Category: secularissm

New Bavarian law mandates crosses in all state offices

April 26, 2018 • 2:45 pm

Bavaria is of course a pretty Catholic area of Germany, but I’m not sure how many Bavarians really believe in God (Bavarians out there should weigh in). Nevertheless, this new law, described in the BBC article below (click on screenshot) seems to violate all canons of secularity.

An excerpt (my emphasis):

The German state of Bavaria has ordered Christian crosses to be placed at the entrances to its public buildings.

Premier Markus Söder said crosses should not be seen as religious symbols but as a “clear avowal of our Bavarian identity and Christian values”.

But opponents said the ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) was trying to score points ahead of October’s election amid fears of a rise of the far right.

Crosses are compulsory in public school classrooms and courtrooms.

The decree, which comes into effect on 1 June, will not affect municipal and federal government buildings in the predominantly Roman Catholic southern state.

Reader Florian tells me that the school cross bit is incorrect, noting that “In 1995 the German Supreme Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that the Bavarian law mandating crosses in schools was against the Constitution, in particular article 4, which grants freedom of religion. The Bavarian state still stipulates that crosses should be there, but they have to be taken down when people sue.” Clearly Bavaria needs a Freedom from Religion foundation to file these lawsuits! Why should there have to be a lawsuit to remove each separate cross?

As for Söder’s statement that “crosses should not be seen as religious symbols but as a ‘clear avowal of our Bavarian identity and Christian values'”, that’s pure hogwash (or Schweinseife, as I’d say auf Deutsch). How can they be an avowal of Christian values and at the same time not a “religious symbol”? They certainly are symbols—symbols of “Christian values”.

Söder is talking out of both sides of his mouth. It’s even more ridiculous in light of his statement (in German) that “The cross is a fundamental symbol of our Bavarian identity and way of life. He’s not fooling anyone, but clearly pandering to the religious right. This kind of nonsense is also going on in Turkey and India: increasing religiosity of a right-wing government. And then of course there’s the U.S. . . .

 

This part, however, confuses me:

The decree, which comes into effect on 1 June, will not affect municipal and federal government buildings in the predominantly Roman Catholic southern state.

What is the difference between a public building and a “municipal and federal government building”? The BBC doesn’t explain.

At any rate, these are rear-guard efforts in a West that’s losing its religion. I hope every Bavarian town sues to get the crosses out of the schools, and that this foolish law is overturned.

h/t: Florian

FFRF celebrates 40th anniversary with a full-page ad in the NYT

April 5, 2018 • 2:30 pm

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its founding by putting a full-page ad in today’s New York Times commemorating “40 years of activism.” Ceiling Cat bless the FFRF, my favorite secular/atheist organization, and if you want to join for a year (and receive the FFRF’s great monthly newspaper), it’s only $40. There are various other options for joining, including a life membership for $1000 (I’d suggest you be no older than 50 for that!). Join here. And tell them that Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) sent you!

The definitive refutation of those who say atheists are bigoted and alt-right

April 5, 2018 • 1:00 pm

I wish I’d known of this article when I wrote my critique of faitheist Chris Stedman’s VICE article calling out the atheist “movement” for converging with the alt-right. As I noted at the time, Stedman was long on accusation, anecdote, and generality, and notably short on actual data. Are atheists really as bigoted, misogynistic, and homophobic as he claimed? And how do they compare to the population in general, which, in the U.S., is largely religious?

Well, I’ve already written quite a bit on how countries as a whole show a negative correlation between religiosity and well-being: the most atheistic countries, like those of northern Europe, tend to be those that score the highest on various measures of social welfare. They also tend to be countries whose inhabitants are happier. The more religious a country is, the less likely its inhabitants are to be doing well, and the unhappier they are. The U.S. is not that much of an outlier, for it’s a religious country and, compared to places like Sweden, Iceland, and Switzerland, scores poorly on “social success.” I’ve given my own theories about this correlation, views shared by some sociologists, and won’t go into that here.

