Indiana high school student sues over graduation prayer

Ah, always good to see freethinkers in Indiana! Or at the very least, young people who support the separation of church and state:

A Greenwood High School honor student who learned in class about court rulings striking down school prayer has found a real-world application — his own graduation ceremony.

Eric Workman’s lawsuit, filed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, challenges the high school’s practice of allowing seniors to vote on whether to have a student-led prayer at graduation.

ACLU attorney Ken Falk said allowing the vote and even having the prayer run afoul of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that found prayers at public school-sponsored events to violate the First Amendment.

“This is particularly egregious when it’s coming from a student who’s going to be sitting on the stage,” Falk said. Workman, 18, is ranked first in his class, the lawsuit says.

Good for him! It can be difficult to deal with small religious towns in Indiana, and this kid is probably getting a lot shit for what he’s doing. So I send kudos his way for helping keep church and state separated!

Of course, not everyone is as understanding…

The Rev. Shan Rutherford, pastor of Greenwood Christian Church for more than three decades, said he disagrees with the proposition that such a prayer would violate a student’s rights.

“If I lived in a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation or anything else, I would expect to go along with the majority,” Rutherford said. “He’s trying to go with minority rule. To me, that’s wrong in a democracy, one that was founded on Christian principles.”

“If you don’t agree, I don’t think you should try to stop other people from exercising their rights.”

Rev. Rutherford, I think you need to sit in on that government class Workman learned so much from.

Anyone who still claims that America was founded on Christian principles shows how little they know about our government’s history, since that trope has been destroyed over and over. But worse than that is his failure to comprehend the idea of “majority rule, minority rights.” Just because Christians are in the majority doesn’t mean they get to have everything their way, especially when it infringes upon the rights of the minority. Removing a school prayer doesn’t make it an atheist ceremony, representing a majority of Americans – it makes it a secular ceremony, representing everyone. I would be just as a against someone getting up on stage an talking about how there is no God, religion is stupid, and anyone who believes in God is deluded. That would be totally inappropriate for a public school graduation, just as a prayer would.

Ah, Christian persecution complex. Lovely, isn’t it?

(Hat tip to Tom)

No prom? Blame the gays

This story really makes me sad.

A northern Mississippi school district will not be hosting a high school prom this spring after a lesbian student sought to attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

The Itawamba County school district’s board decided Wednesday to drop the prom because of what it called recent distractions but without specifically mentioning the girl’s request, which was backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The student, 18-year-old high school senior Constance McMillen, said the cancellation was retaliation for her efforts to bring her girlfriend, also a student, to the April 2 dance.

“A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation,” McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered.

School policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex. The ACLU of Mississippi had given the district until Wednesday to change that policy, arguing that banning same-sex prom dates violated McMillen’s constitutional rights.

…

The ACLU said McMillen approached school officials shortly before the memo went out because she knew same-sex dates had been banned in the past. The ACLU said district officials told McMillen she and her girlfriend wouldn’t be allowed to arrive together, that she would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo, and that she and her girlfriend might be asked to leave if their presence made any other students “uncomfortable.”

Alright, I know it’s Mississippi, and apparently it’s a small religious town, but how can a school be so fucking stupid? Don’t they know this is just going to open up a can of worms? No, instead they have to stand by their “traditional values” of discrimination instead of letting a girl wear a tux and dance with another girl. Jesus Christ, people. Have a little compassion, or at least a little legal common sense.

And the fact that they canceled prom is even worse than if they just banned this student from taking a same-sex date. I think McMillen is right when she says this is punishment – those gays are to blame for prom being canceled! If only they could just be good, quiet, heterosexual girls who wore dresses. If this high school is anything like mine (or most American high schools), prom is a big fucking deal. Even I went to prom. Twice.

This makes me wonder what could have happened at my high school back in the day. Two of my close friends were lesbians who were dating each other, and they were considering going to prom together. I know there were some worries over if Munster would allow it, if they’d have to fight for it, if they’d have to drag in their parents (who are super supportive wonderful people). They would have been the first same sex couple to try it – gays went to prom, but usually with a friend for a date because they were too afraid to come out (I was actually my gay friend’s beard for his senior prom). In the end, it didn’t matter though – they decided that prom was lame, and they went to a Star Wars convention instead (probably a much better choice).

I really hope this school comes around and stops acting like the asshats they are. No, prom isn’t some god given right to all high school students – but to revoke that privilege because of one gay couple is just wrong.

