Reading Time: 7 minutes On May 14, 2022 at 2:30 pm local time, a shooter entered a building in an American city and took innocent lives. The name of the shooter is insignificant, while their race and gender are both significant and predictable. This time the city was Buffalo, New York, but similar atrocities in a hundred US cities […]
News
The latest breaking news and journalistic reporting from a secular perspective at OnlySky, a secular community for nonreligious Americans.
Posted inReproductive rights
Archbishop bars Pelosi from communion over abortion stance. This will backfire.
Reading Time: 3 minutes In what I can only assume is meant as a threat, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone just announced that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ineligible for communion because she supports abortion rights. He explained in a letter that her actions (defending women’s right to control their own bodies) amounted to a “grave evil” and […]
Posted inPolitics
Michigan GOP candidate: I’d vote to ban birth control. ‘It should not be legal.’
Reading Time: 3 minutes Jacky Eubanks, a Michigan Republican running for State House, said in a recent interview that, given the option, she would vote to ban all birth control because it violates her Catholic faith. The Trump-endorsed conspiracy theorist made the comments during an interview conducted last week with Michael Voris of the aptly named site Church Militant. […]
Posted inReproductive rights
As other states prepare bans, Colorado etches freedom of choice into state law
Reading Time: 5 minutes In September of last year, my worst nightmare came true: Texas passed a severe ban on abortions and instituted a bounty on anyone attempting to aid or receive abortion health care. It was something right out of a dystopian novel. This had already been a reality for millions of people of color—now it had simply […]
Posted inPolitics
An Idaho atheist is about to become State Senator. He’s a Republican.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Idaho is on the verge of electing a Republican atheist to the State Senate. And virtually no one saw it coming. Geoff Schroeder isn’t merely an atheist. He’s the type of guy who owns the “ATHEIST” license plate in the state—and has it signed by Richard Dawkins. Schroeder is also no stranger to public service. […]
Posted inReligious News
2022 Annual Report: Another bad year for the Southern Baptist Convention
Reading Time: 9 minutes Every summer, evangelical-watchers enter their equivalent of March Madness. Of the World Series. Of, dare I declare, the Super Bowl. That’s because every summer, the biggest evangelical denomination of ’em all, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), holds its Annual Meeting and releases its Annual Report. In every Annual Report, the denomination’s leaders share the SBC’s […]
Posted inRacial justice
Mental illness doesn’t cause mass shootings. Hate armed for war does
Reading Time: 6 minutes First Amendment-loving conservatives have long blamed isolated mental-health issues in very angry individuals but never the availability of guns as the proximate cause of America’s decades-long epidemic of horrific mass shootings in America. Or they claim mass shootings are hardly a problem at all and that, by the way, overall gun violence is supposedly down […]
Posted inLaw
Judge halts Christian-only prayer at Parkersburg (WV) City Council meetings
Reading Time: 3 minutes A federal judge ruled yesterday that the city of Parkersburg, West Virginia has to stop saying the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of all city council meetings, giving victory to the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its two non-religious plaintiffs. The lawsuit was first filed in 2018 and claimed that council members said the prayer […]
Posted inPolitics
Michigan governor candidate Pastor Ralph Rebandt wants to ban the Bible. Well, sort of.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Ralph Rebandt, a Christian pastor and Republican candidate for governor, embarrassingly makes a case for banning the Bible in schools.
Posted inLaw
WV school district finally settles case involving Bible indoctrination classes
Reading Time: 5 minutes A West Virginia school district has finally paid up for decades of Christian indoctrination, putting an end to a five-year legal battle waged by a courageous student who faced considerable harassment over her “Bible in the Schools” class. All of this occurred in the Mercer County Schools, which offered “elective” Bible courses at the elementary […]