But what about within countries—in particular the U.S.? Are atheists and agnostics really likely to be more odious than believers? Well, there are plenty of data on the issue, and the answer is a pretty firm “no”, at least according to sociologist Phil Zuckerman, the only professor of secular studies in America. (He’s at Pitzer College in California.)  In 2009, Zuckerman published a piece in Sociology Compass (reference below; free access) that examines the psychological and behavioral traits of atheists and agnostics versus religionists. It’s worth reading, and people like Stedman should have read it before writing “J’Accuse” pieces against atheism.

I’ll concentrate just on the variation among Americans rather than among countries, since the claim of Stedman and other atheist-dissers applies to people within my country.

Zuckerman begins by estimating the proportion of atheists in different countries. Estimates of nonbelievers vary according to how you define “atheist”, “secularist”, “agnostic,” and so on (Zuckerman considers this), but combining various statistics, he says that, at the time of writing, “we can estimate that somewhere between 10 million and 47 million adult Americans are atheist, agnostic, or secular.” That would have been, given the population of 307 million in 2009, between 3% and 15% of all Americans. (I usually use an estimate of 10% for “nonbelievers”, though of course some of these are “spiritual” or “pantheists”.)

Here are the salient facts; quotes are from Zuckerman’s piece and emphases are mine.

  • As we know, men are more likely to be nonbelievers than women, and atheists tend to be younger than believers.
  • Atheists tend to be more highly educated than the average American
  • “Secular people score markedly higher on tests of verbal ability and verbal sophistication whe compared to religious people” and that goes for “indicators of scientific proficiency” as well
  • Professors at American universities are “far more likely to be atheists than the general American population”
  • “. . . when we actually compare the values and beliefs of atheists and secular people to those of religious people, the former are markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian”
  • Atheists are much more likely to register as Independents and Democrats than religious people.  Atheists are also “the most politically tolerant” group compared to various religious groups, supporting “the extension of civil liberties to dissident groups.”
  • “Recent studies show that secular individuals are much more supportive of gender equality than religious people, less likely to endorse conservatively traditional views concerning women’s roles, and when compared with various religious denominations, ‘Nones’ possess the most egalitarian outlook of all concerning women’s rights.”
  • On many contemporary social issues, atheists and secularists take a more liberal and progressive stand than do religionists: these include protecting the environment, supporting gay right and gay marriage, the death penalty, treatment of prisoners, use of torture, and assisted suicide.

Now not all is peaches and cream in Non-Believer Land. As Zuckerman notes, he’s made every effort to find the relevant studies, regardless of whether they show atheists in a good light. So where we fail compared to religionists are in donations of individuals to charity (though I suspect that many of this is to religious charities), our generally less optimistic attitudes than those held by religious people, and our tendency to have more extra-marital affairs. But I’ll take a little extra adultery if it goes with the panoply of liberal social attitudes mentioned above.

Here’s Zuckerman’s conclusion:

This essay began with a well-known Biblical quote stating that atheists are simply no good. Do the findings of contemporary social science support this Biblical assertion? The clear answer is no. Atheism and secularity have many positive correlates, such as higher levels of education and verbal ability, lower levels of prejudice, ethnocentrism, racism, and homophobia, greater support for women’s equality, child-rearing that promotes independent thinking and an absence of corporal punishment, etc. And at the societal level, with the important exception of suicide, states and nations with a higher proportion of secular people fare markedly better than those with a higher proportion of religious people.

So while religious people excel in a few areas, in the ones highlighted by Stedman—that is, those including bigotry, social justice, and liberalism—atheists are more progressive and less bigoted than believers, and since the proportion of atheists is so low, you can substitute “Americans as a whole” for “believers”.

