Using Our Humanist Values to Save Democracy

[0:01] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. In this episode, we look at how to respond to the current threat to democracy. Our humanist values demand we take direct action. In related news, Humanist International released their latest Freedom of Thought report. 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.

[0:34] Music.

[1:03] Welcome to another episode of the Glass City Humanist. My name is Doug. I’m your host. And today we got some things to talk about. One of the things that we do as humanists is we have a consensus on a set of values, humanist values, uh, critical thinking, service and participation, social justice, uh, altruism, um, uh, environmentalism, et cetera, et cetera. Um, the American humanist association titles those, the 10 commitments. Um, I don’t myself, I don’t like the, uh, religious connotations to 10 commitments, but, you know, it is what it is. I didn’t spend money on the marketing. And so we obviously, if you’ve been following the news, you know that we do

[2:01] have a new presidential administration that took over on January the 20th. And it’s Donald Trump, And he won a second term. He originally served as president, uh, from 2017 to 2021.

[2:22] And if people remember from that, um, that he was very aggressive, very bigoted, um, Even then, and there was quite a bit of pushback in, in opposition to him during that first term. There was a lot of federal civil servants and other program directors who tried to not let him run roughshod over everybody. Uh, we had the, some of the people that had left government that, uh, had, uh, ways of dealing with, uh, president Trump at the time. It was, uh, they had written a book or pamphlet. It was called indivisible. And so there was a lot of indivisible groups that sprung up around the country in order to support the things that the Republicans and the conservatives were against.

[3:30] Well, the second time around, the Trump administration, President Trump, has a lot of people on board that know how to break things and fire people. And we have Elon Musk, who has inserted himself as an unelected bureaucrat, deciding what is waste and what is fraud and et cetera, things like that. And so there’s been a lot of, it’s not even been a month. Yeah, it hasn’t even been a month. And there’s just a lot of drama coming from Washington, D.C. And things are going to get scary. Now, this is not hyperbole. This is stuff that’s going on that was detailed in that book that we talked about before the election. Called Project 2025. It was written by the Heritage Foundation, and it was a blueprint for a second conservative administration.

[4:38] And it’s pretty much from talking to a lot of political experts, they are actually doing everything that they wrote about so far in Project 2025.

[4:51] So it’s going to be a very difficult time in this country for people who are not white cisgendered men and who are not rich. One of the things that I tell people a lot, because I am a progressive. I fully hold on to that label. I’m a progressive and in the classical progressive style that, you know, I have to explain to people that rich people don’t care about other people but themselves. They just don’t. And you see that all the time. They hardly pay any taxes. They make all of us worker people pay all the taxes.

[5:44] They have the direct line to political offices to lobby to get their you know their privilege to get what they want we have religious people that are the same way the christian nationalists and they might not always be rich but they have a lot of money behind them.

[6:04] Billions of dollars behind them and it’s hard for progressive of politically liberal groups to compete. It just is, especially when you have all that money and all those people against you. And it’s not like their policies or their views are correct. They’re not in most cases. I firmly believe that you are not supposed to use government to intentionally hurt people. And right now, the government is intentionally hurting people. They’re hurting federal workers by indiscriminately firing them, supposedly to save money. You know, it’s an old trope that’s been debunked several times that the federal government is all wasteful and should be broken down and eliminated. And so you see a lot of that going on right now, at least efforts on to do it. We also have a bunch of tech bros who are not even 40 years old, most of them, getting into computer systems that they should not be getting into that have private information.

[7:28] I fully expect to participate in a political process where policies, extreme policies also, that we can discuss these things and work on them and come to a compromise or a consensus. But these guys don’t do that. They just show up and they start banging around in computer systems that have personal information about people. I just heard a story the other day that the guy that’s acting like the president, Musk, is asking for access to the IRS computer system. There’s no reason for him to be having access to that. Um, there was back during Trump’s first term, there was an IRS employee who was actually fired and prosecuted for leaking Trump’s, uh, tax return. If you remember the story, uh, the first, uh, during president Trump’s first term, he was asked to release publicly his tax return and he refused to do it. And we know why he refused to do it because that was one of the charges that he was convicted of in New York state was filing false business reports. So we know that that’s part of it.

