenever we tried to increase the money that was going out for for the social network, the social safety net, that it would collapse the economy. It’s like, no, it hasn’t. Just like just like pausing payments on student loans didn’t collapse the economy so we can cancel student loans. It’s not going to hurt us. So that’s what I wanted to say about that, about the food stamp program. And then as a as a last note for people, friends and members of the secular humanists of western Lake Erie, I, got an email this past week from Amazon and and I’m sure there’s probably people out there that also got the email. They had this program called Amazon Smiles, and our group signed up for it. And basically people could choose our charity our group secular humanists or western Lake Erie. When they would purchase things we would get a percentage of those sales wasn’t very much. Five, 15 bucks, I think at the most. 20 bucks at the most. And that was a quarter every three months or so. But it was nice to get those donations. Well, I got an email last week that or this this week, actually, as I’m taping this, that Amazon is ending the Amazon Smiles program.

[42:14] So and for some people in my group that was a good thing because they don’t like Amazon. So. So there’s the the the thing the sidestep. But you know they gave the old thing well you know we’re going to use our resources more effectively and helping more people. That’s just B.S., really. They just trying to save some money. And they probably decided that this program was costing them more money than than it was generating in sales. So they cut it. You know, a lot of these charity things that these big corporations do is for advertising. You know. Yeah, they’re helping people, but it’s also for advertising and they wouldn’t do it unless they got notoriety for it. And unless it brought in customers, they wouldn’t do it. That’s why when you go to like some festivals or fairs and you see these card, well, at least in our area, we have cardboard waste cans and it has Kroger grocery stores written on it. Well, Kroger’s donated this well, they donated it because it says Kroger on it. They would they wouldn’t donate it if there was no no logo on it, they wouldn’t donate it.

[43:30] And many. And we’ve also found in my group in particular, when we were checking, when we were working on the, Lucas County Children’s Services holiday gift thing, that some of these companies won’t donate products anymore. They’ll donate money or they’ll donate services like Best Buy, used to donate TVs and and stereos and things like that. And they don’t do that anymore. They they they donate like repair services or the Geek Squad or or things like that. And that’s because it doesn’t cost them anything to do so It doesn’t cost them anything. And and but it’s still part of their advertising campaign. Their marketing campaign. But anyway, so I just want to let people know that that Amazon Smile’s program is ending. We have we are still part of the Kroger Cares.

[44:31] If you use Kroger, if you shop at Kroger’s and you have chosen us as your charity, we get a percentage of those sales back and that’s been actually quite lucrative for us. We were getting in the per quarter probably about $30 every three months. We have four, seven families that participate right now. And if you want to know how to do that, you can check our website under our donation page and we tell you how to how to pick us for the charity. And we also have a donation page. So if you just want to donate directly to us without having to go through any of these affiliate programs, we’re more than happy to accept your donation.

[45:19] Thank you for listening.

[45:23] For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at Glass City Humanist Show.

[45:33] Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the secular humanists of western Lake Erie. Scholey can be reached at humanists. W-League org Glass City Humanist is hosted, written and produced by Douglas Berger and he is solely responsible for the content.

[45:54] Our theme music is Glass City Jam, composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time.

[46:02] Music.