In other words, Chris Stedman is dead wrong, at least according to the statistics, which have been compiled regardless of anybody’s biases. So I guess I’ll just put this post up and tweet it to Stedman, seeing if he’ll bow to the data. Granted, it’s nine years old, but I strongly doubt that atheists have become more conservative since 2009. And, at any rate, Stedman HAS no statistics. I suppose he could kvetch, “Wait! I just meant the atheist LEADERS, not atheists in general”, but that’s not how his article reads.

h/t: Heather Hastie, for pointing me to Zuckerman’s article

______

Zuckerman, P. 2009.  Atheism, secularity, and well-being: How the findings of social science counter negative stereotypes and assumptions.  Sociology Compass 3:949-971.

2018 data: Across countries, the happiest ones are the least religious

March 22, 2018 • 1:15 pm

The other day I showed some data from the World Happiness Index, and guessed that, as in 2016, the 2018 data would show a significant negative correlation between the religiosity of a country and its happiness index: that the more religious the country, on average the less happy its inhabitants.

Now two readers have plotted the 2018 data and indeed saw such a correlation, which is expected given that the data wouldn’t change much in two years. First, here’s Greg Mayer’s analysis (see the link for the countries involved); his comments are indented:

My visit to the Freedom From Religion Foundation

March 15, 2018 • 9:00 am

I’ve long been a supporter of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), whose headquarters are in Madison, Wisconsin. I’d never visited that town before, so when they invited me up to do some events, I jumped at the chance, taking the three-hour Amtrak train from Chicago to nearby Columbus, Wisconsin.  Plus I wanted to visit their new headquarters, which involved a remodeling of and addition to their earlier, cramped building. It’s located just a stone’s throw from the Wisconsin State Capitol Building, which you can see in this photo taken from the South:

The East Entrance of Freethought Hall. It’s definitely a Frank Lloyd Wright look.

The north entrance (the main entry to the building). Security is tight here; you have to be buzzed in and there are cameras everywhere. The reason is obvious.  Note the illuminated sign: “In students we trust”. The message changes every five minutes.

One had me on it, in honor of my visit:

There are four floors. This is the legal wing where the real business is done: filing lawsuits, writing letters to Constitution violators and so on. The FFRF has two big cases underway: the exemption for ministers’ housing allowance (violation of the First Amendment), and the right of Dan Barker to give a secular prayer in the House of Representatives (it was denied; that’s also a First-Amendment violation since it privileges religion).

I wasn’t sure what the turkey tail represented on the legal wing wall. I wrote FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel (see below) for clarification, who explained:

That is an excellent question. Diane Uhl, the generous donor who gave her name to the legal wing, wanted us attorneys to keep kicking all those theocratic turkeys’ butts. She brought the framed feathers as both congratulations and a motivational reminder, or, as she put it “an artistic, fun mission statement: work your tail off.”

A picture of Clarence Darrow, atheist and fierce defender of civil rights, adorns the legal wing.

If you’ve been to the FFRF conventions, you know that they auction off “clean money”: US currency printed before 1957, when the words “In God We Trust” were added under President Eisenhower. Here’s a framed display of clean money in the hall:

This is the only remnant of the house that was later turned into FFRF headquarters. It was saved and mounted on the wall at the request of Annie Laurie:

A portrait of Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), the “Great Agnostic”, a wonderful orator and exponent of “freethinking” (atheism) in the 19th century. Right now I’m reading his biography by Susan Jacoby.

This is a Darwin Wedgewood plate (Darwin was of course married to his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood of the pottery factory), carefully brought back from England by Annie Laurie.

I love the atheist signs that hang over every restroom (mixed gender, of course). Katherine Hepburn: “I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.”

Here’s another. Emily Dickinson:

“Faith is a fine invention for gentlemen who see—
But microscopes are prudent in an emergency!”

The television and radio studios:

Inside the video studio where we recorded the “Ask an Atheist” Facebook stream (next post) and the “Freethought Matters” video.

The control room:

A selfie in the bathroom, which, like all spaces in the building, has various freethought items. This is a thank you from school kids to Dan for giving a talk:

Also in the bathroom: all of Dan’s nametags from various conventions and meetings:

One of the many whimsical freethought items that pop up here and there in the building:

The wonderful library, full of freethought and science books. There’s a full-sized latex statue of Darwin in the library. I’m told that once, when the building door was found to be open, the police came and went through the building. Seeing this statue in the dark (and it looks very realistic), they ordered it to put its hands up. Darwin didn’t comply, and they almost shot him! It would have been amazing to have Darwin with a bullet hole in him!