[8:49] And so there was an IRS contractor who was prosecuted for leaking his tax refund stuff. But the conservatives, there’s just crickets coming from conservatives that Musk and his Teen Titans want access to their ARS computers. You know, they’ve already violated the computer systems for Social Security.

[9:20] Trump, Musk had a tweet that he put up claiming that there was thousands of dead people still getting Social Security benefits. There wasn’t, but that’s what he claimed because he had access to the data. He just didn’t know how to analyze it because that’s not what he is. He’s not an analyst. He supposedly knows about tech. He doesn’t know how to analyze information. Somebody that knows how to analyze information looked at the same information and saw that 98% of the people that he noted were receiving benefits have not received benefits because they’re dead. And the reason why they are on a list still to this day is they died before there was electronic death certificates or notifications of death.

[10:12] You know, and so this is what this is what we’re struggling with. One of the most agrarious things that have been done so far is that Trump wrote an executive order basically saying that trans people don’t exist. You know, it’s not legal. It’s not ethical, but he did it anyway. And they also had some conservatives that are demanding, I think it was actually Trump’s White House, are demanding that the NCAA and other sports authorities go back and remove any records given to trans athletes just to wipe them off the face of the earth. Because that’s what they do. That’s what these people do. And I know that people are going to be concerned about how much politics I’m talking about right now. But we are having an existential crisis about our democracy. The fact that they could write an executive order just discriminating against a whole group of people should scare you.

[11:28] And this is not, like I said, this is not hyperbole. This is just not, you know, complaining because we don’t like it. You know, this is fundamentally undemocratic.

[11:40] 200 executive orders in the, in the, and it’s not even been a month, over 200 executive orders. And one of them banned trans people from serving in the military.

[11:55] The other one just totally bans trans people and says they don’t exist you know are we going to stand for that well i can tell you that the secular humanists of western lake erie is not standing for that and we passed a resolution at our last board meeting and we had a meeting this month a regular meeting where uh you know we had some members and we talked about this issue And it’s a resolution in support of the LGBTQ plus community and opposing bigotry. And that’s the title of it. And basically, we are agreeing to a statement that was put out by the 16 national secular groups in this country that was titled, Statement from American Atheist, Humanist, and Free Thought as Secular Group’s Affirming Commitment to Protecting LGBTQ Plus Rights.

[12:57] And one of the quotes, pulled quotes from that is, and we firmly believe this here in our group, we will not permit religious extremists to format a moral panic, encourage harassment or violence, and enact dangerous policies that seek to force LGBTQ plus Americans generally, and trans Americans in particular, out of public life and out of existence. Nor will we sit silently or ignore when the talking points, misinformation, and outright fabrication of anti-LGBTQ plus extremists are laundered and given a veneer of legitimacy or acceptability by those who hold themselves out as voices of reason or science. And so our resolution our local resolution went further and that we will not tolerate bigotry from our state legislature general community or our membership we will call out that bigotry when needed and we will not support or work with any group that supports bigotry of any kind especially towards the lgbtq plus community and when we mean by support we only don’t mean that they actually support it, but that they’re silent to any of the bigotry. Or they have no comment about any of the bigotry that’s called out.

[14:22] And we say that free speech arguments should never be used to justify hurting people. And whether a group should have basic dignity and worth should never be debated. No one should live in fear for simply existing. You know that it’s like you know we humanists we are a marginalized group we are not religious we don’t go to church well most of us don’t go to church church we don’t believe in the bible we don’t believe in the supreme being we’re already marginalized and so we are not going to sit here and let another marginalized group get stomped on because it could be us and it probably will be us. And the reason why we know it will be us is because in the state legislature, the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 1, which would force colleges and universities to censor topics that they study. It would outlaw diversity, equality, and inclusion programs. And it would prevent staff and faculty at these colleges and universities in Ohio from striking.