(Via BoingBoing)

Send an Atheist to Church: Final results

The results are in! During our Send an Atheist to Church event, the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University raised…

$362.95 for Food Finders Food Bank!

That is so amazing! I wasn’t sure if we’d even raise $100, but we blew past that goal!

And for those of you who are wondering about the more competitive side of the event, here are the donation results per denomination:
The Episcopalians had the highest amount, just barely beating the Baptists by six cents! Representatives from both of those denominations stopped by and made big donations, which helped put them in the lead. $37.34 was also donated to just a general fund that didn’t represent a specific denomination – some people didn’t want to send us to any religious service, haha. I guess the Episcopalians and Baptists will have a lot of atheists coming their way soon…

Thanks so much to everyone who donated and to everyone who helped organize the event. I would call this a huge success!

Send an Atheist to Church: Preliminary results

About a week ago I mentioned how the Society of Non-Theists would be holding a Send an Atheist to Church event. Yesterday was our first day, and we exceeded expectations! We raised about 140 dollars, and the Exponent (local student newspaper) wrote up a nice article about us:

Non-Theists attend religious services to benefit food bank

By Katy Adams, Staff Reporter

Publication Date: 02/19/2010

“Save a soul, put food in a bowl” and “Donate to charity and spare our souls” are two slogans that the Purdue Society of Non-Theists is using to raise money for charity.

From 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. today, the Society of Non-Theists will raise money for Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County, which they hope will help to raise awareness of the club.

The idea for the fundraiser, called “Send an Atheist to Church,” was based off Hemant Mehta, an atheist who sold himself on eBay to attend any church service at $10 an hour. The winning bid, $504, went to a non-profit charity, and Mehta wrote a book on the experience titled, “I Sold My Soul on eBay.”

The fundraiser has set out paper cups to collect donations. The cups are labeled with different religions or denominations, including cups for Buddhists, Methodists, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and a cup for general donations. A donor can donate to a specific religion, hoping that religion get closer to “winning.” All profits go to the charity and each domination will have society members attending their services.

As of Thursday, the Methodist church had the most donations.

Monya Anderson, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts and treasurer for the organization said that the club raised $135.31 for the Food Finders Food Bank on Thursday, and that the fundraiser has given them a chance to learn about other denominations and religions.

“It brings a lot of discussion (when people visit the table) … (we) met a lot of people, (had) varied reactions,” she said.

Kimberly Tricoche, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, visited the table because of the signs. She said that the organization’s efforts are creative and are helping a good cause.

“They are saying they are open to going to other churches. It’s a creative idea to send themselves to church (for charity),” she said.

Elizabeth Almada, a junior in the College of Education, disagreed, saying that the list is discriminatory to others faiths, as the only non-Christian religions named on the cups are Judaism and Buddhism. She said that as a campus event, it should be campus-wide, with one for each denomination.

“I’m all for donation, but it seems like a battle of the churches, kind of shows who cares and who doesn’t,” she said. “‘Come to my church. We raise the most money.’”

Anderson said the organization e-mailed different people, but some didn’t respond or weren’t interested. She said that the organization will continue to do the fundraiser in the future, either every semester or every year, to continue to raise money.

(I’m pretty sure the Baptists and Mormons are winning, maybe they weren’t when she interviewed everyone)

I’m always happy when our events get covered by the news, but it’s even more awesome in this situation. Hopefully even more people will stop by our table today and we can raise even more money. I wasn’t even sure if we’d make 100 dollars, so I’m already elated.I was stuck on an airplane for most of yesterdays event, but the members who were at the table tried to fill me in on how it went. They said the most common remark was “Where are the Catholics?!” We tried so hard to get the Catholic church on campus to agree, but they kept being noncommittal and referring us to other people – thankfully most people understood that situation. Maybe now that they see how successful our event was, they’ll join us for next year.

We also had questions like the young lady in the article, about why there were so many Christian groups. Short answer: Purdue has a lot more Christians. We asked the Islamic Center and they declined (though they were very polite and nice). Someone from the Muslim student association came by later in the day and told us to sign them up, so at least we have them now! The Hindu student association never replied. Other than those groups, there aren’t really that many clubs or places of worship for non-Christian faiths. Someone asked about Taoism and Deism – show us where we can actually physically go, and we’ll go there!

And one of the funnier responses through the day was actually from random atheists who walked by, not theists. We got a couple of glares from (presumably) theists, but atheists would stop and be offended. They thought we were a religious group trying to force atheists to go to church, not an atheist group being a little silly! Once we explained the situation, they would laugh about it. I think that illustrates the religious environment at Purdue – it is totally normal, common really, for religious people to go around trying to save us heathens in public.

