An Election Brings Hope To Humanism

[0:05] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist.

[0:12] Here is your host, Douglas Berger. After a brief rundown of upcoming Sholei events, we discussed why the recent midterm election is good for humanists and other freethinkers. Then we look at a Northwest Ohio school district that is violating Ohio law and two U.S. Supreme Court cases by hosting a LifeWise class on school property. 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] Hello, I’m Doug Berger, president of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie and host of the Glass City Humanists. Welcome to another episode. Appreciate it. Some people might be concerned that I don’t think we had an episode last month. Or maybe we did at the beginning of the month, but there’s been a kind of a gap. Very busy. Didn’t know what to talk about. Wasn’t much news going on. Um, we had, uh, a members meeting for our group where we went over the financials for the last fiscal year. Um, the American Humanist Association that we’re a chapter of has updated some of their group exemption IRS stuff because IRS has updated their rules and we had to go over some of that. Um, and then we have, uh, a board meeting coming up in November where we’ll choose the officers and I plan on coming back as president, hopefully. Fingers crossed. And so basically, we have some stuff coming up at the end of.

[2:08] During November, we have some activities coming up. One of them is that we work with the Lucas County Children’s Services Agency, and we get assigned a struggling family to sponsor. Okay. For the holidays. And, uh, I think I’ve talked about this before. We’ve had some people kind of concerned that we do this during the holiday when people need help all year round and they do, but this is a specific program we’ve pretty much done every year since we came into existence that, uh, is popular with the membership and our friends. And, uh, we’re able to provide some gifts for a family. They give us a list of who is in the family, their ages.

[3:00] And then we also get a list of wants and needs. And so what we try to do is we try to hit all the needs and some of the wants, depending on what it is, the cost of it. And it’s graciously donated by members and friends of the group. Um, if you want to check it out, we do have a, uh, donation page set up for it on our website, humanistwle.org. And so if you want to donate some money, we don’t have, we haven’t been assigned a family yet. They’re, they’re kind of going last minute here. Cause usually we have to wrap up by the second or third week of December because these families get together and their caseworker gives them the gifts, around Christmas time for the, for the little kids. And I, I really enjoy doing that. Uh, the other thing that we’re going to be doing slightly different this year, normally we would get together for dinner, have a dinner, a event, social the day before Thanksgiving and, uh, had some feedback recently that maybe we should do it the day after Thanksgiving, because some people wanted to come, but they’re very busy for Thanksgiving because of family or they’re going out of town or whatever. So we are going to do that.

[4:22] On Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we’ll be meeting at our usual place, the Fortune Inn Chinese restaurant on Central Avenue in Toledo. There’s details on our events page about that, and that is open to the public, if you want to come by and meet us and share some egg rolls and wonton soup, and I think I always get the sweet and sour chicken.

[4:51] It’s very good food. Really like the restaurant and the family that runs it. And so we do kind of have a limit on the number of people. It’s typically about 10 or 15. We could probably squeeze in 15. So we have an RSVP link on the events page. So please, if you do want to come, RSVP so we know to try to save you a seat.

[5:15] Uh, in, in December, save your, save the date as it were, December the 19th, we will be having our winter solstice human light event. Uh, last year was our first, was it last year was our first ever? No. Last year was our second, um, winter solstice, we called it a soiree. way. Uh, we’ve had some people that kind of wanted to try to do human light stuff this year. So we’re going to try that. Personally, I’m not much into rituals and things like that, but I’m willing to give this, give it a shot.

[5:54] Um, and so that’s going to be December the 19th, starting at five o’clock. And, uh, this year we do have some entertainment, a friend of the group, uh, Jerry Jaffe, uh, from the Cleveland area. He’s originally from Toledo, is a comedian. He actually makes money being a comedian. And he’s also a theater professor. And he, was one of our speakers this past year in January, talking about his book where it’s about comedy after 9-11 and some of the things about that. So he’ll be doing his comedy routine as entertainment at this year’s Solstice Banquet. but Solstice event. And it will be again at the, in the fellowship hall at Toledo Unitarian on Glendale. All details are in our events page. Again, we would like you to give us an RSVP, although this time we have enough room for quite a few people. So if you want to give us an RSVP so we can look out for you. Basically, Schole will provide the entree. We’ll have a vegetarian option, of course. We also provide the beverages, soda pop, coffee, water. And then what we are asking people to do is to bring a side dish or a dessert to share. And it was very successful last year. We had a real good time.