[15:40] Talk about anti-democracy. That is the pinnacle of anti-democracy. Senate Bill 1, and it passed the Senate here in Ohio. It’s now moved into the House. The Ohio Senate is also considering a bill that was sponsored by Senator Teresa Gavirone from Bowling Green, which would outlaw anybody in the state from ranked choice voting, from having ranked choice voting. And if a city or municipality were to have ranked choice voting, they would have tax money denied them from the state. Again, anti-democracy. And just to note, Senator Gaviron put out a statement in support of Senate Bill 1. She voted for it. And she owns a business, Mr. Spots, her and her husband own a business, Mr. Spots, in downtown Bowling Green, Bowling Green, Ohio, which is home to Bowling Green State University. And she would support a bill that would gut the whole purpose of having a university in the first place. All because of her bigotry.

[16:57] And her undemocratic takes on things. And she wants to be, she wants to run for secretary of state, the person who controls elections.

[17:09] So, you know, there’s going to be a lot of issues coming up, a lot of political issues that we need to take care of and we need to watch. And that’s what I plan to do with the group is we plan to watch all of this and let people know when things are coming to a head, as it were. I do recommend that if you can, contact your elected representatives, even if they’re conservative, even if you know that they don’t support your views, call them, all their office. Don’t email all. Go on the phone. If you go to OhioLegislature.gov, and I’ll throw out some other links up in the show notes for this episode, but if you go to the Ohio Legislature website, you can look up who your representative is and get their contact information. And let them know. Call them many times about these issues.

[18:15] They do keep track of who calls and what you call about You know, we want to get away from this argument That some of these conservatives use That nobody complains, You know, if there’s something you don’t like Something that your elected official is not doing You need to complain, You need to tell them about it And on the flip side If you have an elected official that’s doing something right.

[18:42] Something that you like, let them know. Call them and let them know that they’re doing a good job.

[18:50] Um, there’s also, uh, groups and the individual groups are still around. Uh, if you go onto Facebook or, or do a Google search for it, uh, I know there’s a new group that’s starting up here in the Toledo area. That’s from the same vein. It’s called, uh, Toledo good trouble. And it’s, uh, associated with representative John Lewis, who, um, struggle was in the civil rights struggle that passed away a couple of years ago, and he was known for causing good trouble, you know, getting in the craw of the racist back in the day. So now there’s some groups that have taken on that moniker called good trouble, and there’s a Toledo group that’s starting up. There’s a chapter of the right choice voting group that’s starting back up again. It’s reconstituting here in Northwest Ohio. to support that effort. And that’s the main thing is what you need to do is you need, what you need to do is get off of social media and stop doom scrolling and actually take direct what we call direct action, you know, writing letters, calling, doing letters to the editor.

[20:12] Protesting, you know, there’s a, at the time that I’m writing this, there was supposed to be a protest, uh, for president’s day, you know, join a protest. Um, the last protest I was in was a black lives matter protest back in 2020. And you know, that’s something that’s how you let people know that you are displeased is you protest, uh, go to the city council meetings when they have public comments. Speak about the issues that concern you. Go to the school boards, your local school boards, because a lot of conservatives have infiltrated these school boards. We have the LifeWise Academies that are popping up now because of the new state law that requires schools to have policies to let them in. They’re still disrupting schools, and they’re still trying to insert Bible study into a public school where it should not be in the middle of the school day. So, you know, keep an eye on your school board. If you have the time and the energy, run for school board.

[21:26] You know, that’s one way of getting involved and keeping a check on things.

[21:33] And get involved, you know, be active, take direct action, and stay on top of some of these issues. Even if you hate politics, and I know there’s a lot of people that hate politics. They hate, it’s divided, they’re like, there’s too much division and you can’t persuade anybody. I’m not talking about persuading people. What I’m talking about is getting together. Politics is about gathering with like-minded individuals to affect change. That is the basic thing about politics. You’re not out to change the MAGA voter and tell them how wrong they are. You’re not going to do that. It’s never going to happen. But what you can do is make sure you go vote. Make sure you let your elective officials know how you feel. Make sure your community knows how you feel. You know, if you can, fly a pride flag outside your house. Even if you’re not in the community, you know, show the show the LGBTQ plus community that you’re an ally. You know, if you’re in the store and somebody makes a snide comment about trans people, call them out.

