Introducing Martin Surridge, Our New Associate Editor

Oregon Legislature Votes Down 1923 Ban on Teachers Wearing Religious Dress

Washington Bill to Unionize Child Care Centers Dies in Committee

Introducing Martin Surridge, Our New Associate Editor

We are pleased to introduce you to Martin Surridge who is the new Associate Editor of ReligiousLiberty.TV. Martin is a free lance journalist who is working on his graduate degree in teaching at Walla Walla University in Walla Walla, WA. He comes to RLTV with tremendous interest in freedom of conscience issues, and if you’ve visited the site recently you might have read his articles and listened to our podcasts.

Click here to listen to our latest podcast on Religious Liberty in Europe. (8 minutes)

Oregon Legislature Votes Down 1923 Ban on Teachers Wearing Religious Dress

By Michael Peabody – This newsletter we have a couple of big stories coming out of the great Pacific Northwest. In Oregon, the legislature has passed a bill championed by the Northwest Religious Liberty Association that overturns a 87-year-old law that prohibited teachers from wearing religious dress in the classroom.  It is presently sitting on governor Ted Kulongoski’s desk awaiting signature.

This was the surviving part of a package of laws that was put into place in 1923 after the KKK had convinced Oregon voters to change the state’s constitution to require all students to attend public schools, and consequently prohibit all private education, including religious education. The voters had been given the notion that public education was the only way to keep students from being taught all kinds of off-beat ideas such as racial tolerance in private schools. In order to keep the now unemployed Catholic teachers from working in the public schools, they prohibited public school teachers from wearing religious dress. At the same time, Christian teachers could wear a cross or other small items, but Jewish yarmulkes and Sikh turbans were prohibited, and teachers wearing them would not only be required to go home and change – they would lose their teaching license.

Over time, the cause of prohibiting teachers from wearing religious dress was taken up by the ACLU and other church-state separation absolutists, despite the fact that the bill had enough loopholes for Christian teachers, but prohibited other people whose faith required them to wear religious dress from entering the teaching profession.

This law was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court in the 1980s when a Sikh teacher was kicked out of the profession for wearing her religious dress even though she made it clear that she was wearing it as part of her personal religious commitment and had no intention of converting her students to her religion. it was purely a cultural thing, yet Oregon’s Sikh boys and girls in the public schools would soon learn that they could never expect to teach in the classrooms where they were learning. Neither could Orthodox Jews or members of other faiths who were required by their beliefs to wear certain types of dress. Oregon is one of only three states that had this type of legislation in place.

During much of the early 2000s, as the Northwest Religious Liberty Association and other groups worked toward a Workplace Religious Freedom Act (WRFA), the ACLU didn’t have a problem with the bill, which required employers to make reasonable attempts to accommodate religious employees’ holy day observance and religious garb, but they did have a problem applying this law to teachers.
It was a gaping hole in the Workplace Religious Freedom Act to the point that the Sikh organization SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) actively called for the governor to veto the WRFA legislation unless teachers were also covered. They had experienced firsthand the effect of the educational exemption and wanted to make sure it was covered. The promoters of WRFA met with the Sikh community and expressed solidarity on the educational exemption, and indicated that they would be back once WRFA passed to work on clean-up legislation the next session that would fix this problem.

As promised, the next year, Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt and other legislators influenced by a multi-faith lobby put a law on the table that would overturn this decades old exemption, and as a result of these efforts, Oregon has joined the 47 other states that will make reasonable attempts to accommodate the religious dress of teachers.

This does not mean that teachers who wear particular dress as part of their sincere religious practice can try to convert their students, after all the Establishment Clause is still in place, but they are no longer excluded from the field of teaching.  Legislators had to balance the interests of protecting children from potential proselytizing while protecting the rights of teachers. I believe that the Oregon legislature struck the right balance in overturning this ban. However, we will need to be vigilant on the other end to protect the rights of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their students.

What this bill does is recognize that the United States is a diverse country made of people of many faiths – although Americans don’t all have to believe the same thing, we do need to learn to live together in peace and should not discriminate against reasonable teachers because they have to wear certain things as part of their faith.

Washington State Bill to Unionize Child Care Centers Dies in Committee

Other great news comes from the great State of Washington. You may have read our last newsletter about the bill that labor unions were trying to pass that would unionize private child care centers, and including faith-based preschools, and categorize their workers as government employees for purposes of union due, so long as they accepted children who received government subsidies in order to attend.
The SEIU had successfully passed similar legislation in Michigan where day care providers were surprised to find union dues missing from their paychecks.

