The New Inquisition? Ohio’s Church-State Bills & Trump’s Memo

[0:04] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. As the legislative session in Ohio resumes, we take a look at some of the bills under consideration that have church and state implications. We also discuss what Trump’s national security memo means for secular groups. So much for freedom of religion. 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.

[1:00] All right. I want to thank everybody for being here today. This is a secular advocacy update. It’s going to focus mainly on Ohio legislative laws. There’s one national issue that I’m going to mention and then some local stuff. Since we relatively live in a blue area of a democratic controlled area, there isn’t too much going on locally, but some things we might want to keep a lookout on. And I have a slideshow. Can everybody see that?

[1:40] Okay, and in case for those that don’t know me, I am the founder of the Secular Humanist of Western Lake Geary. I host two podcasts. I serve on a board. I’ve been active in the secular humanist movement. This is the start of my 30th year. I was president of HCCO down in Columbus for a couple of years and served as co-chair for the Secular Coalition for Ohio for five years. So I am familiar with a lot of this political stuff going on, and hopefully I can impart some of that information to everybody.

[2:17] All right, the Ohio legislature recently returned from their summer break. And in some of the next slides, I’m going to show what some of the current bills under consideration that have some church and state connections.

[2:33] All right, the first one is House Bill 485. It’s called the Baby Olivia Act. It would require schools to show a misleading anti-abortion fetal development video every year starting in third grade. Uh, it recently had a hearing in the house education committee. Um, it is getting some pushback, not only from, uh, liberal groups, but also some, from some, uh, conservative groups as well, because it’s, I think it’s AI generated. It’s like a cartoon and schools are already required to show, I think they’re required to show, or there’s an option to show, um, a high-definition ultrasound of a fetus breathing or moving or something. The sponsor of this bill is Representative Melanie Miller from Ashland. She is the executive director of the Ashland Pregnancy Care Center, which is one of those anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers that is funded by millions of state tax dollars currently. So that’s House Bill 485. And like I said, it’s already had one hearing. That’s when the sponsor talked about it and introduced it. The one thing that was not in the original bill was a parental opt-out.

[3:55] And the Representative Miller said that she was open to amending it. Why she didn’t put it in there in the first place? Well, we know why. All right, and the next bill is House Bill 486, the Charlie Kirk Heritage Act. And it would allow public school teachers and public universities to highlight the positive influence of Christianity on history and culture. This is a problem for several reasons with the primary being it limits instruction to the positive influence of Christianity and neglecting the negative aspect, and the examples provided in the language of the bill are suspect as to their accuracy. One of them, one of the.

[4:43] One of the things that they mentioned is that Ben Franklin called for a prayer during the Continental Congress, and then they hired chaplains. Well, it wasn’t as it said there. He did ask for prayer. His motion was not approved, and they adjourned soon afterwards. And it was several years later that they started having chaplains in the House after many, you know, I think it was like five or six years after they had already established the Congress. You know, things like that. That’s what that’s what they do. This bill was introduced. It’s sponsored by our buddy, Reverend Gary Click over in Fremont. And I do have an invite out to him to talk to him about this bill and other things that he’s sponsored for the podcast, and I haven’t heard back yet, probably won’t.

[5:42] But it had an opposition hearing on yesterday on the 21st, which is unusual because usually when you have state legislation, they have the sponsor and they have a hearing with the sponsor and they introduce the bill. Then usually the next hearing is for proponents, people who like the bill. Then you usually have the opponent testimony. And then finally, then you have everybody else and interested parties. And this time, the second hearing was opponent. So I missed it.

[6:13] I didn’t have it tagged and I missed it. But there’s some good testimony given by the ACLU, FFRF and some other groups against it.

[6:29] And there’s also a question about whether or not it would be constitutional anyway.