I’ll let you know how today goes!

Harvard update

I thought I’d give you guys a quick update about my trip to Harvard. First of all, my flight was…eventful. We were supposed to land in Boston at 4:20, but their airport was closed because of the snow. Instead we had to land in Providence, RI. It took over an hour to deplane since everyone was landing there and they were understaffed. I smartly grabbed a quick dinner, and then we reboarded at 7:20. …We didn’t take off until 10:20 because a plane was stalled on Boston’s runway and no one could land. Yep, I got to sit on a plane for three hours. Fun stuff. Everyone was getting so cranky that they started giving us free alcohol, but at that point I just kind of went to sleep.

Other than that, Harvard was wonderful. The campus was absolutely beautiful. All of the winding old streets were a bit insane – how did it take so long for people to build cities on grids? The department was housed in the same building as the natural history museum, which was equally amazing from the short peak I got. Exhibits on global warming and evolution, shiny rocks and skeletons and every taxidermy animal you can think of!

More importantly, the people were great. I met with faculty and current grad students from 10 until 6. Everyone was intelligent (obviously) and super nice – they totally defied the stuffy Harvard stereotype. I learned all about the department, life as a grad student, living in Boston. Don’t want to say anything more than that before I visit my other potential schools, though. Sorry! (Though as a fun side note, I met the professor who did the study that was in Nature recently on how running barefoot actually causes less stress and injuries – you may have seen it around the internet. He was wonderful!)

My potential advisor and her husband (another professor in the department) took me out to a very nice restaurant for dinner. Our conversation was everything you shouldn’t talk about at dinner – sex, politics, and religion. They were really interested in what it was like being an evolutionary biologist and an atheist in Indiana (I included the Society in my resume, and they gave me major kudos for it). Long story short: I think I will be much more comfortable living in the east coast. Perk: No longer have to totally freak out about the professor finding my blog, since she’d probably agree with what I’m saying. Downside: What the heck will I blog about if I’m living in Liberal Land?

The flight back was kind of uneventful, except for Random Talkative Older Guy who talked to me the whole first flight (only 45 minutes, thankfully). Usually I don’t mind chatting with strangers, but I was just so exhausted that morning. He was nice though, and surprisingly very pro science and evolution. He was joking about how he’d keep an eye on me for when I’m presenting my awesome research on tv – maybe one day!

(Oh, and since people were asking, yes, I’m pretty much in. Just going to come down to me saying yes or no!)

Feminism at Purdue

My day started off a little rough. I missed the bus even though I was about 10 feet from the bus stop (Thank you, Mr. Driver), the walk to campus was freezing, and I was lugging our Darwin Day merchandise and poster along. I was hungry and tired. I plopped down on the bench, ready to zone out for an hour until my class, when my friend Mike thrust a newspaper into my hands.

“Noooooooooo!”

It was the Purdue Review.

For those of you who aren’t Purdue students, let me explain. We have a sane, balanced, and fairly well done student newspaper called the Exponent. If the Exponent is Purdue’s journalistic Superman, the Purdue Review is Bizarro. It’s a extraordinarily conservative student newspaper that seems to take all of its ideology from Glenn Beck, Fox News, and teabaggers. Yeah, we’re talking about some good stuff, here.

It’s only printed a couple of times a semester (thankfully). To make it worse, one of my ex-boyfriends is on their staff, but that’s a totally different story. If I’m in for a good rage, I’ll grab a copy – but most of the time I ignore it to keep my own sanity. But now it was being thrust into my hands, and I couldn’t ignore the title: POL 222: Women, Politics & Public Policy.

The Purdue Review was going to tackle feminism? You know I’m too much of a masochist to ignore that.

It’s such a pile of crap that it’s not worth picking apart: just go read it or Mike’s critique, since he actually took that class. It’s just some conservative student whining about how political science classes are so liberal and us liberals push feminism on everyone. He tries to make these arguments okay by asserting he’s totally against husbands abusing their wives. What a stand up guy. I mean, how can you not like a guy who thinks this?

It need not be said that the points raised in the class are incongruent with traditional conservativism. The role of the mother has always been to take care of her family and maintain the household. Even in nature, the young need to be with the mother for a certain amount of time before they can go about on their own.