Who could resist having their photo taken with Chuck D? He was tall for a Victorian man: about 5′ 10″, I think. Certainly taller than I.

The face; it’s very well done and very realistic.

There’s a book on how the effigy was made (I didn’t remember the details), but it was built up bit by bit. This is what Darwin looked like before they added his beard.  And that’s what he would have looked like as an old man had they shaved his beard. Who does he look like to you? He reminds me a bit of Gollum.

Darwin’s hands:

Andrew Seidel, one of the FFRF’s constitutional attorneys, and one I’ve worked with in the past. Notice the “Don’t give up the ship” banner, appropriate for lawyers used to losing their First Amendment cases. But I’m told the FFRF wins 2/3 of the cases it brings to court. Their legal accomplishments are one reason why I support them so strongly.

Dan in his office. Like me, he collects toys, artifacts, puzzles, and stuff, so his office is full of whimsy. (Dan told me that his job at the FFRF was “to provide levity”.)

Although he gave up the ministry and became an atheist, Dan still retains his valid certificate of ordination, which he displays here. It allows him to still perform marriages, which he often does.

Here’s a small cupola in the building, a place where Dan often performs marriage ceremonies:

Annie Laurie busy preparing for the 40th anniversary convention of the FFRF, to be held this fall in San Francisco.

Dan gets some makeup before the afternoon taping of the “Freethought Matters” t.v. show (broadcast locally on Saturdays). It will also be up on YouTube, as will the “Ask an Atheist” video we also made yesterday.

Dan and Annie Laurie just before we taped:

This is the auditorium where Dan and I had our 1.25-hour conversation and Q&A last evening. I think it went well. Dan is great at running conversations, and we have good rapport. Afterwards we signed our books, which you can see on the table to the right. Before the discussion, Dan played the piano, a gift to the FFRF (Dan used to write and play hymns; now he does jazz and popular songs).

And another message flashed on the building.

If you’d like to donate to this worthy organization—in my view, the best of all secular and humanist groups—go here. For only $40 a year (tax deductible), you get a membership and a spiffy monthly newspaper full of cool items.

NYT: Quebec’s new ban on the face veil is Islamophobic

November 9, 2017 • 10:15 am

The New York Times continues its move toward the Regressive Left (really, Lindy West as a columnist?) with the op-ed below (click to go to the piece). The author, Martin Patriquin, is a journalist from Montreal who writes for iPolitics.

The story is that in mid-October Quebec passed a law banning face coverings (not hijabs or niqabs, but any covering of the face itself, which would also include face-obscuring scarves, sunglasses, or anti-disease masks) for those receiving public services or working in government jobs. Face coverings are not banned in most other circumstances, but of course nearly all those affected by the law will be face-veiling Muslim women, which the article at the top estimates to be about 100 women in a province of about eight million Quebecers. The link in the first sentence of this paragraph leads you to this:

The Quebec provincial legislature on Wednesday barred people who are wearing face coverings from receiving public services or working in government jobs, a move that opponents criticized as unfairly singling out Muslims.

The law will prohibit public workers like doctors and teachers from covering their faces at work, and will effectively bar Muslim women who wear face veils from using public transportation or obtaining public health care services, although it will be possible to apply for exemptions.

Proponents said the legislation would ensure state religious neutrality, and Quebec’s minister of justice, Stéphanie Vallée, who sponsored the bill, said it would foster social cohesion.

But Canadian Muslim groups have long complained that the legislation, which languished for years before it was passed, 66 to 51, on Wednesday, would penalize Muslims, particularly in a province where few women wear face coverings.