[22:47] Just be polite about it, but call them out. I think we’ve gotten away from that. We’ve gotten siloed into our social media and our bubbles in our social media. And for a lot of people, that’s what they want to do. And I’m telling you, we need to not do that anymore. We need to be out there and we need to let people know how we feel. We need to take direct action because we need to support democracy.

[23:21] And as humanists, that’s what we need to do. You know, everybody has basic humanity. And when you get away from that, then that’s what happens is somebody like Trump gets elected. And we need to stop doing that.

[23:40] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[23:54] The other thing that happened in January, yeah, I think it was January. Seems like it’s been a long month. I’m sorry. The other thing that happened this past month was that Humanist International released their free thought report. And it’s something that they release every year. And it talks about different countries that have, you know, and what, how they deal with free thought. Some countries still have blasphemy laws on the books. Some countries are jailing or exiling people who are free thinkers or atheists. Um in some countries if you’re an atheist you can be murdered or not murdered but executed by the government for being an atheist and it makes notes of that and what and they had this uh this uh shindig in washington dc to announce it um.

[24:51] And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to play a clip or two from this presentation, uh, just to kind of give you the gist and, uh, uh, let you know what the, what it is and what they do. And again, this was from the Humanist International and this, uh, press conference was hosted by the American Humanist Association and, uh, the links to get the report and for further information will be in the show notes. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here. thank you particularly to AHA for organising this event. I am Emma Wadsworth-Jones. I am the Casework and Campaigns Manager at Humanist International, which means that, among other things, I’m responsible for the publication of the Freedom of Thought report each year. Humanist International is the global representative body of the humanist movement. Our members and associates include humanist, atheist, secular, rationalist, ethical culture, free thought organisations all over the world.

[25:53] And we also have individual supporters who share our vision and our values. And it’s inspired by these values that we are optimistic for a world in which everyone can live a dignified and fulfilling life. And we work to build, support and represent the movement and work to champion human rights and secularism. So what is the freedom of thought report well let me see if I can get the slides to turn you never know.

[26:23] Yes, no, yes, no. Aha! Produced since 2012, the Freedom of Thought report examines each state’s record of upholding the rights of the non-religious across four thematic strands. Constitution and government, education and children’s rights, family, community and society, and freedom of expression and advocacy of humanist values. Across all the thematic strands, we’re seeking to explore the levels of discrimination that the non-religious face. This might include legal discrimination, violence perpetrated by state or non-state actors, social prejudice and taboo, or even where freedom of religion or belief is instrumentalised to curtail the rights of others. Because although the right is often siloed, the right to freedom of religion or belief is closely related to the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the rights of women, the child, equality and non-discrimination. And the non-religious, be they humanist, atheist, unaffiliated or just disinterested, are a distinct minority within freedom of religion or belief.

[27:30] The report itself is online first, by which I mean that on our website, fot.humanist.international, you can find a page for every country in the world. These pages are updated on a four-year, five-year rolling cycle. So it means that we update about 40 countries a year. And alongside this, we publish our print edition, which is a sample of the countries that have been updated in the year, alongside a watch list of some of the countries that we haven’t updated, but that we continue to monitor closely because of our concerns. So.

[28:12] Alongside the narrative of each country entry, you will find an individualised ratings table. This ratings table is populated with what we would term boundary conditions. The boundary conditions themselves are discrete, descriptive statements that describe forms of persecution or discrimination that may or may not be present in a country. In total, I think we have around 70 boundary conditions that could be applied, and they are divided up into the four thematic strands, as well as by severity level, from free and equal, all the way to grave violations. And on the country page, alongside the narrative, you will find the specific boundary conditions that relate to that country. I should say here that the omission of a boundary condition doesn’t necessarily mean that it doesn’t apply in practice, but it may be that we don’t have the evidence to substantiate that. We always welcome the submission of additional evidence to help us to populate this report.

[29:15] The boundary conditions also are fed into our open source data tables, which are downloadable and usable under a Creative Commons license. And that we use them and members of the public use them in order to draw out patterns in the data and to really interrogate what is going on for the non-religious. The application of these boundary conditions also allows us to generate interactive maps for each thematic strand as well as a summary score, which looks at essentially the average score of the worst score on each of the thematic strands. I hope I explained that right.