[6:35] This bill, House Bill 531, was just introduced yesterday. It’s the School Chaplain Act. I’ve been waiting for this to show up. And basically, it would permit public schools to engage volunteer chaplains to provide support services in the public schools. The initial bill does require background checks like they do for teachers. And says that chaplains would not replace professional mental health support people that a lot of these public schools already employ. That is different. I know Texas had a bill where the school could have a professional mental health person or a chaplain. They could do either or, and people were really upset about that. The chaplains, however, are not needed since they do have professional mental health people, and it’s much better than someone telling a kid they should just pray to God and get over it. Next, we have a bill that was just recently passed and signed by the governor. It was House Bill 57. It was originally for ministering overdose reversal drugs in public schools. And then it was passed in the House unanimously. It was a bipartisan bill. And then when it got to the state Senate, they added an expansion of the time allowed for release time religious instruction. And the amended bill was passed, but not unanimously this time, and it was signed by the governor this week.

[8:03] The article that I read about it, I believe it was WEWS in Cleveland, said that Andrew Brenner, the chair of the education committee in the Senate, said that he had gotten phone calls from supposedly 50 Catholic school districts in Ohio that were complaining about the original RTRI limitation because they said it would keep kids from attending Mass. So I doubt it. I don’t think that that’s true, but that’s how he explained it. And the other interesting thing is that the amendment was passed in one day. The bill was passed out of committee in one day, and it was voted on on the same day. And that’s how supermajorities work, is they can pass stuff in one day without any public input at all.

[9:01] Here’s some other bills that are either under consideration or have had committee hearings. Senate Bill 109, which would provide no-cost breakfast and lunch to students. The Senate Speaker, I think it’s the Senate Speaker, Matt Huffman, he said that it could cost too much and it would benefit only the rich people. Even though they’ve just given almost a billion dollars in voucher money to the richest people in the state. That can already afford to send their kid to private school. Senate Bill 34, religious documents in public schools. This was, they were supposed to show like the Ten Commandments and the Declaration of Independence and some other historical documents. This is stalled in committee right now. There is a question about the constitutionality of it, and I think that’s what’s holding it up. Senate Bill 68, educational savings account. This is the next step for people with universal voucher. This money would not be accountable at all, and it would not have to pay for tuition. Right now, the voucher programs are only required to pay for tuition, and this would be a slush fund paid by taxpayer dollars that could be spent for any reason as long as it was tangentially connected to education.

[10:27] And then we have Senate Bill 107 and House Bill 153, which would make all state board of education and local school board races partisan. They just recently got rid of the state board of education and moved all that into the office of the governor.

[10:48] And then Senate Bill 113 and House Bill 155 would ban diversity, equality, and inclusion in public schools.

[10:56] They’ve already banned it in higher education. Now they’re going after it in public schools. This is still currently in the committees.

[11:09] Uh house bill 28 129 and 355 are property tax reforms that will devastate public goods like libraries public schools and first responders i believe 129 and 355 were passed today they were passed by the house i think they moved to the senate now, um and and basically what it would do is it would uh a couple of things one of them would it would ban replacement replacement levies uh it would allow a third party budget commission to deny a public school to put a levy on the ballot so the school board would vote to put a levy on the ballot, and then somebody could complain to this budget commission, and then they could vote to say, no, you can’t have a levy.

[12:07] Now, it’s all about, now, this stuff about property tax reform, the reason why this is such an issue right now is because the state legislature cut all the income taxes. And so, these things still need to be paid. Public schools need to be paid or libraries need to be funded. Police and fire need to be funded. So, a lot of these communities now are leaning onto levies, property levies. and those have gone up. So their property taxes have gone way up in many, many areas. And the state legislature now is, they’re going in and cutting it. The only thing that there is a constitutional petition to eliminate property taxes, but the Republicans won’t do that. The state Republicans won’t go that far because they still need to pay for this stuff. They realize they still need to pay for this stuff.

[13:09] And then we have Senate Bill 63, which would ban ranked choice voting. It’s been voted out of the Senate and now moved on to the House. This was introduced by our good friend Teresa Gaviron from Bowling Green. She does not know how ranked choice voting works, but she went to a conference of Republican leaders, and they gave her a cut and paste bill to hopefully get passed. And what this would do is it would prevent municipalities and other local areas from using ranked choice voting for their elections.