But this bit is weird (from top article):

Quebec’s justice minister, Stéphanie Vallée, recently confirmed that the ban would include not only Muslim veils but accessories like sunglasses as well. This is ripe for satire similar to that inflicted on Quebec’s infamous language police, which must ensure that English on signs is less prominent than the French. It will be up to bus drivers to not only ferry passengers, but to measure the size and tint of their spectacles.

Now I don’t approve of the no-sunglasses on public transportation law, which doesn’t comport with any good reason I can see for the other bans, but in general the law seems reasonable, especially given Quebec’s long history, documented in the article, of laïcité: the kind of public secularism practiced in France. (France banned all public wearing of face veils in 2010.) But truly, if they really don’t allow women to cover their faces with sunglasses in government jobs, then they also must prohibit women from wearing sunglasses on public transportation!).

Patriquin, however, sees Islamophobia in this practice.

Canada is perhaps best known for its cheery multiculturalism and its equally cheery prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Yet Quebec, the province where Mr. Trudeau spent much of his life, last month put a ban on the face coverings worn by a handful of Muslim women, prompting a fractious debate over the place of non-Christian religions in Canada’s only French-speaking province.

The law says that anyone giving or receiving a public service must do so without a covered face for “security or identification reasons.” It doesn’t ban head scarves. It doesn’t include the words “niqab” or “burqa,” Muslim headdresses that cover all or part of the face. And public officials have gone to great lengths to argue that the vague and poorly written law is not anti-Muslim.

Still, it’s hard to escape the law’s anti-Muslim intent: Few people other than some Muslim women cover their faces. It will marginalize Muslims, especially women, who will feel scrutinized, if not persecuted, even if they wear only a head scarf.

The law does have roots in Quebec’s history and culture. Quebecers have chronic discomfort with public displays of religion. Many people in the province have bleak memories of the era before the secular strides of the Quiet Revolution in 1960 when the Roman Catholic Church dominated public life.

Perhaps some people who voted for this law did indeed have “anti-Muslim intent,” but in fact there are good secular reason—reasons having nothing to do with Islam—to show your face in the situations covered under the law. Imagine being taught by somebody whose face you couldn’t see, or be treated by a doctor or meeting a government official whose face is obscured! Yes, there may be few Muslim women who cover their faces, but surely there will be more, and at any rate what matters here is the principle of seeing your fellow citizens face to face in important situations, not the number of people affected. And no, I don’t want to be taught by someone wearing sunglasses that cover their face, so any face-covering in this kind of non-public situation seems odious.

I have to say that I don’t object to this law. Rather, I favor it, and for the same reason Christopher Hitchens favored the anti-veiling law of France passed seven years ago. Writing in Slate in 2010, Hitchens emphasized that the secular value of seeing someone’s face in certain situations overrides whatever religious arguments there are for veiling:

Ah, but the particular and special demand to consider the veil and the burqa as an exemption applies only to women. And it also applies only to religious practice (and, unless we foolishly pretend otherwise, only to one religious practice). This at once tells you all you need to know: Society is being asked to abandon an immemorial tradition of equality and openness in order to gratify one faith, one faith that has a very questionable record in respect of females.

. . . Not that it would matter in the least if the Quran said otherwise. Religion is the worst possible excuse for any exception to the common law. Mormons may not have polygamous marriage, female circumcision is a federal crime in this country, and in some states Christian Scientists face prosecution if they neglect their children by denying them medical care. Do we dare lecture the French for declaring simply that all citizens and residents, whatever their confessional allegiance, must be able to recognize one another in the clearest sense of that universal term?

So it’s really quite simple. My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise. The law must be decisively on the side of transparency. The French are striking a blow not just for liberty and equality and fraternity, but for sorority too.

I dislike talk of “rights”, and of “right X trumps right Y”, as assertions of “rights” are not arguments. But what I believe Hitchens is talking about here are societal values: the utilitarian value in society of mandating seeing someone’s face in certain situation versus that of allowing religious people to dress in the way their religion dictates.

