Blasphemers Bible – Psalm 73

“How old was Mary?”: How dozens of Oklahoma Republicans fought a bill banning child marriage

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The good news is that Oklahoma recently became the 17th state (along with Washington, D.C.) to ban child marriage.

The bad news? It wasn’t unanimous. In fact, 36 Republicans in the State House voted against the legislation, reminding everyone that they’re perfectly fine with adults forcing themselves upon children who aren’t legally old enough to make decisions for themselves.

Their excuses were downright embarrassing.

Senate Bill 504 shouldn’t have been controversial. All it did was remove the underage exceptions to the law about how marriage can only occur between legal adults. From now on, it won’t matter if your parents (or other authorities) agree to it or if you’re pregnant. No marriage until you’re 18. Simple. That’s a big deal because children are sometimes pressured by their parents to marry early or they feel forced into marriage because of teenage pregnancy. Plenty of adults enter into marriages that don’t pan out, but it’s perfectly rational to say a decision that important should only be made by adults.

Taking an impregnated middle- or high-schooler and pressuring her into getting married to her classmate—at an age when both of them barely understand how their own bodies work—isn’t a love story. It’s Purity Culture run amok. They didn’t have much of a childhood. They barely had time to develop crushes. They probably haven’t gone through a break-up. Why should we assume they have the maturity to understand their options as wedded adults?

Let’s not pretend they can easily end the marriage either. The sort of Christians who advocate for child marriage also condemn divorce regardless of the reason. So child marriage is very much about trapping people into relationships before they’re old enough to know any better.

That’s why this wasn’t merely symbolic legislation. According to the advocacy group Unchained At Last, “nearly 315,000 children as young as 10 were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2021—mostly girls wed to adult men.”

But that didn’t stop a number of Republican legislators from making a series of bizarre arguments against the bill.

State Rep. Justin Humphrey argued that this law was getting in the way of parental rights… and causing abortions.

Representative, you know I love ya. But you think that you know better than parents? Do you think the government should make decisions for parents over family? You think we have that authority?

… Let’s take a situation where a girl was already pregnant. She’s already done that. Do you think that that person who is pregnant, who is not allowed to get married, is much more likely to have an abortion? So if we’re worried about abortion, don’t you think we’re actually causing that?

It’s quite literally the government’s job to create and enforce sensible regulations. And considering how shitty many parents can be, some basic restrictions like not being allowed to enter your children into marriages when they’re barely old enough to think for themselves should not cramp anyone’s lifestyle.

Also, why the hell would not letting children marry lead to more abortions? Those are two separate things that don’t have anything to do with each other. If this bill preventing underage marriage leads you to have an abortion, it’s because you were going to get one regardless.

State Rep. Derrick Hildebrant argued that this bill contradicted the Bible. And we can’t have that happening, can we?! He added that this bill was destroying potential families.

Mr. Speaker, how about Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” Does “among all” mean now only those who are 18 and older? Or is marriage honorable except in every case that this bill removes?

… How about pregnancy? “Pregnancy can pressure minors into marriage!” If a young couple is expecting a child, both families support the marriage, should the law then forbid them from forming a stable home? I think not.

He got the last three words right.

Who the hell cares what the Bible says, much less a cherry picked verse? By his logic, parents should be allowed to force kids into marriage at any age. Hell, why not perform the ceremony when they’re fresh out of the womb?

And if your idea of a “stable” family involves 16-year-old children and any possible babies they’re having, probably with no direct means of support, your brain is broken. (Keep in mind many of these conservative Christians believe a same-sex couple with solid careers, nice home, and adopted children are inherently unstable.)

Humphrey, an elected representative in the government, later returned to argue that government is always the problem and no one should listen to them. And then he claimed this was about imposing Socialism upon the masses. (He also referred to himself in the third person, which is just plain weird.)

I just wanna ask everybody, What the Humphrey is this all about?! Guys, there’s one thing I know. It’s when government shows up and says they’re there to help, you know what I’m gonna do? I‘m gonna run. ‘Cause I’ll guarantee you they seldom help…

… A lot of people have said this is about pedophilia. This bill has nothing to do with pedophilia! This bill has absolutely nothing to do… because we have… we have bills that protect that. This bill has been on the books for a long long time!

… You know what Socialism looks like? It’s when the government comes in and tells you what you gonna do. Socialism is when they go after the family. That’s what we’ve seen going on in other states. That’s what we see this state trying to become. It’s an attack on the family. And guess what? I see this as an attack on the family. We are a Republican state. We’re a red state. But we’re a red state with blue regulations. It is time we shut down the blue regulations and we take it back. Right here is where we need to plant the flag. Right here is where we say government can’t come in and tell me what I can and cannot do with my family.