Dear Tyler Martin, if someone ever invents a time machine, I will pay out of my pocket for you and all of your conservative friends to zoom back to 1900, so you won’t have to worry about us wandering out of the kitchen or depriving you of our baby making machinery.

Anyway, after reading that annoyance, I had to go get some more change for the Darwin Day sale. As I was passing through the Stewart Center heading towards the bank, there were a bunch of tables set up for Valentine’s Day: Roses for sale, singing telegrams, creative writing majors selling love poetry (loved that idea). I was kind of oblivious, but someone stuffed a piece of paper in my hand.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!”

“You too,” I mumbled, continuing to walk by. I peered down at the paper in my hand and stopped dead in my tracks.FEMINISTS?!?!

I literally walked backwards a couple steps to the table.

“There’s a feminist group at Purdue?! When did this happen?!” I asked the young lady who had handed me the valentine.

“Recently. Hey, you’re Jen, right? From the Non-Theists? I know you, but you don’t know me, because I don’t really come to actual meetings. Sorry if that’s kind of weird.” Oddly enough, this happens so frequently that it’s no longer weird to me.But I seriously can’t explain how excited I was. During my freshman year I was a member of Purdue’s chapter of the National Organization for Women. We did lots of awesome events, my favorite being Sex on the Mall, a giant sex ed fair on Memorial Mall. The group fell apart when the president graduated, and I’ve been severely lacking in my feminism ever since.

Am I going to have time to go to meeting for a new club in the final months before I graduate? Maybe, but probably not. But the mere presence of this club means so much to me, especially after reading some anti-feminist bullshit. It was serendipitous. To see seven awesome looking ladies happily passing out sex ed information and condoms as valentines totally made my day. Oh, and apparently they liked my feminist glee so much that they gave me another valentine. Woo, double the fun.

So keep up the awesome work, Feminist Action Coalition for Today! Purdue needs your voice on campus. (Though hurry up and get a website so I easily send oodles of people your way!)

Happy Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day, everyone! This year the Society of Non-Theists had a fairly simple event, since we have so much other stuff going on. We just had our annual Darwin Fish fundraiser selling cool evolution oriented merchandise.
We sold a lot throughout the day, and made about 150 dollars! Woot! Now we can spend even more money on pizza. And the club members rejoice.

Of course, I’m not too surprised that our fundraiser did well. It does well every year, especially since we hold it in the LILY, the biology building.
I mean, can’t you just tell that’s the biology building, with that artwork in the background? The hands of God coming out of clouds and creating the first cells is totally a biologically sound theory…right?

Regardless of artwork that annoys the biologists, it was a good day for evolution. I saw a random person wearing a Happy Birthday Darwin pin, which made me super happy. I also got to briefly teach my honors freshman class about evolution! We’re learning about mutations and selecting bacteria that can survive in certain environments, so it was somewhat relevant. The professor asked if I would explain evolution to them, since I like it so much.

I have to say, I was really impressed. Everyone already understood the basics of the theory without the misconceptions. I specifically wore my Darwin Athletic Club: Survival of the Fittest t-shirt and asked them why it wasn’t really correct, and they got it right: that strength and endurance doesn’t necessarily mean an individual is fit – it’s reproduction that matters. They also asked extra questions about epigenetics and kin selection. I was really impressed for freshmen! The intro biology class has been updated since I last took it, and is a lot more evolution heavy – looks like people are actually understanding it now!

Not sure anything can make Darwin Day better than teaching our future scientists about evolution.

Send an Atheist to Church

Next week the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University will be having a fun charity event: Send an Atheist to Church. People will have the opportunities to raise money for charity and save our souls at the same time! How neat is that? Here’s all the relevant information, which can also be found on the Facebook event page (please spread the word!):

Thursday 2/18 & Friday 2/19
9:00 am to 4:30 pm
UNION ground floor tables (by Zia Juice & Starbucks)

The main goal of this event is to come up with a creative idea to raise money for a charity that everyone can agree is very important in our community. We also want to show that non-theists are open minded about religious ideas, and that we’re willing to learn more about other people’s faith. The way it works is as follows:

1. Make a cash donation – ALL proceeds go to Food Finders Food Bank of Tippecanoe County.
2. Choose what denomination of religious services you want us atheists to attend.
3. The more money donated in a denomination’s name, the more visits it receives.