Well, thanks to the good work of Greg Hamilton, the President of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association, and an RLTV advisory board member, who leapt into action against this bill which potentially violated religious freedom, the Washington bill is dead this session.

This is the latest in a long string of labor union movements to force themselves into non-union workplaces by any means necessary. The Washington bill was a stealthy attack, and Greg worked many high density hours to bring this law to its knees and defeat the unions. The unions were surprised by their defeat in this bill, since they full expected to take control in state day care centers like they had done in other states, and we will be watching to see if they try to sneak the bill in another way, or to write similar legislation next year.

As labor unions continue to lose influence in other sectors of the economy due to a combination of decreased domestic manufacturing and state labor laws that already achieve many of their goals, we can expect them to continue to attempt to insert themselves in industries where they have not been invited through traditional means.

(For more information on the Oregon and Washington bills, visit the Northwest Religious Liberty Association at http://www.nrla.com)

Coming Soon: Free Speech and the Church

We recently sent out an e-mail exclusive on the topic of why churches need to be careful in how they respond to the issue of same-sex marriage.  That is on one end of the issue.  On the other end is the potential threat to the free speech of churches that continue to uphold traditional marriage.

EXCERPT:

A Conference to relaunch the debate on Sunday protection at European level will be held on 24 March in the European Parliament in Brussels. It is organised by the MEPs Thomas Mann (EPP, Germany) and Patrizia Toia (S&D, Italy) together with the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation. Several European trade unions, civil society organisations and Churches support the conference. László Andor, the new EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs will take the floor, as well as numerous experts and MEPs.

The European Commission will soon be presenting a new draft of the “Working Time Directive”. In its initial 1993 version the Directive stipulated that Sunday should be « in principle » the weekly day of rest for European workers. This reference had been withdrawn in 1996 by the European Court of Justice, on the grounds that the European legislator had not given sufficient reasons as to a link between a work-free Sunday and the protection of workers’ health.

Meanwhile, recent studies[1] have demonstrated the existence of a strong link between workers’ health and a work-free Sunday. Furthermore, a common weekly rest day for the whole of society allows families to spend time with each other, and all citizens to engage in cultural, spiritual and social activities. Sunday moreover strengthens the social cohesion of our societies, which has been undermined by the current economic crisis. It therefore represents a precious achievement, which should be recognised as a pillar of the European Social Model.

Read more, including the programme, at http://www.comece.org/content/site/en/press/pressreleases/newsletter.content/1185.html

Palestinians and Israeli police have clashed near the Jerusalem compound housing the al-Aqsa mosque, leaving dozens of people injured. A large group of Palestinians left Friday prayers and began marching to the mosque, carrying banners and waving green flags, witnesses and police said. Police tried to disperse the crowd – some of whom were throwing stones – using stun grenades and tear gas. It is the latest in a series of clashes amid tensions over religious sites.

The Jerusalem complex is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, and has long been contested. The recent violence has been triggered by Israel’s decision to add two shrines in the occupied West Bank to its list of national heritage sites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8552569.stm

An Oregon husband and wife who relied on faith rather than medicine to treat their dying child were convicted today of criminally negligent homicide. Jeffrey and Marci Beagley of Oregon City said they thought their 16-year-old son, Neil, merely had the flu when they prayed and laid hands on him during the summer of 2008. Neil actually suffered from a urinary tract blockage, and, on June 17 of that year, he died of kidney failure — without seeing a doctor.

The jury’s vote to convict was not unanimous, with two of the 12 voting against it, but Oregon allows non-unanimous verdicts in some cases. The case is the latest to test the line between the freedom to believe in prayer’s healing powers and the duty of parents to seek medical care when their children’s lives are on the line.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/faith-healing-couple-convicted-homicide/story?id=9721812

In high school, the only sports I played to any significant extent were soccer and basketball. A lot of my friends went snowboarding or skiing, but it was a long drive to the mountains and I could not really afford all the equipment, which cost hundreds of dollars. So I never spent much time on the slopes. However, I have always been fascinated by winter sports. The Winter Olympics in Vancouver was the first of two major international sporting events this year, the other being the soccer World Cup, to be held in South Africa in June. Both events feature the best athletes in the world in their respective sports and enthrall millions across the globe.