Leave it to Republicans to argue that government can’t help… when they’re the ones in control of the government. Ronald Reagan was wrong to say it. So is Humphrey. And if he thinks government is this useless, he should resign since he’s quite literally preventing it from helping people. You only need to look at the Democratic Socialism of Zohran Mamdani in New York City to see all the ways government can actually work for people instead of being an obstacle to everything.

State Rep. Jim Olsen then made the point that the biblical Mary was underage. (That’s it. That was his whole point.)

Let me throw another thing for us to think about: How old was Mary when she married Joseph?

… Does that mean we should normally have people getting married under 18? No. No it doesn’t. But it does point out that it might not be wise to say that there shall be no exceptions!

See?! If you prevent child marriage, you could be interfering with future imaginary virgin births! (I’m not sure referencing a non-consensual pregnancy is the mic drop moment he seems to think it is.)

It’s incredible, in a way, that most of their Republican colleagues didn’t buy these unconvincing arguments. The final vote for the bill in the House was 51-36 (after the Senate had already unanimously approved it). Governor Kevin Stitt chose not to sign it or veto it, perhaps fearing backlash from conservative Christians, but because of the overwhelming numbers here, it didn’t make a difference.

But that still led to incredible headlines like this one from Oklahoma Watch:

Great branding for Republicans, truly.

The party that doesn’t give a damn about the Epstein files doesn’t care about child marriage either, because their Christian God taught them pedophilia isn’t always a bad idea.

“I think they’re really stretching,” [Democratic Rep. Cyndi] Munson said when asked about representatives’ response to the arguments on the House floor. “Marriage should wait until adulthood. And we don’t want to exploit children, especially young girls getting married, and having parents have a say over that.”

The irony is that this bill wouldn’t have passed without the backing of the majority of Republicans in the state legislature, yet the takeaway is that dozens of conservatives wanted to protect the possibility of child rape more than they wanted to give up control of when people can get married.

The new law will go into effect on November 1.

And as the Freedom From Religion Foundation Action Fund points out, if Oklahoma can pull this off, why can’t everyone else?

There is no religious right to marry a child. There is no parental right to shackle a child into an abusive marriage. There is no judicial discretion worth preserving if the result is a child spouse who cannot enter a shelter, sign a lease, hire a lawyer, file for divorce or safely escape.

The solution is simple: Minors cannot marry, no exceptions.

Not 17 with a permission slip. Not 16 with a judge’s nod. Not younger with a pregnancy excuse. Not “emancipated” on paper while still blocked from the basic tools of escape.

If Oklahoma can do it, so can California and every other holdout.

American Atheists Files FCC Comment Opposing Politicized TV Rating System

The agency is attempting to inject religious and anti-LGBTQ viewpoints into the TV industry’s rating system

The post American Atheists Files FCC Comment Opposing Politicized TV Rating System appeared first on American Atheists.

Heretic on the Hill: A National Prayer Service in DC Gets Golden Idol-ed

You may have missed it but Jesus showed up on the National Mall last week for “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving,” a day-long event of Christian music and mostly evangelical Christian speakers. The stated goal was to rededicate the United States of America as ‘One Nation, Under God.” House Speaker Mike Johnson took it upon himself to say they accomplished that goal there on the Mall on Sunday. No one really explained when America was officially dedicated as One Nation Under God the first time, or when or why that dedication had worn off.

As for Jesus, he came by our counterprotest which was also on the Mall and featured an inflated Donald Trump golden calf. As a reminder, the golden calf was the idol the faithless Israelites created to worship while Moses was up in the mountains getting the Ten Commandments so they could be displayed in Texas school rooms a few thousand years later. Armed with a bullhorn and a few good jokes, Jesus spoke truth to power, meaning to our golden calf, and moved on down the Mall to the main event.

We worked with our coalition member the Freedom from Religion Foundation and with Faithful America to get the calf onto the Mall. We didn’t know for sure that we would even get a permit from the National Park Service until two days out so we didn’t have a formal program, but we all brought our own crowd of supporters. Plenty of people walking by stopped for pictures as well.

The Rededicate 250 event featured videos from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. President Trump was so invested in this event that his video was just a replay of a video he did several weeks earlier for a “people read every verse in the Bible” event. The President actually spent the afternoon playing golf at his course out in Virginia. The shepherd hit the links while his sheep, many in Trump attire, hit the Mall.

