Holidays

When Easter came and went last month, I started to think about religious
holidays. Specifically, I began to wonder why the federal government
observed them. The First Amendment requires that no religious holiday
should be mandated by the government. So I checked the list of federal
holidays, and discovered that the only religious holiday the government
actually observes is Christmas.

Since Christmas is a christian holiday, this means that the government
is promoting christianity. I would like that to stop. I have nothing
against the christians celebrating their holidays, but the government
has no business promoting it.

This brings me to the "war on Christmas" baloney that is trotted out by
the likes of Bill O'Reilly every December. They all seem to think that
being more inclusive and recognizing that other cultures and other
religions have holidays around that same time of year is somehow
undermining and attempting to get rid of their holiday. They will even cry
"persecution". It is not persecution to remove christianity's
privileged position, and treat them as all others are treated.

I would like to propose a way to eliminate Christmas from the federal
holiday calendar. When the First Amendment argument is brought up as a
reason for eliminating the holiday, I am sure that there will be
objections. The most valid one is that the holiday itself has become
secularized to the point that most who are not christian celebrate it.
It will also be said that it is tradition and therefore should remain.
So, I propose that the holiday be renamed on the federal calendar to
"Winter Holiday". It should also be moved to the fourth friday in
December, instead of always being on the 25th. This would keep the
holiday available for the traditional celebrations that christian and
non-christian alike share. It also makes it more efficient for the
federal offices that would be affected.

As an added bonus, it would greatly increase productivity at private
employers. Since most employers follow the federal calendar to varying
degrees when determining their own holiday schedules, this would make
the winter holiday a three day weekend, even when the 25th is in the
middle of the week. No more juggling the floating holidays around to
accommodate the day of the w
eek on which Christmas falls. Of course,
private employers would still be free to observe Christmas directly.

There is precedent in federal law for moving a holiday from it's
traditional date to a specific day of the week. The Uniform Holidays Act
of 1968 adjusted Washington's birthday, Memorial Day, and Columbus Day
from their traditional dates to a specific day of the week.

Wife on the road too

My wife is on the road now. She is taking a trip to the pacific
northwest with her father. Helping him to navigate is taking quite a bit
of her time, so I don't get anywhere near as much time on the phone with
her as I usually get. It makes for some long days, it starts getting to
me.

The Wait

As Tom Petty once put it, the waiting is the hardest part. I am
currently sitting in Iowa waiting for a load of meat to be ready. This
is nothing new, most of the time when I need to pick up meat I have to
wait. The destination for this load is Boston. I have about 1200 miles
to go to get it there, and it needs to be there by 9 pm Sunday. It is
now Thursday.

There is not much to do while waiting for a load to be ready. It could
come at any time, and there is only so much sleeping I can do. I may
have to drive for six or seven hours after being up all day. I may get
to sleep all night then move out in the morning. I may get to sleep all
night then wait all day then drive for ten hours to get close enough to
make it to the delivery point on time. It is a lonely job sometimes.

Taxes

Tax time is upon us here in the USA. I pay my taxes willingly, as I see
it as the duty of all Americans to pay what their fair share. However, I
am dismayed by the preferential treatment given to some in the US tax
code.

Of course, I am talking about churches. Nearly all churches are
organized as non profit corporations. Although I have no personal use
for churches, I do not begrudge them their non-profit status. The
preferential treatment that bothers me is the fact that all other
non-profits must file certain forms each year, and churches do not.
If a non-profit is not a church and is either a charitable foundation or
has income greater than $5000, they must file a form 990. They must also
submit an application with a fee of up to $500 to be registered as a
non-profit in order for the IRS to recognize them as such. Churches
(which includes parent organizations such as the Southern Baptist
Convention) are not required to do so. What this means is that if I were
to set up a small secular charity run by unpaid volunteers to give food
to the hungry in my small town and it receives donations equal to $5000,
I must spend the time to fill out the form 990, and also must use ten
percent of those gifts in order to be known as a non-profit. At the same
time, the aforementioned Southern Baptists can have well-paid staff and
take in millions of dollars in donations without having to spend a dime
to report anything to the IRS.

This is not fair. This is unconstitutional. Churches, being religious
entities, should not be singled out for unfair advantages in the tax
code. They should be required to follow the same rules as other
non-profit organizations, or all non-profits should be given the same
exemptions as churches.

Hobby Lobby and Religious Freedom

This week, oral arguments were heard in the Hobby Lobby case. The Hobby
Lobby corporation wants to be exempted from the Affordable Care Act's
requirement that employer sponsored health insurance must provide
contraceptives at no cost to the employee. The owners of the company
happen to be right-wing christians (no big surprise there). This is a
bit disconcerting. Can a corporation have religious freedom rights?

I don't think so. Most of the arguments were made on this point.
Most of the supporters of Hobby Lobby's position seem to think that the
corporation's rights are the same as the owner's rights. However, I do
not believe that the US Constitution allows for corporate entities to be
considered equivalent to a citizen of the US. Can a corporation then
vote? Or be counted by the census? Can it serve in the armed forces?
Can it hold public office? Can it serve on a jury? If we must extend
religious freedom to a corporations, we must extend these other rights
and responsibilities to them.

The most troubling aspect of this is that it would allow the corporation
to violate the religious freedoms of it's employees. Would they be
allowed to require it's employees to go to church? After all, the
employee would have to make accommodation for their company's religious
stance. What about other religiously fraught debates? If a gay man works
for Hobby Lobby, and is in a state that allows same-sex marriage, can
they deny his partner health coverage when they get married?

I heard a program on NPR that had a panel discussing this. Every member
of the panel except one referred to the medications in question as contraceptives. That is the purpose of these drugs, to prevent conception. The lone standout was one of the attorneys for Hobby Lobby. He insisted on
calling them "abortion drugs". This is one of the ways that the religious
right operates. If they are against something, they try to change the
terminology to make their position look like the best one, regardless of
the science or other facts that oppose them. Calling contraceptives
"abortion drugs" is deceptive at best. It is an attempt to paint all
women who use them as being sexually promiscuous and having low regard
for human life. It refuses to acknowledge that there can be other
reasons to use them, unrelated to preventing pregnancy. It refuses to
acknowledge the fact that monogamous heterosexual married couples may
need to use them to become temporarily infertile so they can have
children on their own schedule. It completely ignores the rights of all
people to control their own bodies.

I am certainly hoping that the Supreme Court decides this against Hobby
Lobby. That would maintain the freedom of the most people.

Fred Phelps

I suppose I should weigh in on the recent death of Fred Phelps. He was a
man who followed his religion to it's logical extreme and taught nothing
but hate. There is now one less man spreading hate, and that is all that
needs to be said.

Culture Shock at the Truckstop

This evening, I was heading into the truckstop to take a shower and I
came across a group of muslims conducting their evening prayers. I then
began to wonder just what the other truckers thought about that. My
thoughts are that the islamic variety of imaginary sky daddy is just as
ridiculous the christian one. However, I certainly don't want to refuse
them the right to believe as they wish. Elsewhere in the truckstop were
the usual christian literature stashes, evidence of the general
right-wing christian leanings of the typical trucker.

It occurred to me that most truckers observing the muslim prayer ritual
would likely think that "those people" shouldn't be allowed to do that
in front of good, decent Americans. Somehow, I don't think they would
feel the same if a religious minority came out and said the same thing
of them.