Currently participating denominations include:
Baptist (Faith Baptist Church)
Episcopalian (Chapel of the Good Shepard)
Orthodox (Saint Alexis Orthodox Church)
United Methodist (Wesley Foundation)
Judaism (Purdue Hillel)
Buddhists (Purdue Buddhist Society)

If you see certain religions missing from our list and you know a place of worship (in the Lafayette area) that would like to participate, please let us know before Thursday and we will ad them to the list! The more, the merrier! It doesn’t have to be a Christian denomination – “Church” is used just for a catchy title.

Inspired by Hemant Mehta‘s book, I Sold My Soul on eBay

Anyone can donate, regardless if they’re a Purdue student, a member of a participating church, etc. If you can’t physically come to make a donation during the listed times, you can also make a check out to Food Finders Food Bank (be sure to note what denomination it’s going toward!) and mail it to:

The Society of Non-Theists
Stewart Center, Box #566
128 Memorial Mall
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2034

So if you really want me to go visit the Baptist church or something, send a check! Not only will it tickle me pink because it’s going to a good cause, but you’ll get a blog post out of every church service I have to attend.

This is our first year trying out this event, so I hope it goes well. We’ve had a little trouble getting churches to participate – a couple outright said no, but most are unresponsive. Hopefully if this is successful this year and we prove this isn’t some nefarious plan to interrupt their services, more places will trust us next year. I have to say, I’m really excited. I’ve never really been to church, and I’m curious to see what it’s like.

So, go spread the word! Donate! Wish us luck!

A preemptive blog apology

Hey everyone. This is just a bit of a warning that I’m going to be busier than usual during the next couple of weeks, and thus posting may temporarily slow down. How busy? I’ll be out of the state on graduate school visits approximately 40% of the time during the next four weeks. Here’s my slightly insane schedule:

2/16 – 2/18: Cambridge, MA
2/20 – 2/23: Seattle, WA
3/3 – 3/7: Stanford, CA

Yeah, at this point I’m glad I decided to only apply to my top three schools. Can’t imagine having to do more than this, like some of my friends.

Problem is that not only am I out of the state and busy interviewing, but I also don’t have a lap top. That means I probably won’t be able to make any significant posts even if I get a minute to breathe. So consider this a preemptive apology for my likely absence. Sorry guys, my future is just a tad more important than blogging at the moment.

On a related note, a couple of people have asked me if I’ll have time to grab a coffee or something. I won’t at Harvard, I probably won’t at Stanford, but I will definitely be available in Seattle. I have all of Saturday the 20th to explore and goof off. I already know a couple of my readers (hopefully not axe murderers) are keen to hang out; so if you’re in the area and interested in an informal meet up, let me know. I’ve already seen the touristy stuff in Seattle, so it would be nice to do something different.

Alright, back to work!

Greta Christina on Atheism & Sexuality (with video)

Greta Christina‘s talk at Purdue last night was awesome! We had about 80 people in attendance, which I consider a great success, especially because 1) it was snowing pretty good and 2) that’s more than IU had even with good weather (neener neener, insert silly disparaging remarks about our rival here). Thankfully you don’t have to take my word for it, because we have it on video*.

My favorite bits:

– Her Broccoli Analogy against emotivism
– Sex connecting us to our tetrapod cousins
– Her closing remarks about porn and other media

Yeah, now you have to watch it, don’t you? It’s long but worth it. (podcast?)

I actually think one of the best parts was the Q&A at the end, because it really showcased Greta’s talents. She’s prepared to answer pretty much any question about atheism, and she can do so in a concise, punchy, memorable matter. This was especially important for the couple “questions” that were really people (probably philosophy students) pontificating for 20 minutes about some theological concept against atheism that didn’t relate to the topic at all. While my response probably would have been a short “Irrelevant, moving on,” Greta replied intelligently just as quickly.

The drive home was probably the most interesting part of the night for me. The weather was pretty crummy, so a two hour drive to Chicago took three, and I think I counted 5 cars in ditches along I-65. Hooray for snow! But talking with Greta for three hours was a special pleasure – I should have been taping that, since it was effectively the Extended Edition of her lecture (featuring Jen McCreight). We discussed everything from our annoyance of feminists who reject science, to why she totally needs to get a Twitter account, to why the hell there are so many billboards for adult stores and strip clubs in conservative Indiana (backlash? truckers? Illinois laws? Anyone have a better hypothesis?)

I’ve heard nothing but happy reviews from other Purdue students – thank you so much for coming, Greta!
Secretary, Treasurer, Greta, and President. Who says there aren’t any female atheists?!

*Yes, I know the audio has some annoying background hum. If anyone out there is savvy with audio editing, let me know and I can send you the mp3 file.