Colorado news site runs FFRF op-ed on Supreme Court case
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
A leading Colorado news site has published a Freedom From Religion Foundation op-ed that spotlights the attempt of religious schools in the state to discriminate while receiving tax money.
“[In 2020,] the Legislature passed a law to implement the program, including basic requirements such as a minimum number of instructional hours, maximum educator-to-child ratios, qualification standards for teachers and other best practices,” Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude writes for the Colorado Newsline. “The Statehouse also required preschool providers to give children an ‘equal opportunity to enroll and receive preschool services regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability’ of both the child and their family. This seems perfectly in line with a universal program, as universal typically means all — without exception.”
Unfortunately, as Charlotte writes, a number of religious preschools are fighting for admission to the program while being unwilling to offer the very equal opportunities the state clearly highlights, leading to a current U.S. Supreme Court case:
However, some religious preschools, including St. Mary’s Catholic Parish, refused to agree to this nondiscrimination requirement and sued Colorado to be let into the program anyway, arguing that Colorado was discriminating against their religious beliefs by requiring them to admit LGBTQ+ children or children with LGBTQ+ families to get funding. Apparently, to them, “universal” should allow exceptions.
If it seems backward to suggest that states can’t condition funds on reasonable requirements, that’s because it is. In fact, most government-funded programs include conditions that must be met before funding is available. Nondiscrimination requirements have been mandated to receive funding for decades. For example, in 1981, the Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant was amended to require funded programs to comply with the Age Discrimination Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act’s nondiscrimination requirements. Even school voucher programs typically require participating private schools to comply with nondiscrimination requirements.
Even more backward is the suggestion that states must fund private entities even when those entities openly state their intention to discriminate, just because the discrimination is based on a religious belief. Governments cannot be in the business of funding discrimination. To require Colorado taxpayers to fund preschools that openly intend to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people because of a religious belief opens the door to state funding for other types of discrimination based on claimed religious beliefs. Any attempt at defining what counts as a religious belief would require deciding that some beliefs don’t count as religious. Preventing the government from making that choice is exactly what the First Amendment was intended to do.
The piece concludes by urging the Supreme Court to stand behind Colorado’s guidelines and keep the program’s benefits from being abused by unwelcoming religious schools.
“If schools want government benefits, they have to play by the government’s rules,” the op-ed states. “Colorado says universal means all preschoolers. Colorado taxpayers voted to fund every preschooler. The Supreme Court must not reverse decades of law that has established where the line between religious liberty and illegal discrimination stands.”
You can read the full op-ed here.
This column is part of FFRF’s initiative to engage with pertinent issues and spread the messages of secularism and freethought to a broader audience.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,300 members and two chapters in Colorado, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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Saluting ‘Atheists in Foxholes’ on Veterans Day
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
It’s never been more important than on this Veterans Day to acknowledge nonreligious and non-Christian veterans — especially given the current Pentagon leadership’s Christian nationalist actions.
FFRF has erected a monument to the proverbial “atheists in foxholes” at its office building in Madison, Wis., thus making such an acknowledgment.
At a time when half of active military members are either atheist or agnostic (18 percent) or have no religious affiliation (32 percent), unpatriotic Pentagon moves to infuse and enforce conservative Christianity are alarmingly increasing. These theocratic diktats include:
- Erasing atheism. The Pentagon has eliminated atheism and numerous minority religious and nonreligious identities from its official religious affiliation classifications.
- Reshaping the military chaplaincy around Christianity. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called for sweeping changes to the Chaplain Corps, disparaged secular humanism and emphasized a more explicitly religious approach to military spiritual readiness.
- Creating a sweeping new Office of Religious Affairs with authority to assess a service member’s supposed “spiritual fitness.”
- Using official military communications to promote Christianity. Pentagon messaging has increasingly featured biblical verses, Christian imagery and religious declarations, including Hegseth’s references to a “heavenly king,” “putting on the full armor of God” and assertions that “the real battle is spiritual.”
