TheHumanist.com is pleased to announce the winners of the fifth annual Haiku Contest, this year held to honor National Poetry Month in April. The contest requested entries of haikus about humanism and humanist values. Submissions were required to be in the form of a haiku, a seemingly simple form of poetry in three lines: five syllables on line one, seven syllables on line two, and five syllables on line three. We received over one hundred entries, and our judges chose ten of their favorites. A huge thank you to all of the poets who submitted their haikus. And another big thank you to our pane ..read more

I was delighted to be invited by Suzanne Perry of HumanistsMN (a chapter of the American Humanist Association) to be a featured speaker for their 2024 National Day of Reason Breakfast and Reception at the Minnesota State Capitol. I first learned of the event from Sarah Levin of Secular Strategies, a consultant for the Center for Freethought Equality, after she spoke at their 2022 event. Sarah excitedly told me about the great turnout and the strong relationships between the elected officials and the humanist and atheist community. She thought that Minnesota was ripe to form a state secular cau ..read more

The latest from Cagle Cartoons.     Birth Controlled by Christopher Weyant, The Boston Globe, MA The post The Comics Section: Birth Controlled appeared first on TheHumanist.com ..read more

Tell your Senators to cosponsor and support the Access to Birth Control Act! Contraception is safe; access to it should be protected as both a fundamental right in the United States and a critical component of an individual’s agency with regard to their sexual and reproductive health. Unfortunately, patients seeking contraceptive medication over-the-counter in 24 states and the District of Columbia have had their access to contraception obstructed by pharmacists who have taken it upon themselves to refuse to provide these medications based on their own personal feelings. The Access to Birth Co ..read more

It seems to happen every time a law or policy that privileges religious belief is passed, it gets exploited to be used as a sword against those of us who don’t believe or who support separation of religion and government. A ten-year-old Ohio law created to allow students to get high school credit for religious lessons is now being used to inject bible classes into public schools. Leading the charge to convert public school children is LifeWise Academy and they are planning on coming to a public school near you. To be clear, the current prohibition on having religious classes in a public school ..read more

Tell Congress to cosponsor and support the Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024! Inserting a mechanism into law for the investigation of any wrongdoings of the Supreme Court is critical to ensuring that one of our most important and powerful democratic institutions is impartial, fair, and ethical. The American Humanist Association (AHA) is pleased that such a policy has now been introduced for the consideration of Congress by Representative Melanie Stansbury (NM-1) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (CT). The Judicial Ethics Enforcement Act of 2024 (H.R. 8098 / S. 4176) would establish an Inspe ..read more

The latest from Cagle Cartoons.     Temperature Rising by Pat Byrnes, PoliticalCartoons.com The post The Comics Section: Fighting Infection appeared first on TheHumanist.com ..read more

Journeys to Humanism, theHumanist.com’s regular series, features real stories from humanists in our community. From heartwarming narratives of growth, to more difficult journeys, our readers open up about their experiences coming to humanism. Marceline Dotson Dallas, Texas I’m an atheist. Scary, right? That’s what people in the Bible Belt think at least. I grew up snuggled in the suburbs of North Carolina, swaddled in Southern Baptist Christianity from the day I was born. I thought I had a golden childhood, and in many ways, I did because I was their golden child. Never in trouble. Never quest ..read more

This is part of The Humanist’s monthly series highlighting openly nonreligious elected officials across the nation. Because of the work of the Center for Freethought Equality, the political and advocacy arm of the American Humanist Association, there are over 120 elected officials at the local, state, and federal level who identify with the atheist and humanist community serving in 34 states across the country. Join the Center for Freethought Equality to help politically empower the atheist and humanist community—membership is FREE! The Center for Freethought Equality’s advances have ..read more

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in consolidated cases Idaho v. U.S. and Moyle v. U.S. that threaten the lives of pregnant people across the country by jeopardizing access to emergency abortion care. Christian nationalists continue to ram through their unpopular and dangerous agenda to systematically dismantle access to life-saving abortion care across the country. Prompted by the disastrous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade protections, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) now finds itself ..read more