However, after watching the Germans steer their bobsleds, the Russians twist and turn in figure skating, and the French ski down steep mountain slopes, I began to realize that the true reason that many athletes from cold-weather countries succeed in this frosty quadrennial competition is not climate or topography or even, dare I say it, talent, but rather privilege, economics, and wealth. Of all the stunning statistics that were tossed around during the fortnight of games in British Columbia, one stat was not mentioned, although its omission is hardly surprising. Of the 238 total medals that were up for grab in Vancouver, over 50 percent were won by eight of the world’s wealthiest nations. The United States, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, France, Germany, and Italy—industrialized market economies, who together make up the world’s main economic council of wealthy nations, the exclusive Group of Eight, or G8—took home 130 medals and nearly half of the first-place finishes. In addition to the success of the G8 nations, China, widely considered the second wealthiest nation in the world after the U.S., and South Korea, another powerhouse economy in Asia, took home just under 10 percent of remaining medals. It is also worth mentioning that Norway, which the International Monetary Fund places three positions higher than the United States in GDP at purchasing power parity per capita, and Switzerland, which also ranks in the top ten and is just one place behind the U.S., brought home approximately 9 percent and 3 percent of the Winter Olympics medals respectively. If you are doing the math, that means that 72 percent, nearly three-fourths, of all the medals in Vancouver were won by twelve incredibly wealthy nations. While similar patterns were displayed in Beijing and other summer Olympic games, one must remember that the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics were a competition where poorer nations like Ethiopia, Romania, Jamaica, Kenya, and Ukraine walked away with a half-dozen gold medals each. With the exception of Austria, hardly a nation of impoverished citizens, and Yugoslavia, the Winter Olympics has never been held outside of these twelve countries since the competition began nearly ninety years ago.

The lack of success among underdeveloped nations in the Winter Olympics is not for want of trying. Take, for instance, the story of Tugba Karademir, the young figure skater from Turkey, where the capital city Ankara has the country’s only real ice rink. Karademir’s father and mother, who is a certified aerospace engineer, immigrated to Canada and accepted jobs doing menial labor just so their daughter could have a chance to compete in the Olympic Games. While geography could be considered a significant challenge to athletes wanting to ski in the Pacific islands or snowboard in the heart of Africa, a large number of events occur indoors or on manmade ramps and tracks, and more often than not, poorer countries do not compete because they lack the finances to compete in sports that require such a large amount of equipment. Is it surprising that most kids in Brazil have never played ice hockey but are always seen with a soccer ball at their feet? Or that children in Cuba play baseball with a simple wooden bat instead of curling? Or that the best skiers in your dorm usually come from the most privileged families? Understand that I am not insinuating that there is a vast conspiracy in winter sports against poorer nations, but that among all of the athletic competitions in the world, it is the most inherently unequal. While I enjoyed watching ice hockey and the rest of the winter games, as a liberal and a lover of equality, they pale in comparison to the World Cup, where 32 nations from across the globe compete on a much more equal playing field in a truly international competition, where success is determined not by how much equipment you or your country can afford, but by your skill kicking a ball on a field of grass.

Martin Surridge is the associate editor of Religious Liberty TV and a freelance journalist who writes for the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. He is currently working on his M.A. in Teaching at Walla Walla University.

The United Nations and European Union have condemned a call from Libya’s leader for Muslims to carry out jihad against Switzerland over a recent vote to ban the construction of minarets in the European country.

Gaddafi said: “Any Muslim around the world who has dealings with Switzerland is an infidel [and is] against Islam, against Mohammed, against God, against the Quran.”

“Let us fight against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression,” he said in a speech broadcast live on television.

Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the UN director-general in Geneva, said the call by Muammar Gaddafi on Friday was “inadmissible”.

Read the full article at http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/02/2010226124744420153.html

Oregon’s longstanding ban on teachers wearing head scarves or other religious dress is near its demise after the Senate and House gave final approval Tuesday to lift the ban.

Champions in the Senate called ending the ban a historic step toward religious freedom and non-discrimination in a state that has performed poorly in those arenas in the past. Christian teachers have long been allowed to wear crosses in Oregon public schools, but head scarves and turbans are not permitted.

Read the full article at http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/02/oregon_legislature_repeals_ban.html