[7:24] Even with a medical emergency in the middle of it.

[7:28] But it was still, it turned out okay. And so if you’re interested in that, check out the information. So that is everything that’s going on locally with the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. And I really would encourage you to check us out. If you’re looking for a humanist community in Northwest Ohio, and if you’re an atheist, agnostic, even if you’re a Christian that’s just tired of the evangelical Christian nationalist bullcrap, check us out. We welcome everyone. We’re a very welcoming group. And hope to see you then. Segments of this podcast are available Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern on W.A.K.T. 106.1 FM in Toledo and on ToledoRadio.org. If you have a Spotify account, you can view a video version of the podcast and share a comment or two.

[8:36] The next thing that I’d like to talk about is we had an election this week, the week that I’m recording this, on Tuesday, November the 3rd. What I typically do personally is I work as a poll worker at a voting location, and I didn’t do that all day. Very tiring, but it was very good because we had a lot of people. There was a ton of people. Our voting location normally has about 7,500 people registered there. I saw probably about 2,500 of them Tuesday. We get there…

[9:14] And they are always looking for poll workers. So they pay about $200 an election. It does have a very serious time commitment, at least around the election time. You have to do a three-hour training session at the Board of Elections. Then on Monday, the day before an election, you show up the location that they’ve assigned to you, and you set up the polling place. You unpack the voting machines and the tabulators and the poll books, and you set it all up, ready to go. Then you come back Tuesday morning at 5.30 in the morning to turn everything on, get it and have it ready to go. Because in Ohio, the first voters show up at 6.30 in the morning. And then besides a break of about an hour or you could do a half hour break at one point and a half hour break at another but you get a total of an hour, for a break you are there all day until 7 30 p.m when the polls close then we have to put everything we have to pack everything away.

[10:29] And close down and that takes probably an hour and a half to two hours depending on how busy we were So there is a sizable time commitment, but they are always looking for people. So if you have the time, many employers will give you a day off to work as a poll worker.

[10:47] So investigate that, check with your HR people. And see if that’s a possibility. Here in Lucas County, where we are located, we’re in Toledo, they are in serious need of Republican poll workers. A lot of Republicans refuse to work for the Board of Elections because they don’t trust the Board of Elections because of all that anonymity and the conspiracy theories and stuff about elections. So a lot of people that would be available to refuse to work. And unfortunately, the way that the election system is rigged for two-party system.

[11:29] We are required to have a Republican and a Democrat poll workers check people in, sign paperwork, check the machines. If a voter is having an issue with a machine, It takes two people to show up. So I think in my polling location, we had four Republicans out of 20 people. So they got to work out. They got to work out. So if you’re a Republican or if you know a Republican who doesn’t buy into all of the election denial conspiracy theories, have them take a look at becoming a poll worker. Because that is one way you can find out that a lot of the conspiracy theories are bunk, is by working an election, because then you can see exactly how everything is done, except for the counting part, because that’s done separately from the actual voting part.

[12:28] But I do want to make some comments about the election. It was very good for humanists, very good for supporters of church and state separation, very good for civil rights supporters because of the wave where the Democrats came in.

[12:52] They have probably at the time that I’m taping this, they are possibly going to have 255 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives that are going to be Democrat. They need 218 to pass legislation.

[13:10] For majority to pass legislation. So they’re going to be way past that. And there’s also they also took over the Senate. And they right now have 54 seats in the Senate. They possibly, because there’s still two outstanding races going on, they possibly could have 59 seats. They need 60 seats to have a veto-proof majority in the Senate.

[13:43] And that’s just unheard of. I just, you know, it’s been 20 years, 25 years. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never seen a complete shift like this. And basically, you know, I’m not going to talk a lot about politics because that’s not what we do at Sholi. But I will tell you that people don’t like corruption.