[13:47] House Bill 190 would ban school staff from using preferred pronouns that differ from a student’s birth certificate without parental permission. And then we have House Bill 249. The drag band creates a new crime of unlawful adult cabaret performance. This bill was introduced by our good friend here in the area, Josh Williams, who’s running for the 9th District Congressional seat. Basically, he assumes that drag performances are automatically obscene,

[14:25] no matter where they occur, no matter when they occur. And he believes that children are in danger when drag performers are in public.

[14:39] So that’s some of the state issues. Anybody have any questions or need any clarifications on some of that stuff? All right, going on to the federal issue. The one big federal issue right now for us as secular humanists is National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. And what this does is this empowers the federal agencies like ICE and FBI and Homeland Security to go after groups and people that claim that they are anti-fascist. It says, Common Threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American values on family, religion, and morality.

[15:40] And this is different than just a run-of-the-mill executive order that is basically just telling agencies how to act. These types of memorandum, these national security memorandums, can actually be used to act on things. Law enforcement could act on things. A lot of times these things are kept secret, but we know that they wanted this one out so that they could try to intimidate people. And basically what the other thing too that they’re doing is they’re going to weaponize the irs to go after non-profits that support anti-christianity activities so uh the people at the aha the american humus association is aware of it they’re concerned i’m concerned for our group that, you know.

[16:32] It, it’s not, it’s not, none of this is constitutional, I know, but because the courts are up in the air and Trump is in charge, it’s a crapshoot and anything could happen. So I just want to make people aware of it. Uh, Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist has a very good article about this and I’ll, I’ll send that along with the links and, uh, Rebecca Watson, who’s a skeptic.

[16:58] She did a video about this as well. It’s scary. We need to know about it, but it’s like something that we really can’t do anything about except contact our elected officials and let them know that we’re concerned about this stuff.

[17:17] So have you thought about how we may change how we’re running the group as a result? No, I don’t plan on changing or running the group. Just the fact that we exist, people would consider us anti-Christian because they equate religion with Christianity and there’s nothing else.

[17:40] I haven’t had any contact with any law enforcement or anything like that yet. Um, you know, we do, we file our nine nineties, we do the state, you know, we, we, uh, have to register with the state cause we’re, we solicit donations. So we have to register with the state. We’re incorporated with the state. Um, you know, so we’re doing everything legally that we need to do. And, uh, you know, basically they’re attacking people for what they do and what they say for no apparent reason, no rational reason. It’s a program. It’s a program that they’re doing. It was in Project 2025 that people were warned about, and this is the outcome. This is the culmination of it. So I don’t think because we’re so small that anything might happen, but you never know. So I just want to make people aware of it.

[18:49] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[19:10] And then we have some local issues. LifeWise chapters are springing up, not so much in Toledo, but like Anthony Wayne, Perrysburg. I think Rossford’s getting one. And all I can suggest is, you know, a lot of flashpoints, a lot of what we’ve been talking about tonight is connected to public schools. So really get involved with your local school board, either, either, uh, run for election or attend school board meetings and look at their agenda and speak up because particularly like life-wise, they just pop up, they show up. You don’t know they’re going to be there until they show up.

[19:57] There’s a lot of first amendment and freedom of religion violations going on involved with LifeWise all over the state and again, what it comes down to is we need people to file lawsuits but they have to be parents or teachers and the teachers won’t do it because they don’t want to lose their jobs and a lot of the parents, they like LifeWise so they’re not going to sue them.

[20:24] The other thing to keep an eye out is called classical academies. These are private charter schools that can receive tax dollars. They are not religious schools, although they are sponsored by religious groups. The one we have here in Toledo is Northwest Ohio Classical Academy. It was founded by Lee Strang, who was the UT professor. and now he’s in charge of a conservative think tank down in Columbus, but he started the school. It’s based in a church. I think they just expanded to K through 12. They were K through eight. I also heard an announcement that St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Finley is starting a classical academy based on the Charlton school. I forget, but that’s mainly Catholic. And I think they’ll still be able to use tax dollars for that because it’s considered a charter school.