[29:54] So as we know, the focus of this year’s report is blasphemy, and I wanted to take a moment to explain why.

[30:02] Freedom of religion or belief offers protection to individuals. It does not offer protection to religions or to institutions. Blasphemy laws stand in direct opposition to international human rights law, and this fact is non-negotiable. Not only is the concept of blasphemy fundamentally inconsistent with principles outlined in articles 18 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but Human Rights Committee’s General Comment 34 explicitly affirms that, and I quote, prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws, are incompatible with the covenant. Blasphemy laws undermine the right to freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression and are discriminatory by nature insofar as they afford different levels of protection to different religions. And yet, at least 90 countries at this point have some form of blasphemy law, accounting for at least 57% of the global population.

[31:09] We reach this statistic by combining the total populations of every country where a boundary condition relating to the existence of a blasphemy law was triggered. So if we look at that data in more detail, we find that approximately 1 in 12 people across the globe could be sentenced to death for blasphemy. 4 in 10 could face imprisonment, and 1 in 12 could face a fine or other form of sanction.

[31:38] The continued existence of blasphemy laws on the statute books and this the stigma associated with becoming non-religious clearly play a significant role in stifling non-religious voices and their ability to live a life true to themselves and their beliefs without fear of retribution we know from our work supporting humanists at risk across the globe that the fear of being accused of being blasphemous or an apostate, and the perils that are associated with it, be that ostracism, challenges in securing employment, violence, or legal prosecution, is one of the primary drivers of self-censorship. Because for the non-religious, simply saying, I don’t believe in God, can be taken as evidence of blasphemy.

[32:29] We recently conducted a survey of all of the requests for support that we’d received from humanists at risk across the globe between January 2020 and June 2024. And the data shows that 62% of everyone who reached out to us cited blasphemy as a key concern in their case. Almost a third of all applicants explicitly indicated that they feared being identified as a blasphemer or an apostate due to their non-religious views. And within this group, over half fear violent retribution should it be discovered. Far from fearing prosecution, the majority of those who’ve reached out to us fear violent retribution at the hands of a range of actors, be it family, wider society or state actors. Those who have already been labelled as a blasphemer or an apostate, often by members of their close family or friends, perhaps their colleagues or members of the local community, cite violence as the primary risk that they face, which gives credibility to the concerns of the innumerable closeted atheists that there are across the globe.

[33:42] After a fear of violence, the next most cited concern is ostracism as a result of their blasphemy either by family or from the wider society. Less often reported but no less harmful are the use of coercive or conversion practices against those who have been identified as blasphemous. These practices include subjecting them to psychiatric evaluation, forced marriage, forced veiling, forced prayer, exorcism for example. In cases where this was reported the person who was persecuting them who was perpetrating this kind of violence was a family member women and non-binary individuals were almost twice as likely to indicate that these forms of abuse were their primary concern in relation to being identified as a non-religious person no other form of persecution was more common in women than in men.

[34:40] For those who came to us saying that they were facing legal prosecution Nearly 80% of them told us that they had been charged with some kind of blasphemy law, So this is why our focus is on blasphemy. So let me tell you a little bit about the Key Countries edition, this year’s edition. Let me remind you, of course, that the Key Countries edition only represents a sample of the countries that we updated in 2024. And in the sample, we’re seeking to draw out examples from across regions and societies. While conducting research for this report, we found countries that we didn’t know had blasphemy laws that do have blasphemy laws, including Uruguay which doesn’t feature in the print edition but is of course available online and as I mentioned before every country page is consultable from our website you can even download that page and of course you can download a pdf of the key countries edition itself. So what are the countries that we looked at this year?