[14:07] And they are having a problem paying for gas and groceries and electric and, and stuff like that. And that was probably the main driver of a lot of it. And so what this is going to do when I say this is good for humanists is because most Democrats are like-minded and they’re on our side. All right. So, for example, in the Ohio State House, we had enough Democrats get elected Tuesday that it broke the supermajority in the Ohio House, which has not happened since 2011. They have had a supermajority. The Republicans have a supermajority in the Ohio House since 2011. And so what this means, I really do believe that a lot of the crazy crap that’s been coming out of the Statehouse, like the Charlie Kirk Act and the Ten Commandments Bill and the Pastors in the Public Schools Bill and more Christian privilege for life-wise, is not going to get out of the Ohio House. I don’t even think it’ll get out of the committees.

[15:24] Because these are where a lot of these culture war bills that do nothing for anybody except for Christian nationalists, this is where they need to die, is in committee. They don’t need to even come out. The other thing that will also be improved on is we’re going to stop this sticking bills that people don’t support into other bills to get them passed. That’s what happened with the RTRI stuff that we recovered a couple years ago, is the bill got stalled in the House, the House Committee, Education Committee, because they had a change in chair people. And the chairperson that took over was Gail Manning, who was a former teacher and school board member who hated the RTRI bill. And that was the bill that would require public schools to work with LifeWise. So they introduced it, the Republicans, like Andrew Brenner, introduced it into the Senate. Well, he couldn’t find enough votes. It got kind of stuck there. So during the lame duck session, they took that text of that bill and shoved it into House Bill 8, which was an attack on the LGBT community and trans people.

[16:47] And so the RTRI bill that nobody really wanted ended up being passed because they passed House Bill 8. Because House Bill 8 had already passed the House. The Senate passed it. It went back to the House. The House confirmed the changes. And then it went to Mike DeWine’s desk and he signed it. So with the change in government and the breaking of the supermajority, it’s less likely that that crap is going to happen. Pardon my French, because it is crap. We might also be able to finally pass a ban on child marriage. It’s still languishing in the Ohio legislature because Rob McCauley, who had his failed bid for lieutenant governor, didn’t want to piss off the Christian nationalists. So he just stuck it in the wind and didn’t act on it or anything, even though it had the votes. It was a bipartisan bill.

[17:54] So we’ll be done with that.

[17:58] On the federal level, it will also be good for humanists and free thinkers because a lot of the Christian nationalist stuff that’s been coming out of the federal government, won’t be passed in Congress, hopefully. You know, I can say more than likely it won’t be because we’ll have more people that are friendly for separation of church and state. For example, Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin is set to take over chairman of the Judiciary Committee that controls the Department of Justice, the FBI, judge appointments, and things like that. He is a member of the Free Thought Caucus. He’s good buddies with Jared Huffman, who’s an out-humanist. So he’s a friend of us. He’s a like-minded friend of us. And he’s going to be in charge of the Judiciary Committee. So a lot of that Christian nationalist bullcrap that, like, Trump had his biased committee looking out for religious freedom.

[19:13] It won’t be significant. It won’t be relevant. So hopefully. So I see that happening. The Senate might be a little bit more iffy.

[19:29] But that’s how it’s going to be. So basically what I wanted to do is I wanted to talk about the election and how it is looking good for us. We still have issues we need to deal with.

[19:43] Uh, life-wise, uh, I have a segment coming up. We’re going to be talking about, uh, agrarious violations by life-wise in one school district here in Ohio. Um, when there was a camp during the campaign, um, governor elect Dr. Amy Acton, um, through the trans people under the bus said she was going to enforce the bans on, uh, trans women and men’s sports. She even called them boys. Anyways, Marcy Kaptor, who won her district, and that shocked me, she won her district race in the ninth, had a campaign ad where she claimed that she voted with Republicans to ban trans women from women’s sports. And when I called her out on it, she sent me a letter saying that she supported the LGBT community. So she lied.