[21:29] And then the other thing we need to keep an eye out is local impacts of state laws and policies. Because of the shutdown, we have where people are in danger of losing their food stamps and Medicaid and insurance premiums are going to go up. So there’s going to be a lot of things to keep an eye out on that. Anybody have any questions about the local issues or anything they want to mention that they’ve heard about that maybe I don’t know about? All right, and here are a list of groups that you can join, other groups that you can join that spend a lot of time on these issues. You have Honesty for Ohio Education. I work with them on the religious, release time, religious education stuff. Secular Education Association, they used to be Parents Against LifeWise. Now they encompass secular education. Then we have the Toledo Troublemakers that we’ve dealt with in the past. Toledo Persists.

[22:29] You can always check out the ACLU. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Humus Association and if you want to track bills Ohio based legislation I use ohiobills.wtf it’s maintained by Ohioans against extremism and basically all they have is a Google Doc, with all their bills that they’re watching with and they all have links to the bills they have uh updates on them can every everybody see that okay and then items to oppose um bills that were signed into law bills to watch etc etc and then when you click on these links and it goes down into this deeper information. And it has who to call, who to contact. Um, and also you can find out if there’s going to be testimony that’s going to be required, uh, requested. And usually they let us know very, um, almost before, usually testimony has to be turned in, uh, 24 hours before the hearing. And a lot of times they only let us know maybe 48 hours before the hearing so you have like 24 hours to come up with something.

[23:58] The other thing that you can use to track legislation is on the Ohio legislature website itself you, And it’s called My Ohio Legislature. It’s up in the upper right. And you click on it. And you’ll create an account. Which I’ve already done. And I also have a video on how to set this up on our YouTube channel.

[24:23] But basically it has all the legislation that’s been acted on that day. Has what committee has already come up. And then what I do is I track legislation. So I have a list of bills that I’m watching. And when something happens with one of these bills, I get an email. So I can check it out. You can track by number, track by subject. These are the subjects I keep an eye out on. You can also track committees. I haven’t updated this, but usually for our purposes, at least for church states, Since a lot of stuff happens in the public schools, I will do the education committee. So I’ll do that.

[25:13] But I’ll show you here…

[25:21] All right. So basically, this is what, on the Ohio legislature, this is what a House bill page looks like. It’ll tell you who the primary sponsors are. It’ll also say who the co-sponsors. And I can tell you on this bill, this is the Charlie Cook American Heritage Act. These are the usual suspects for the religious extremists, the Christian nationalists that we have to deal with all the time. It tells you what committee it’s in, tells you the status. Then you can also look at the text of it as it was introduced. Then sometimes they’ll do an analysis and fiscal, whether it has any impact. Then you’ll have the status. It’s just in the committee right now. If it’s voted on, it will be here. In a committee activity, it’ll tell what meetings there were. And then if there was testimony, then the testimony is available. And this was yesterday on the second hearing. Here’s all the opponent testimony.

[26:25] And a testimony, written testimony, even if you’re appearing in person and you give testimony, you still have to have written testimony submitted 24 hours ahead. And the written testimony is a public record. So all of it shows up on the public record And people can look it up We have the FFRF, American Atheist There’s Christina Collins With the Honesty for Ohio Equality And Sisters to Charity I’ll have to read that later.

[26:58] And then if you do that My Ohio Legislature stuff and you’re interested in tracking it, then you just click the interested to track it. And then it will, again, if there’s any activity with it, like a committee hearing notice or whatever, you’ll get an email with it. Any questions on that? But the that uh ohio extremism one uh the google doc that’s always a handy stuff just to give it a a look so you don’t have to do a lot of typing and and i’ll tell you when it was updated like this was updated uh yesterday evening but they don’t have the chaplain bill on here yet so probably when it gets gets updated any questions about anything.

