Iowa on religious liberty and schools

The blog Religion Clause reports on the new Iowa School District policy on religious liberty:
Teachers shall prepare and teach lessons throughout the year and throughout the curriculum that:

Approach religion as academic, not devotional

Strive for student awareness of religions, not acceptance of religions

Study about religion, but do not practice religion in the classroom

Expose students to diversity of religious views, not impose any particular view

Educate about a variety of religions, not promote or denigrate religion

Inform students about various beliefs, not conform students to any particular belief

Demonstrate the impact of economic, social, political and cultural effects of religion throughout history

Are age appropriate

More here

Is there a religious right to ignorance?

Seems in Quebec, they have a new law to teach comparative religion in the classroom. Predictably, Christianist loons protested. From Canada's National Post:

Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children.

"In light of all the evidence presented, the court does not see how the ... course limits the plaintiff's freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them," Judge Dubois wrote.....

As of last year, parents no longer had the right to choose between courses in Catholic, Protestant or moral instruction. The new curriculum covers a broad range of world religions, with particular emphasis on Quebec's religious heritage -- Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and aboriginal spirituality. It is taught from Grade 1 through Grade 11.

The course's scope was too broad for the parents in the Drummondville case, who cannot be named because their two minor children are involved. During the trial, the children's mother testified that she did not see why her 7-year-old son needs to learn about Islam when he is still forming his own Catholic spirituality. "It's very confusing," she said.....

Sébastien Lebel-Grenier, a law professor at Université de Sherbrooke, said he is not surprised that the new course survived a challenge under the Charter of Rights.

"What parents were demanding was the right to ignorance, the right to protect their children from being exposed to the existence of other religions," he said. "This right to ignorance is certainly not protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of religion does not protect the right not to know what is going on in our universe."

Gay Marriage is a defense of marriage act!

Rachel Maddow tells you why:

Marriage equality: Ireland

Support MarriagEquality's campaign for same-sex marriage in Ireland.

Demographics: who are these Episcopalians?

A while back a question came up asking how religious denomination correlates with education. The data exist, thanks to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public LIfe. I downloaded the data and processed it for you.

Due to how the data are collected, the Episcopalians are generally lumped with "Mainline Protestant" on the big comparisons and broken out separately only on sub documents that focus on Protestants. But I pulled the Episcopal data and added them to the Big Table for your interest. I named these a little differently from the Pew data: "Unaffiliated" means people of faith without traditional affiliation; "None" means no religion/atheist/agnostic, etc.

The first graph looks at levels of education, from no school, to high school, some college, college degree, or post-graduate work. The chart is sorted in descending order from those with most education (College + postgrad combined) to those with least. As you can see, the highest levels of education are non-Christian faiths (Hindu and Jewish), but the 'piskies are pretty high. More conservative Christian denominations such as the Roman Catholics or Evangelicals are much further down the chart, indicating that a larger fraction of those belonging to this group have lower levels of education.
The second chart takes the same groups and asks whether they have a positive or negative view of gay people. Although there is some expected agreement, this chart does not completely correlate with the education chart; for example, Hindus are much less favorable to gay people, although very highly educated. The unaffiliated group is most gay-positive, and the Roman Catholics are right up there with the Episcopalians. Perhaps someone should tell the RC Bishops, who are busy attacking gay marriage around the country, that they've lost the people

Still, a recent study from Florida notes that more educated people are more favorable to gay rights.

The study found education was about five times as important as race in determining whether a county's residents favored the ban. .....
"There's a lot of evidence showing increased education leads to greater tolerance," Smith said.

I don't think any of us are surprised with that. But it is interesting how different the denominations are, don't you think?

Health care reform and family values

The US pays more per capita than any other developed nation for health care. For that vast sum of money, we do not cover all our citizens. Our outcomes are worse (infant mortality, for example, is higher in the USA than in Cuba). And medical bills, even for insured people, can be catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy. In fact, 62% of bankruptcies come from health care bills, most of which are people who have insurance. If you think it couldn't happen to you, you're wrong. Nearly all of us would be wiped out, even with what we think are solid insurance plans, by a significant and expensive illness.

Marriage has a significant benefit in insurance costs. Most employer plans will allow the employee to cover his/her spouse and children, for an extra fee. And this is part of being married. Unless you are gay, naturally. If my wife were covered on my employer's health plan, my employer would have no problem. But the IRS would look at the value of that coverage, and consider it taxable income. That would be a sizeable boost in my income and therefore taxes that a straight married couple wouldn't pay, leading to a significant financial disincentive.

Of course, that wouldn't stop creditors from bankrupting us for medical bills. Unlike the government, THEY have no problem seeing us as married. Which leads to stories like this one about a woman whose husband was diagnosed with dementia:

The disease is degenerative, and he will become steadily less able to care for himself. At some point, as his medical needs multiply, he will probably need to be institutionalized.

The hospital arranged a conference call with a social worker, who outlined how the dementia and its financial toll on the family would progress, and then added, out of the blue: "Maybe you should divorce."

"I was blown away," M. told me. But, she said, the hospital staff members explained that they had seen it all before, many times. If M.'s husband required long-term care, the costs would be catastrophic even for a middle-class family with savings.

Eventually, after the expenses whittled away their combined assets, her husband could go on Medicaid -- but by then their children's nest egg would be gone, along with her 401(k) plan. She would face a bleak retirement with neither her husband nor her savings.

Kristof reports that the laws are written to allow seizure of assets up to 5 years post-divorce.

So let's get this straight, so to speak: "family values" in this country not only deny gay families protection including access to insurance, but specifically require straight couples divorce to avoid bankruptcy and ruin of the family and impovershment of the children.

THESE are the "family values" of the Republicans: a big F*** you to families whether straight or gay. Divorce, or go bankrupt. THis is the "status quo" and the "sacredness of marriage" that Republicans support.

There is NO justification for any of this. NO justification to deny gay families legal rights, and NO justification to preserve the status quo of a system that destroys families in financial ruin.

The immorality of this system is truly breathtaking. These people have the audacity to claim morality and Judeo-Christian values. But who would Jesus bankrupt?