[20:45] To get elected. So that’s somebody else, uh, um, that we need to keep on and pressure, you know? And, and the thing about it is, you know, when they did this, when they both had, Sherrod Brown was kind of noncommittal about it, about trans people too. So he needs to have his feet to the fire. But the thing about it is, is they do this and because they’re Democrats, They will be more amenable, to having their positions changed if we do it correctly, if we act as a united front and we get them to change their views. And I’m sure, like, Marcy Kaptur will probably change her view because she won her election, maybe.

[21:41] I would like to see somebody else run for that office next time from the Democratic Party, if possible, because, you know, she used to be, Marcy used to be against abortion and she saved a church. She spent federal dollars to save her old church. And, you know, it’s just, she needs, I think she’s been in Congress long enough. And I think we need people with better ideas. So, so it was good. It was a good week. I, it’s been a while since I’ve woken up the day after an election in a good mood. And this is very good, but I can tell you AHA, Americans United, the atheists, Everybody, FFRF, we’re all on the case and we’re going to keep, the pressure on the politicians because that’s what we need to do to protect separation of church and state.

[22:48] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[23:08] One of the issues that I’ve been dealing with for a couple of years now is fighting, the Christian nationalist group LifeWise Academy. And in case you don’t know, this is the group that is injecting itself into public schools around Ohio and the rest of the country to provide Bible classes for kids. And it’s a constitutional, relatively constitutional, as long as it’s voluntary, that it happens off campus, that it’s not in the school, and that no tax dollars are spent on it, and the school doesn’t promote it. And so basically what it is, is the parents sign a form and they give it to the school. And then the kid is released to somebody from LifeWise. And in most cases, they either get on a bus or van and they travel to a local church where they do their Bible class.

[24:19] Some districts, like Elida near Lima, they actually have a place next door to the church, to the school. So the kids walk to their LifeWise class. And typically it’s 45 minutes to an hour. Then they go back to school.

[24:39] And this is called Release Time Religious Instruction. It was allowed after a couple of court decisions in 1948, McCollum v. Board of Education, I believe was the name of it. Yeah, it was McCollum v. Board of Education in 1948 and Zorach v. Clausen in 1952. And those cases say that RTRI, Release Time Religious Instruction, has to be voluntary off-campus, not promoted or supported by the school district, and no tax money is spent on it.

[25:22] There is a school district in Ohio where we know they are egregiously violating those court decisions.

[25:33] It’s the Elmwood local schools. It’s in Wood County. It’s about 35 miles south of where we are at in Toledo. And I think about 10 or 15 years ago, I’m not sure, I haven’t dug into it, they worked with the state to build a new combined K-12 school building next door to their old school. A lot of schools, particularly rural schools in Ohio, have done this, is where the state pays money, they pay part of it, and then the local districts, they pay part of it, and they get a brand new school. And a lot of these rural schools needed new schools because they were either built in the 50s or 60s and a lot of maintenance issues.

[26:23] So they have this new building, this new combined building, and most of the old building, the previous building, was demolished. The state allows them to keep a couple of parts of the building for other uses. I know there was a school district in Hancock County, Arlington, where they kept the old gym, but they tore the rest of it. Not old Jim, but there was like an addition that had been put on in 1995, and they kept that addition and tore everything else down. That is part of the deal with the state, is you just can’t keep the old building complete. And so they had this building, and they called it a community center.

[27:09] And there’s a theater, a weight room, some classroom space for meetings, and they rent out the center to local groups.

[27:19] The school district still owns the building, the land, and they control who rents that building. So if you’re a local group in Wood County and you want to use that community center, you have to contact the school district. And there’s like a form you have to fill out. Uh, Elmwood has had a LifeWise program since I think about 2022. Don’t hold, hold me to that date. Uh, in fact, that was, that program was what got me on the road to, uh, opposing LifeWise. That’s when I heard about LifeWise for the first time was somebody in the Elmwood District had contacted my group contacted Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie and wanted to know what to do about it, and so I looked into it and kind of, you know and the rest they say is history where we’re at now, but instead of being taken off campus like all the other program LifeWise, most other there’s some other ones too Instead of being taken off campus to a local church or to private property, LifeWise rents a room at the community center.