[35:45] Under the de facto Taliban government the newly declared Islamic Emirate enforces an extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Now, there is a lot to be said about the violations that happen for a number of different groups, but for the purposes of brevity, I’m going to focus on blasphemy laws. You can read the rest in the report itself. Under the Taliban, blasphemy and apostasy are punishable with death, and the Taliban actively persecutes the non-religious. In August 2021, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the number of requests we received for assistance increased exponentially, far beyond the numbers that we could support. And the kind of persecution, the perpetrator of the violence changed. It wasn’t any more perhaps members of society, people that they knew. It was now the state. this de facto government was likely to kill them or attack them. And we have received credible reports of attacks and the murder of non-religious individuals identified as such by the Taliban.

[36:58] The plurinational state of Bolivia has undergone significant political upheaval in recent years, and while it doesn’t have a blasphemy law on its statute books, senior government officials have increasingly demonstrated official symbolic deference to religion and a desire to protect the nation from quote-unquote Satanism. This kind of rhetoric creates a really hostile environment for the non-religious, who are often identified as a moral and Satanist. In Burundi, the progressive erosion of democratic principles combined with a presidential campaign to quote-unquote moralise society has led to the use of public decency laws to curtail particularly artistic expression that is seen to be blasphemous. In April 2022, a rapper was detained for almost six months in connection with one of his videos because it featured him and a woman dressed in religious attire dancing erotically.

[38:00] In cyprus religious groups be they christian or muslim hold a privileged position the criminal code provides the possibility of imprisonment for blasphemy under its de facto provisions however that’s not the only way that you could fall foul of blasphemy allegation in cyprus in september 2020 teacher and painter george gabriel was placed under investigation and suspended from his job as a teacher by the Ministry of Education following a complaint about his paintings, which some, including the Archbishop, deemed to be derogatory of religion. Some of his artworks, which he describes to be anti-establishment, do have religious themes. They include a naked Jesus, they include Jesus riding a motorcycle, and a dog urinating on the Archbishop.

[38:53] In October 2021, that case was finally dropped, over a year after he was placed under investigation. For more than a year, he was not able to teach.

[39:10] To come out as an atheist is legally unrecognisable in Eritrea and would likely provoke arrest and significant social persecution. Eritrea’s penal code criminalises at least two types of blasphemous conduct with prison sentences as a possible sanction. However, because of the freedom of expression climate in Eritrea, there’s not enough public information for us to be able to determine how often the laws are used in practice.

[39:38] In Iraq, insult to religious rituals, symbols of sacred persons or objects is punishable by up to three years in prison, although reports indicate that the law is infrequently enforced in practice. But those who don’t hold religious beliefs often feel compelled to hide their worldview from others so that they avoid stigma and discrimination.

[40:06] Oh i’ve gone far too far i apologize oh no i didn’t my brain apologies i’m jet lagged uh we are in italy now yes the dominant influence of roman catholicism in italy impacts all four areas reviewed by the report defamation of religion is a criminal offense while blasphemy is an administrative offense both are punishable by a fine and both are enforced in fact italian footballers often fall foul of blasphemy allegations when they swear on the pitch using religious references and are frequently subjected to match bans as a result. In another example, in April 2024, Italy’s Advertising Standards Authority removed a television advert in which nuns were offered crisps instead of hosts at mass because there were complaints that it was blasphemous. The regulator upheld the appeal and reminded the advertiser that their publicity must not offend moral, civil or religious convictions.

[41:12] As we heard from Mubarak Bala, the differing legal systems in operation across the federalised states of Nigeria lead to inconsistent penalties for the crime of blasphemy. In certain northern states where Sharia law is applied, a Muslim could be subject to a Sharia penalty, the death penalty, while a non-Muslim might be subject to a prison sentence for the same crime. However, the strained ethno-religious tensions in the country often mean that those accused of blasphemy face the prospect of vigilante violence. At least 300 people have been killed as a result of violence provoked by blasphemy allegations since 1999, according to domestic media reports. Perpetrators of such violent acts often get away with complete impunity. In contrast, such killings often receive public support by influential officials, including government officials. And morality laws are also frequently used to curtail artistic expression in Nigeria.

[42:15] In portugal systemic religious privilege particularly favoring the roman catholic church, results in the undermining of the rights of others a quasi blasphemy law criminalizes offending a person in virtue of his religious belief providing a prison sentence or a fine as possible penalties we consider it unlikely that sentencing would result in a prison term without some element of a hate crime. However, the wording of the provision is so broad that it does seem that it would curtail legitimate expressions about religion and thus it constitutes a quasi-blasphemy law.