- Institutionalizing sectarian prayer. Hegseth has inaugurated monthly evangelical prayer services at the Pentagon during the workday. At the first service in May 2025, he declared that the nation needed to be “on bended knee, recognizing the providence of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
CNN recently reported that Ryan Higgins, Hegseth’s senior adviser on religious matters, has spent years openly rejecting the separation of church and state, promoting conspiracy theories and spreading racist and homophobic rhetoric.
“Our service members swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not Christianity,” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker.
This Veterans Day holds particular significance for FFRF following the death of World War II veteran Joseph Cunningham, a longtime FFRF member and former member of its board, who died Oct. 30 at age 100. Cunningham stands in the photograph that accompanies this statement beside FFRF’s monument honoring “Atheists in Foxholes” at its national headquarters in Madison, Wis.
FFRF’s unique monument to “atheists in foxholes” is made of the same granite as Mount Rushmore. It serves as a testament to the U.S. military’s diversity in the face of Hegseth’s theocratic propaganda. It resides in FFRF’s Rose Zerwick Memorial Courtyard and Patio outside Freethought Hall, FFRF’s bustling office building in downtown Madison. Veterans, their families and active-duty freethinkers are cordially invited to visit and contemplate FFRF’s “Atheists in Foxholes” monument, which honors freethinking veterans and their service.
The words, penned by FFRF principal founder Anne Nicol Gaylor, read:
In Memory of
Atheists in Foxholes
And the countless freethinkers who have served this country with honor and distinction.
Presented by the Freedom From Religion Foundation with hope that in the future humankind may learn to avoid all war.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With about 40,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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FFRF calls on Iowa city to end prayers after second satanic invocation controversy
Tags:Freedom From Religion Foundation, Politics, Religion
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is again urging an Iowa city council to end a divisive practice after a satanic invocation was disrupted for the second consecutive month.
Former City Council Member Matt Dalbey, a member of the Satanic Temple of Iowa, delivered an invocation at the Nov. 3 City Council meeting emphasizing religious liberty, freedom of expression, individual dignity and respect for differing beliefs. But when Dalbey concluded with “Hail Satan,” Jeremy Herrell began loudly reciting the Lord’s Prayer in an apparent attempt to drown him out. Herrell was eventually escorted from the chambers by police. The incident came just one month after a Christian pastor interrupted proceedings following Dalbey’s first invocation, demanding that the City Council “reverse the curse” he claimed Dalbey had placed on the city. Mayor Benjamin Foote accommodated the pastor’s objections by calling for a moment of silence.
In a follow-up letter after the second confrontation, FFRF is asking the Ottumwa City Council to reconsider its policy of opening meetings with religious invocations. FFRF had written to the council in October, warning that its response to Dalbey’s invocation raised serious constitutional concerns and urging it to abandon the practice altogether. Unfortunately, the latest disruption only reinforces those concerns.
“The council has now experienced two consecutive meetings overshadowed by religious controversy,” writes FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line in the new letter. “What should have been routine proceedings devoted to the business of governing instead became confrontations over religious beliefs.”
FFRF reminds the City Council that the Supreme Court has made clear that legislative invocation practices must be administered without discrimination against minority religions and nonreligion. If the city insists on hosting religious invocations, it must ensure that speakers are treated equally and that disruptions are promptly addressed.
The latest controversy prompted City Council Member Cara Galloway to renew her suggestion that the council replace invocations with a moment of silence, an alternative FFRF considers acceptable.
“Nothing is more divisive than religion in government proceedings,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “And consider how arrogant it is for supplicants to imagine a deity, if it existed, is concerned about the inner workings of Ottumwa city meetings. City Council members who feel the need for divine guidance over sewers, liquor licenses and variances are free to pray privately to themselves or stop at the house of worship of their choice to and from meetings. They can pray on their own time and dime.”
Therefore, FFRF is renewing its request that the Ottumwa City Council discontinue invocations entirely and focus on the secular business of governing.
“The residents of Ottumwa deserve a government focused on serving their community, not refereeing religious disputes,” FFRF’s letter concludes. “The simplest way to accomplish that is to leave prayer to individuals and religious institutions and leave governing to the City Council.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 40,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Iowa. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
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