Okay...so, I haven't blogged in forever, for a number of reasons that I will not take the time to expound upon right now. Suffice it to say, it's been a crazy and stressful couple of months and I've been a bit tuned out to the rest of the world. But tonight, I saw something that I felt the need to comment on. So here goes.
While browsing through my FB feed, I came upon this short article, posted by the Being Mommy FB page. It gives a very brief summary of a public school's inability to fight legal action threatened against them for participating in a charity drive. Being that it was so short, I did a bit more research on the story. More information can be found here or here. Basically, the students of a public school were collecting items to make "shoeboxes" for Operation Christmas Child, a drive funded by Samaritan's Purse, an openly Christian organization. This was the third year in a row they were involved with this specific drive.
They were forced to abandon their project when they were threatened with legal action by the American Humanist Association for being unconstitutional. They were told that because the drive they were participating in was funded by a Christian organization and they are a public charter school, that they are violating the church vs. state issues involved in the constitution, or more specifically: 42 U.S.C.A 1983. Being a small school, they didn't have the resources and funds to enter into a legal battle and so they did indeed abandon the drive, informing students and their families that they had been faced with legal action and to please donate their gathered items to another charity.
Here's my issue (and it's not about whether the school is being constitutional or unconstitutional):
The attack on this school came from the American Humanist Association. According to their website, "The AHA strives to bring about a progressive society where being "good without a god" is an accepted way to live life." More importantly, according to the website, Humanism is defined as "a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity."
Now, I completely understand that a huge part of their philosophy is that no sort of god is necessary to lead what's considered a good, moral and ethical life. They're against God, gods, deities, any sort of supernatural beings, any sort of outside non-worldly help. Got it. That's fine. It is completely up to each individual to decide if they want to believe or not believe in anything. So I understand that their issue with Operation Christmas Child is that it's run by Samaritan's Purse which is a Christian charity.
HOWEVER....
Humanism "affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity." The greater good of humanity. Can someone please explain to me how preventing boxes filled with toys, clothes and hygienic necessities from reaching their intended recipients in third world countries aspires to the greater good with humanity? Their (the AHA's) argument is that "the purpose and effect of Operation Christmas Child is to induce impoverished children to convert to Christianity” and “the boxes of toys are essentially a bribe, expressly used to pressure desperately poor children living in developing countries to convert to Christianity.”
In contrast to this, school officials stated that there were no religious materials included in the boxes and that the project was non-religious, strictly voluntary and not tied to any graded assignments.
It just seems slightly ironic to me that a group that claims to be "humanistic," a group that claims to "aspire to the greater good of humanity" will let their aversion to organized religion be a large enough obstacle to keep them from focusing on humanity. This is a group that preaches tolerance, that is, for everything except religion. So, basically, in order to save poor children from being bribed with Christianity, we're also going to deprive them of not only things that may be wanted, but also things that are desperately needed. Call me crazy, but that just doesn't sound real humanistic to me. It sounds more like they're on the exact opposite end of the spectrum as the WBC. WBC deals out intolerance under the guise of saving us from ourselves in the name of God. The AHA seems to deal out intolerance under the guise of saving us from God/gods/deities/etc. Either way, I think they're both missing their marks. By a lot.
I might suggest to the AHA that in lieu of not allowing those packages to reach their intended recipients, they replace those packages to those specific recipients from their own funds. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen....Way to fail, AHA, way to fail.
