Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, at both the state and federal levels, has provided cover for Christian business owners who want to discriminate due to their faith. RFRA has been used to defend everything from anti-gay pizza shop owners in Indiana to the anti-women owners of Hobby Lobby. The scary thing is that various forms of RFRA are all over the country. Americans United for Separation of Church and State just published a map documenting the kinds of RFRA statutes in every state, and you get a sense of just how pervasive this faith-based legislation is: Read more
In the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, much has been made of his doctrine of Originalism, interpreting the Constitution as the Founders envisioned it, even though they couldn’t have known about the issues we’re dealing with today. One of the biggest rebuttals to Scalia’s theory has always been the issue of desegregation. The Founders clearly didn’t want to see the children of slaves and the children of slaveowners on equal footing, but no decent person today would support segregated schooling. So how would Scalia have voted in Brown vs. Board of Education, the case that eliminated segregation in schools? His response was always very awkward as he tried to square the circle and reconcile his Originalism with a case that clearly went against it. Which brings me to Pastor Steven Anderson. He’s someone who always says the Bible is 100% true. He’s a fundamentalist’s fundamentalist. But doesn’t the Bible condone slavery? How does he handle that issue? He responded in a sermon clip posted to YouTube: Read more
It was last July when all the scandals with the Duggar family finally hit the fan and TLC officially canceled their reality show 19 Kids and Counting. It was surprising, really, that it hadn’t happened earlier, immediately after it was revealed that Josh Duggar had been accused of molesting five girls (including four of his sisters) when he was younger — while some of them were sleeping, no less. TLC stopped airing episodes of the show in May, when the story became national news, but there was question of whether the Duggars had appeared on TV for the last time. As we soon learned, TLC wasn’t going to let this cash cow run dry anytime soon. Read more