The Rededicate 250 event was part of the year-long celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The general theme among the numerous speakers was to reinforce the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation. Even though no one wrote that down 250 years ago. We were happy to present the opposite view to people who dropped by the golden calf wondering what was going on.

Regular readers may have noticed that I’m a fan of historical events disproving the “founded as a Christian nation” theory. (See the Treaty of Tripoli.) The latest example I ran across comes from Ben Franklin. He was a noted deist, not a Christian. In 1787, after weeks of little progress on drafting the Constitution, Franklin suggested in a speech that the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention start opening their meetings with a prayer.

Maybe Franklin thought a prayer would motivate the Christians in the group to make some compromises and some progress. There was, however, not much support among this collection of the nation’s founders for a prayer. In his notes at the bottom of the speech he wrote, ‘The Convention, except three or four persons, thought Prayers unnecessary.’

So there you have it from the 55 most influential people in the new country who were setting up the new government; “An opening prayer? Nah, we’re good.”

The post Heretic on the Hill: A National Prayer Service in DC Gets Golden Idol-ed appeared first on Secular Coalition for America.

Don’t let Christian Nationalists control the social studies curriculum nationwide

The post Don’t let Christian Nationalists control the social studies curriculum nationwide appeared first on American Atheists.

Rockwall County courthouse in Texas unveils illegal Ten Commandments monument

Friendly Atheist
By Hemant Mehta

The post Rockwall County courthouse in Texas unveils illegal Ten Commandments monument appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Keeping the Pace: Let’s rededicate how to listen with love

The Independent (Montrose, PA)
By Will Hagenbuch

The post Keeping the Pace: Let’s rededicate how to listen with love appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Illinois school district drops middle school graduation prayer after FFRF intervention

Photo by Emmanuel Offei on Unsplash

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has ensured that the Lisbon Community Consolidated School District 90 will not permit official graduation prayers at a middle school from now on.

FFRF learned last year that Lisbon Grade School included a preplanned invocation and benediction at the eighth-grade graduation ceremony. It was reported that Kari Friestad, who is a youth ministry coordinator  at West Lisbon Church, delivered a Christian sermon before leading the audience in both a prayer as well as a religious benediction, blessing the students as they graduated. The content of her speech reportedly included direct references to Christian theology and was delivered in the tone and format of a sermon. Both the invocation and the later benediction were included in the graduation ceremony program, demonstrating that they were preplanned and school-sponsored.

FFRF took action to remind the district of its constitutional duty to stay secular.

“School officials may not invite a student, faculty member, clergy member, or anyone else to give any type of prayer, invocation, benediction, or sermon at a public school-sponsored event,” FFRF Staff Attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to Superintendent William Pender. She noted that the courts have continually reaffirmed that the rights of minorities are nonetheless protected by the Constitution.  

Grade school graduation is a once-in-a-lifetime event that students and families look forward to. There is no need to marginalize non-Christian and nonreligious students and family members by inserting prayer into an event that is meant to honor all students regardless of which faith, if any, they believe in. At least a third of Generation Z members (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualifies as “Nones” (religiously unaffiliated).

While the district did not initially respond, upon a follow-up this month, Interim Superintendent Chris Mehochko confirmed via email that the district had learned its lesson. 

“We are in the process of finalizing the graduation program,” Mehochko wrote. “We have removed the prayer portion that you are referencing.”

FFRF is proud of its persistence that brought about the necessary change.

“Middle school graduations are supposed to celebrate students’ achievements as they take an important step into the next phase of their education — not serve as a platform for sectarian worship,” states FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “We’re pleased to receive these reassurances that future graduation ceremonies will be free of such divisiveness.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,000 members and a chapter in Illinois. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

The post Illinois school district drops middle school graduation prayer after FFRF intervention appeared first on Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Solipsism: The Last Refuge of the Theist | The Best Of The Atheist Experience

The rising cost of reaching secular voters is good for democracy

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Here’s an amusing dilemma for politicians everywhere: As more Americans ditch organized religion, campaign firms are finding it harder and more expensive to reach large blocs of voters in a single swoop.

This is excellent news for those of us who care about having an informed electorate instead of one dominated by gullible religious rubes who fall for bottom-of-the-barrel candidates who manage to get elected just by talking about how much they love God.

All of this is according to the campaign firm TriStrategies, as relayed to Axios, which ran the headline “Campaigns pay the price for America’s secular shift”:

Campaigns spent about $1.40 per nonreligious voter versus roughly 45 cents per religiously affiliated voter in 2024, Sisto Abeyta, a Democratic consultant with the Nevada-based firm TriStrategies, tells Axios.