How I miss that man! At any rate, Patriquin apparently sees no public, secular value in seeing one’s face in these situations, and simply calls the bill anti-Muslim—a violation of the freedom of religion. Would he mind if his kids were taught by a teacher whose head was completely covered? Or that people with covered faces could walk into banks? Or if someone with a sack over their head testified in court? He argues this:

Religious face coverings are divisive, even among Muslims. Yet the freedom to practice one’s religion is enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The National Council of Canadian Muslims, along with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and a Quebec Muslim who wears a veil, recently filed a legal challenge of the law, calling it a collection of “blatant and unjustified violations of freedom of religion.”

Quebec’s government has not only opened itself up to legal challenges, it has also put the province in the dubious company of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, where the governments also dictate what a woman can or cannot wear.

Sorry, but there is no comparison here. Muslims are allowed to cover their faces under the new law, except in situations where it violates the “equality and openness” principle underscored by Hitchens. (I still object to the public transportation thing.) In Iran and Saudi Arabia, all women have to veil, and for religious rather than secular reasons. Further, the law in Quebec applies to both sexes, not just to women, and so is not nearly as gender-oppressive as what Saudi Arabia and Iran do. As Hitchens points out in his piece, the issue of whether Muslim “choose” to wear the veil is up for grabs, and my own view is that this kind of “choice” very often reflects familial and social pressure that begins at an early age.

The FFRF wins a big one: federal court rules that ministers’ tax-free housing allowances violate the Constitution

October 12, 2017 • 9:00 am

You may know that American ministers have some tax advantages under the law: they often get a housing allowance from their church, and that allowance, in contrast to non-ministers who get such perks, is free from taxes.  Here’s the stipulation from the Internal Revenue Service code:

A licensed, commissioned, or ordained minister may be able to exclude from income the fair rental value of a home (a parsonage) or a housing allowance provided as compensation for ministerial services performed as an employee. A minister who is furnished a parsonage may exclude from income the fair rental value of the parsonage, including utilities. However, the amount excluded can’t be more than reasonable compensation for the minister’s services.

A minister who receives a housing allowance may exclude the allowance from gross income to the extent it’s used to pay expenses in providing a home. Generally, those expenses include rent, mortgage interest, utilities, repairs, and other expenses directly relating to providing a home. The amount excluded can’t be more than the reasonable compensation for the minister’s services.

This exemption—the tax-free housing allowance can also be used by ministers for stuff like home repairs, cable television fees, towels, bedding home decor, and computers—costs the government an estimated $700 million per year in taxes, and is used widely. As Christianity Today reports (and they’re pissed off!):

CT previously examined whether pastors’ homes are really that different from everyone else’s. According to the 2018 Compensation Handbook for Church Staff, 81 percent of fulltime senior pastors receive a housing allowance, while 11 percent receive a parsonage allowance. For fulltime solo pastors, 67 percent receive a housing allowance, while 27 percent receive a parsonage allowance; among part-time solo pastors, 59 percent receive a housing allowance, while 10 percent receive a parsonage allowance.

This is a blatantly unconstitutional provision because it gives religious people a tax advantage not shared by nonbelievers. In other words, it privileges religion—a violation of the First Amendment.

On that basis, in 2013 the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) sued the government in the Federal District Court in Wisconsin—and won! (You can see the court’s ruling here.) But the government appealed, and the appeals court overruled the lower court on the grounds that the plaintiffs—the FFRF and its co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker—didn’t have “standing” to sue. In other words, they couldn’t prove they’d been injured by the policy, which is necessary to bring a lawsuit.

But the FFRF is tenacious. As GOP USA notes,

The foundation then had two employees who got housing allowances try to claim the exemption on their tax forms, and when the IRS denied them, the foundation re-filed the lawsuit.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said they followed exactly what the 7th Circuit said they would need to do to have standing in order to bring the lawsuit.

“I think they are going to have a hard time saying we don’t have standing,” she said. “They’re going to have to look at the merits.”

 The Alexandria News explains more:

In November 2014, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out that victory—not on the merits but on the question of standing—arguing that [FFRF Co-Presidents] Barker and Gaylor had not yet sought a refund of their housing allowance from the IRS. Accordingly, they sought them and when denied, went back to court.

