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.
When you consider that the Supreme Court has six Catholics on the bench, maybe this news isn’t too surprising: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, just before heading to Times Square to help drop the ball and ring in the new year, blocked the part of the Affordable Care Act that would have mandated certain religiously-affiliated organizations provide comprehensive health care to their employees. Her ruling means that, for now, certain religiously-affiliated businesses will not have to provide health insurance that includes birth control to their workers. The government has until Friday to respond. Here’s a little more information about what’s going on: [This post is still being updated] Read more
For weeks now, New York State Senator Andrew Lanza has been complaining about the American Atheists ad in Times Square. He said the digital billboard, images of which are below, was “religious persecution of the kind that similarly lead to the Holocaust.” Recently, he altered his original press release to remove some of the most offensive statement along with his call for the IRS to revoke American Atheists’ non-profit status. Meanwhile, the bit about the Holocaust remained in place. … If you go to Lanza’s site now, there’s a completely new press release where the old one used to be. So let’s go through some of these new revisions, shall we…? Read more
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is clearly run by a bunch of people who failed the Analogy section of the old SATs. Case in point: The legal defense group just bestowed its annual “Ebenezer Award” (awarded to the “most ridiculous affront to Christmas or Hanukkah celebrations”) to the state of Wisconsin for allowing non-Christian displays in their state capitol building. Because you can’t have Christmas without Christ. (Or Jews, I guess, just to give off the vibe of not being complete assholes.) They’re referring to the fact that the state capitol has a Flying Spaghetti Monster display (along with other atheist signs) right alongside a Nativity scene. Here’s what the Becket people write: Read more
The Illinois Family Institute, like most non-profits, wants to get those end-of-the-year donations, so they’re doing it in typical fashion: by scaring other Christians and reminding them the sky is falling. And who’s responsible for all their troubles? You know it: those awful, awful teachers: The first educational institutions to succumb to censorship, indoctrination, and oppression were our colleges and universities. Then Leftist sexuality dogmatists came for our high school students, and now they’re taking aim at our littlest ones through “bullying prevention” activities, “comprehensive” sex ed, and discussions of “family diversity.” Only a right-wing group like IFI would put scare-quotes around topics like bullying prevention, diversity, and realistic sex education that doesn’t end with abstinence. As if discussing those topics are problems instead of solutions. But they’re not done yet. Since the number of teachers who push anti-Christian views in the classroom is approximately zero, they decided to go after me because I’m a teacher who also shares his opinions outside the classroom (*gasp*): Read more