• Candidates can reach through existing mailing lists or megachurch coffee shops, Abeyta said. Nonreligious voters, however, have to be sought.

• “For religious voters, all I have to do is send a mailer and say I believe in God and apple pie,” Abeyta said. “For nonreligious voters, I need to send a list of issues with links so they can verify and be ready for questions. It’s time-consuming and costs more.”

They make it sound like it’s a bad thing to tell voters where candidates actually stand on the issues. Yes, it’s more expensive to do that at first, at least if you’re not used to it, but the alternative is cheap religious bullshit that ruins our country. It’s morbidly funny how Abeyta seems to openly long for the good old days when campaigns could just tell megachurches their candidates love God and be done with it. But now they have to (gasp) do the work of actually informing voters what these candidates believe about various issues because those damn non-religious voters dig into the details unlike churchgoers who aren’t interested in facts.

That says a lot about how easy it is to manipulate religious people.

Honestly, you should be ashamed of your faith if this is how a campaign firm talks about you.

But it’s also not a permanent problem because reaching non-religious voters isn’t all that different from reaching all voters, especially these days as people become more isolated and less likely to be part of any civic/social/in-person groups. You just have to know how information spreads.

Voters respond to candidates who articulate clear priorities, defend their positions under scrutiny, and communicate like actual human beings instead of focus-grouped robots. That’s why politicians like Zohran Mamdani were able to generate enormous organic support online: people understood what he was fighting for, and supporters became unpaid amplifiers for his message. The amount of earned media he received was every campaign manager’s dream.

Or you can just pander to us for once. Steven Emmert, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, offered that simple solution:

Emmert argues that secular voters are often highly engaged and quick to respond when candidates simply acknowledge them.

That could be as easy as just saying that, if elected, you will represent people who are religious and non-religious.

But in the long term, the best (and eventually cheapest) way to reach non-religious voters is to have candidates who actually stand for church/state separation, and (actual) religious freedom, and against Christian Nationalism. You know, principles that most decent people can rally behind.

If your campaign can’t survive without hiding behind generic references to God and patriotism, the problem isn’t the cost of reaching secular voters. It’s that your candidate has nothing compelling to say. If all you care about is God, you shouldn’t be running for public office, period. That may have worked in the past, but thank goodness more of the country is less interested in thoughtless candidates like that.

If anything, we’re worth the investment. Non-religious voters are deeply interested in politics, according to a Pew Research Center analysis from 2024. (“Nones” as a whole are, by nature, wishy-washy, but that’s true about everything in their lives.) If you ever did get explicitly non-religious voters activated, they would be just as committed—if not more committed—than religious voters when it comes to voting and caring about politics.

Keep in mind that 38% of younger voters (the under-30 crowd) are not affiliated with any organized religion, and over a third of Democratic-leaning voters are non-religious. So what if it costs a little more to find us? We’re your base. You need us.

The party that can unite non-religious voters under an umbrella of decent principles is in the best position for the future—and Democrats have the advantage if they ever cared to capitalize on it.

Not being able to reach out to a megachurch mailing list doesn’t mean you can’t reach voters in a cost-effective way. It just means you have to focus on actual ideas instead of putting the word “God” over pictures of your candidate and assuming that’ll do the trick. And if that’s too difficult to do, maybe your candidate shouldn’t have been running in the first place.

While I understand that campaigns cost money and campaign firms always want to stretch their dollars, no one should be praying for more races like that of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, where religion, football, and MAGA cultism are enough to convince Republicans to vote against their best interests.

The fact is it’s not that hard to court non-religious voters. All you have to do is put substance over symbolism. We want candidates who can defend their positions under scrutiny and who can articulate how their ideas will improve our lives. We don’t want vague moral platitudes and idiotic culture wars. Campaign firms should be thrilled that secular voters ask questions and expect receipts because, if they have good candidates, it shouldn’t be hard to deliver on those expectations.

All we’re losing here is a cynical shortcut that never should have had a place in American politics.

Politicians, especially Republicans, have long relied on churches as voting blocs because they know those voters don’t ask tough questions or demand results. It doesn’t take a lot to appeal to religious zealots—the right code-words, an endorsement from the pastor, or some vague appeals to God do the trick. And we’ve all suffered because of that kind of ignorance.

The fact that fewer Americans are willing to treat religion as a substitute for virtue is a huge step in the right direction.

Candidates should have to persuade people and survive fact-checking, skepticism, and follow-up questions. If campaigns are frustrated that they’ll have to do a little more work or spend a little more money to satisfy those boxes, too damn bad. The real scandal here is how so many campaigns have become dependent on voters who demand so little in return.