FFRF, a national state/church watchdog based in Madison, Wisconsin, renewed its historic challenge of the housing allowance in April 2016. Sued are Steve Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and John Koskinen, IRS Commissioner. The case also had religious intervenors as defendants.

Plaintiffs are FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Ian Gaylor, representing the estate of President Emerita Anne Nicol Gaylor, whose retirement was paid in part as a housing allowance.

The new ruling, by the same judge in the same Wisconsin court, was issued on October 6, and it’s another victory for the FFRF. Click on the screenshot below to see the ruling:


The take-home message:

Here are some quotes from Judge Barbara Crabb’s ruling as reported by the News:

“Although defendants try to characterize § 107(2) as an effort by Congress to treat ministers fairly and avoid religious entanglement, the plain language of the statute, its legislative history and its operation in practice all demonstrate a preference for ministers over secular employees,” writes Crabb, for the Western District of Wisconsin.

“As I noted in the earlier lawsuit,” Crabb writes, “there is no reasonable interpretation of the statute under which the phrase minister of the gospel could be construed to include employees of an organization whose purpose is to keep religion out of the public square.”

Any reasonable observer would conclude that the purpose and effect of the statute is to provide financial assistance to one group of religious employees without any consideration to the secular employees who are similarly situated to ministers, Crabb noted. “Under current law, that type of provision violates the establishment clause,” she adds.

“In reaching this conclusion, I do not mean to imply that any particular minister is undeserving of the exemption or does not have a financial need for one. The important point is that many equally deserving secular employees (as well as other kinds of religious employees) could benefit from the exemption as well, but they must satisfy much more demanding requirements despite the lack of justification for the difference in treatment.”

Crabb also discusses financial benefits to even wealthy ministers: “”Thus, an evangelist with a multimillion dollar home is entitled under § 107(2) to deduct the entire rental value of that home, even if it is not used for church purposes. (“Joel Osteen lives in a $10.5 million home and is entitled to exclude the fair rental value of that home so long as he spends that money on the home and his church allocates that amount to housing.”).”

You can also find this on page 4 of the ruling:

Ministers receive a unique benefit under § 107(2); it is not, as defendants suggest, part of a larger effort by Congress to provide assistance to employees with special housing needs. A desire to alleviate financial hardship on taxpayers is a legitimate purpose, but it is not a secular purpose when Congress eliminates the burden for a group made up of solely religious employees but maintains it for nearly everyone else.

Judge Crabb suggests some fixes for the law, but none of those involve favoring religion:

As I have discussed throughout this opinion, Congress could have enacted a number of alternative exemptions without running afoul of the First Amendment. For example, Congress could have accomplished a similar goal by allowing any of the following groups to exclude housing expenses from their gross income: (1) all taxpayers; (2) taxpayers with incomes less than a specified amount; (3) taxpayers who live in rental housing provided by 43 Case: 3:16-cv-00215-bbc Document #: 87 Filed: 10/06/17 Page 43 of 47 the employer; (4) taxpayers whose employers impose housing-related requirements on them, such as living near the workplace, being on call or using the home for work-related purposes; or (5) taxpayers who work for nonprofit organizations, including churches. Or some of these categories could be combined.

Make no mistake about it: this is a big victory, and churches are complaining loudly. Cry me a river! Some churches are whining that they may have to close without such advantages, but that’s too damn bad: they are entitled to no such tax privileges under U.S. law. If they can’t keep their enterprise going without taking advantage of illegal provisions, they shouldn’t be open.

The government will of course appeal, but now that the plaintiffs have standing, I can’t see on what grounds they could lose. This is clearly favoritism of religion. But of course the Supreme Court, where this might ultimately land, is deeply conservative, and might suss out some wonky rationale. If it does, that will be a serious erosion of the Constitution they’re supposed to follow.

Congrats to Annie Laurie, Dan, and the FFRF for this victory.

h/t: Woody