[28:41] During the school day.

[28:45] There’s a gentleman, Keith Comer, who we’ve interviewed previously. He inquired about this because he lives in that area. And he mentioned that it doesn’t seem legal. And the school responded back to him that they rent out the space to the community. And due to previous Supreme Court cases, they can’t discriminate just because LifeWise is religious. Which is technically true. if they offered space in their school buildings to, other community groups like Boy Scouts or the Shriners or maybe a church service every once in a while, who knows? If they do that, then they cannot discriminate based on content. Uh it’s a public what do they call it access it’s an access law, so so if you they call it a limited public forum, so you know you’re not letting everybody in but if you let some people in you have to let people that want to come in come in and so that’s, technically true what the school tolling. The problem is.

[30:11] LifeWise takes place during the school day. And I have a graphic up and I’ll have it in the show notes. But if you’re watching the video of this episode, if you look over my shoulder, you’ll see a graphic of the website, the Elmwood Local Schools website about their community center. If you look at the hours that it’s open, it’s prior to 9 a.m., and then they have hours after 3 p.m. that it’s open. So between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., they do not rent out that community center. And the fact is the school rents only to LifeWise during the school day.

[31:03] The same concerned community member that I talked about earlier tried to rent a meeting space during the school day and was denied. And he was told that the students still use some of that space and it was a safety issue. So basically, they have a religious Bible class on school property during the school day. And that violates the Supreme Court case, McCollum v. Board of Education in 1948, because that was the exact same thing. And the court said, even if you rent a room to a religious group, it does not absolve you of the violation. Because you have control of the school building and the children have to go to school. They’re required to go to school. The compulsory attendance laws.

[32:03] And that LifeWise program is also violating the Zorach v. Clausen case because it’s not off campus.

[32:14] And it’s supported by the school district because we also have information that they set them up with the school computers and some phones. And they even have a permanent room, I’m told, a permanent room in that community center that they can use all year. So it’s not like they have their materials in a tote and they bring it out for class and have to put it away before they leave. That’s their room. That is totally illegal. And Elmwood Local Schools is violating Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022, Release Time Courses in Religion Instruction, which is a codified version of the Zorach court decision. And that was created in 20, part of it was created in 2014 when the initial law was passed and it was amended to require schools to work with LifeWise. And that was House Bill 445. And that was the law that was stuck into the attack on the LBGT community, House Bill 8, the Parents’ Rights Act, at the end of the Layton Duck session 2023, I want to say, something like that. So Elmwood local schools in Wood County is violating the law.

[33:42] Now, I also told was heard from the person, the concerned citizen in that area that that Elmwood recently got a new superintendent. So maybe we can change it. I do know that this was extensively reported in the Ohio Capital Journal. FFRF, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, sent a strongly worded letter to the school district earlier this year. And it’s gotten some coverage, local news coverage, but they are still violating the law. Now, I don’t care so much that kids attend LifeWise if that’s what parents want their kids to do. I care that they’re allowed to flaunt laws and be privileged that way. You know, if the community center is not open during the school day, LifeWise should not be on school property. They shouldn’t be on school property anyway. They should bus those kids to a local church or somebody’s private property.

[34:55] So our group, what we’re doing is we’re working with some people to look at the legal options, including maybe having a taxpayer lawsuit brought against the Elmwood School District. Um, so if you are concerned about this and you live in the Elmwood local school districts and you, want to take the chance of suing the school district and life-wise for violating Ohio law, uh, reach out, let us know. And we’ll keep your information confidential, you know, until we go through the process. It’s probably what we’re probably going to do is start really looking close at it at the beginning of 2027 when the legislature changes. So maybe we’ll have a better way of taking care of it through normal channels rather than having to file a lawsuit. And it could be with the new superintendent. Maybe we can get some kind of legal advice to him to let him know that they are violating two Supreme Court decisions and Ohio law, by having LifeWise on school property. That’s the issue. And so I will keep everybody updated on that.

[36:21] Because that is going to be a major issue going forward. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.