[42:59] In Qatar, Islam is the primary source of legislation and the emir holds all executive and legislative powers. Legal, cultural and institutional discrimination against women and girls, LGBTI people, non-Qatari nationals, certain local tribes, and other minorities is prevalent. Both blasphemy and apostasy are criminalised in the country. While apostasy is punishable by death, no punishment for apostasy has been recorded since I think around 1971. But the penal code criminalises blasphemy, including insulting the supreme being. And defamation or desecration of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism is punishable by up to seven years in prisons.

[43:46] Each year, the Key Countries edition features the voice of an individual with lived experience of the discrimination that we document, or perhaps it might be an expert in the field, such as former UN Special Rapporteur Dr. Ahmed Shaheed. This year, we were lucky enough to feature the account of award-winning Indian poet and filmmaker Lina Manamekalai, who we’ve heard accusations of blasphemy over the course of her artistic work. Her works, whether film or literary, promote human rights, particularly of marginalised communities such as Dalits or the LGBTI plus community. While studying in Toronto, Lena was selected to produce a creative piece on multiculturalism in Canada as part of a national level academic programme. Her short film shows the goddess Kali wandering the streets of Toronto at night during Pride. She observes groups of people out and about on the town, she rides the subway, she stops at a bar, she takes selfies with members of the public, and she shares a cigarette with a man on a park bench. The poster for the film shows Kali, played by Manu Mekalai, smoking and holding an LGBTI flag.

[45:03] When describing the film, Lina said that the film is all about choosing love and championing humanity, and anyone who has seen the film would say absolutely that. It is one of the most beautiful short films I’ve seen, in all honesty.

[45:17] Ahead of its screening at the Aga Khan Museum in July 2022, Lina tweeted the poster’s image that you can see here. As a result, she faced a barrage of death threats, a campaign of harassment on social media with the hashtag Arrest Lina Manamekalai trending on Twitter India, and nine legal complaints filed against her by right-wing Hindu nationalists across four different states. Lina would have had to face each of these cases individually had it not been for a ruling by the Chief Justice of India who ordered that they be combined into one case and that she shouldn’t be arrested prior to the completion of the investigation.

[45:59] The Chief Justice of India also made clear that there was no intent to hurt religious sentiments This case remains pending in the Indian courts However, before this case could reach the Chief Justice the uproar and pressure from the High Commission of India had already led the University of Toronto and the Aga Khan Museum to withdraw her film from the programme and to publish a public apology for any offence that had been caused Meanwhile, flyers purporting to be from the RSS, an Indian Hindu nationalist right-wing paramilitary organisation, circulated throughout Toronto and threatened her with death. Her case is a clear illustration of a religious nationalist government attempting to impose a monoculture, attempting to control the interpretation of its deities. Even though these deities belong to multiple traditions and are perceived differently by many.

[47:01] Before I leave you, I just wanted to leave you with a couple of overarching trends. The first is that the countries with the worst record for freedom of thought tend to be those with the worst human rights record more generally. And perhaps that’s no surprise, given where thought is suppressed, how can any other right be expected to survive? The persecution and discrimination against the non-religious and religious minorities happens across the globe. We are all in the minority somewhere, and we are likely to be persecuted. computed where we are. And blasphemy laws are used against all, irrespective of whether they come from a belief group representing a majority or minority in the population. Of course, our report focuses on the non-religious, but over the course of our research for this report, we come across innumerable examples of blasphemy laws being levied against our religious counterparts, because much like non-religious belief, religious beliefs aren’t homogenous. Often those with differing beliefs from the mainstream interpretation, they’re more likely to face an allegation of blasphemy. And the continued existence of blasphemy laws on the statute books justify social prejudice, taboo and violence.

[48:20] And for the non-religious, simply identifying as such can be taken as evidence of blasphemy. Thank you.

[48:36] Thank you for listening. For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at GlassCityHumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie. Sholee can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Glass City Jam, composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time!

[49:21] Music.