Great article by our American Ethical Union Communications Coordinator, Emily Newman.  Emily is also the Education Coordinator at the American Humanist Association’s Center for Education. Emily grew up in Ethical Culture and has been active with the Future of Ethical Societies, the National Ethical Service, and the International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization.

Link to Article. Enjoy reading about our national organization’s 2019 Assembly!

Next year AEU will join the 2020 World Humanist Congress August 6 – 9 in Miami, Florida. The American Ethical Union business meetings will likely take place a day prior to the Humanists International World Congress.

The American Ethical Union expresses its dismay at this week’s news that the federal government will resume executing prisoners on death row. Our organization has been a staunch and consistent opponent of the death penalty for decades.*

Killing people held in state custody is never acceptable, regardless of their crimes, because it violates two fundamental human rights: the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. Capital punishment is an affront to the ideals of human worth and dignity we exist to uphold.

Our criminal justice system, while protecting society from dangerous individuals, should be humane and focused toward rehabilitation and the restoration of people into the community. Once someone is convicted of a crime and incarcerated, the restriction of their liberty is the maximum punitive element acceptable: the state may take your freedom, but it should never take your life.

Some convicted and condemned to death have later been exonerated as innocent. Certainly, some who are innocent have been killed. The state cannot restore justice after the execution of someone who is innocent, making capital punishment even more of a moral wrong.

The moral imperative to abolish the death penalty is particularly urgent given the fact that in its application it is definitively racist. The death penalty is sought more often against people who kill white victims than African American or Hispanic ones, and people of color are disproportionately sentenced to death. This compounds the inherent depravity of capital punishment, creating a system in which the lives of people of color are literally treated as less important than the lives of white people.

That the USA still applies capital punishment is an embarrassing anomaly: of the 195 nations on the globe, only 55 still execute people, including only a handful of industrialized countries. Every country in Europe has abolished the death penalty, except Belarus, “Europe’s last dictatorship.” The USA is a sad outlier among developed nations in its enthusiasm for state-sponsored killing, and we should all engage in actions to end this cruel, inhumane, and evil practice, including contacting our representatives and the administration to object to this particular action.

*The American Ethical Union first supported abolition of capital punishment in 1960, and reinforced that position in 1973, 1974, 1979, and 2000.

The Freethought Caucus of the US Congress sent a letter to Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Feinstein to highlight Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s alarming record on issues of state-church separation and religious liberty – core American principles.

“The thriving and diverse religious marketplace in America is a result of a robust separation between state and church.  As America becomes both less religious and more religiously diverse, the importance of keeping state and church separate is more vital than ever.  Judge Kavanaugh has indicated a clear desire to betray this American ideal.”

Click Here for a link to the letter signed by 15 Members of the US Congress

Jackie Simms – featured in UCOBSERVER (Ethical Living, Justice and Faith) Newsletter 

The Humanist Society offers certification to celebrants who perform wedding ceremonies for secular and humanist couples. Humanists believe in critical thinking over dogma and the agency of humans over their own lives.

Jacquelyn Simms is a humanist celebrant based in North Carolina. She meets with engaged couples to discuss a wide range of topics, like each person’s concept of marriage, work-life balance and children — both having them and the possibility that biological kids are not in the cards.

She says that it’s important that two people share a commitment to building a life together and have similar and realistic expectations of the partnership.

“I do not tell the couples that theirs is a marriage ‘made in heaven,'” she says. “I do tell them that their marriage will be made by the decisions they make each day.”