[27:53] Are you going to be offering another one of these in the future? Yeah. Yeah. When things like the Congress right now, they’re kind of, you know, at a standstill. So when that picks back up, there’ll probably be some stuff to update on that. I know they’re still trying to do that SAVE Act, which would require married women to have their marriage certificate with them when they try to register to vote and things like that. And I know there’s a version here in Ohio that’s under consideration, but I just didn’t have any information on it to talk about it tonight. There is one other thing. I talked to a group a couple weeks ago, and I can’t remember their name. I know it starts with Unchained, but basically they’re advocates to ban child marriage. And they are working to get a bill introduced in Ohio that would ban child, ban marriage before the age of 18, period. No exceptions for anything, not even permissions or pregnancy or whatever.

[29:04] And, um, and so they do it that way because a lot of times when they make exceptions and put stuff in the bill, then it helps people that are abusers or traffickers and things like that. But I talked to them, and so I have some more information on that. I recommended that they talk to Gary Click because he likes to protect children, and she has a meeting with him next week, so we’ll see how that goes. I’d be very interested to see if he signs on to it because they already have a Democrat that wants to introduce it. Now they’re just looking for a Republican. Hmm.

[29:47] All right. Anything else? Any other questions? You said you didn’t know a lot about it, but did I understand, right, that married women, they want married women to have to carry their marriage certificate when voting? Right, right. Because your name on your birth certificate is going to be different than your married name. And so you’re going to have to prove your… But the name on the voter rolls is what you… I mean… Right. In order, what they want to do is in order for you to get on the voter roll, you have to prove your identity. You’re going to have to have. Well, the real ID is a, you know, a thing, too. You know, it’s like I was married in 1960 in Iowa and then I was divorced in 77. But I didn’t I didn’t change my name. I had three daughters and they had the same name as their dad. I mean, and I didn’t, I didn’t walk her about as long as I’d been my maiden name, right? And whatever like that. But then when the real ID comes in, then you have to hunt up your birth certificate and a marriage certificate. And, you know, hey, why the name change? If I just gone back to my name, pretty much automatic in 1977, they wouldn’t have required anything.

[31:12] What I’ll do is I’ll scrounge up some of the information on that and I’ll send that out I wondered why they you don’t have to have your birth certificate to vote I think that’s what they’re moving to yes, Yeah, it’s all about voter suppression is what it is. Oh, I get it. Just just make it hard. And, you know, you when you know, hey, it’s like you sign that, you know, you’re you believe you’re qualified to vote and able to. And it’s a felony if you, if you sign, you know, lying, that used to be really good. And picture ID, pictures used to be expensive when I was a kid. You know, hey, picture ID would have been impossible, right? And nobody would have, hey, it’s just crazy. Yeah, it does. But I’ll get that information out to you. Well, I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. I appreciate it. Thank you for your research.

[32:26] I wanted to add some additional information that did not make it into the original recording that I wanted to update now while we’re still here. The group that I talk about that is an advocacy for banning child marriage in Ohio, and I couldn’t remember what the full name was, it’s called Unchained At Last. And I spoke to Becca, who’s the outreach coordinator, and that was the person that I recommended she talk to, Gary Click. So we’ll see how that turns out, but I’ll have the link to that group up in the show notes. The other thing that came out in the question and answer was about the SAVE Act. The Ohio version is similar to the federal version of the SAVE Act, and here’s the information I have on that. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility SAVE Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating the registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. For the vast majority of Americans, this would be a passport or birth certificate.

[33:42] Government-issued driver’s licenses, including real IDs, as well as military or tribal IDs, do not satisfy the bill’s requirements. So when my member, Ruth, who was talking about, well, she had a real ID, well, even though you still have to come up with the same documentation to get a real ID, you can’t use that to register to vote.

[34:10] And so basically, what this would do is this would get rid of voter registration drives and registering online because you have to do it in person. And Ohio’s version is Senate Bill 153 and House Bill 233. So I just wanted to add this information on to the end of this episode just to make complete information. And again, the links will be in the show notes. Thank you. For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[35:13] Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.