In the USA there have been three setbacks to the idea of separation of church and state.

i) The Supreme Court ordered a Virginia University to fund a student run religious magazine. This is the first time the court has approved state funding for proselytising literature.

ii) The Supreme Court, by a 7-2 margin, ordered Ohio to let the Ku Klux Klan erect a cross on a public square, saying that government agencies must allow privately-sponsored displays that include religious symbols to be erected on public property.

iii) President Clinton has made a surprise call for more religious expression in public schools. He said: 'There are those who do believe that schools should be value neutral and that religion has no place inside the schools. I think that is wrong ... The First Amendment does not ... convert our schools into religion-free zones.' (Secular Humanist Bulletin, CODESH, Vol 11, Number 3)

According to one alternative press account, ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews stoned a quadriplegic wheelchair-bound European Jew to death in front of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. Highly observant Jews do not use electrical devices on the Sabbath; apparently the Hasidim were outraged when the man, a tourist, approached the Wailing Wall on the Sabbath ... with the aid of his electric wheelchair. (Secular Humanist Bulletin, CODESH, Vol 11, Number 3)

THE Humanist Society of Victoria has initiated a project to collect and preserve the archival records, obsolete minute books, pamphlets, leaflets, photographs, biographical data and associated memorabilia of the Australian Secular Freethought Humanist Movement. The current Humanist Societies, Rationalist groups, University Atheists, and Secular Societies are among the modern inheritors of this nonreligious, secular tradition.

Figures from the last Census and current Public Opinion Polls reveal that 20-25 percent of the community identify with the secular/no religion categories outlined above. The 1991 Census indicated that more than 2,176,608 defined themselves as having 'no religion'. It is significant that the 'no religion' group is particularly strong among people in the 20-39 age range. A feature of the proposed project is to capture and conserve this legacy as an ongoing resource for the growing segment of the community that has rejected institutionalised, traditional religion. (Ray Dahlitz, Victorian Humanist, Vol 34 No 8, September 1995)

The Boy Scouts of America has come under increasing fire for its rejection of atheists and gays and is currently in court defending itself against several discrimination lawsuits. Boy Scout troops in the USA are often attached to other organisations such as a local police force or fire station. This complicates the issue as to whether the Boy Scouts are a public or private organisation. They try to have it both ways so that discrimination can continue.

According to Baden Powell the worldwide scouting movement was to overcome religious and class differences. He wrote: The religion of man is not the creed he professes but his life -- what he acts upon, and knows of life, and his duty in it. A bad man who believes in a creed is no more religious than the good man who does not.' Nevertheless all American Scout Leaders are required to subscribe to a Declaration of Religious Principles.

The obligation of a public agency not to discriminate on the basis both of religion and sexual orientation is recognised in many communities. Some police organisations with Scout Troops attached have been querying the discrimination against gays and atheists.

The Boy Scouts' programme Learning for Life is conducted on school grounds in school time. The teachers who conduct the Scouts programme must follow the leadership 'standards' of the Scouts of America: no agnostics, no atheists, no gays. (Larry A. Taylor, The Humanist, American Humanist Association, September/October 1995)

A new world vision

UNESCO'S main concern is with peace and security and with human welfare insofar as they can be subserved by the educational and scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the world. Accordingly, its outlook must, it seems, be based on some form of humanism. Further, that humanism must clearly be a world humanism... an evolutionary humanism as opposed to a static or ideal humanism. - Julian Huxley, A New World Vision, (the original framework for UNESCO, 1946. Quoted in The Humanist, AHA, September/October 1995)

The British Humanist Association has appointed a new Executive Director, Robert Ashby. In a speech as the South Place Ethical Society Annual Reunion. He Said:

Humanist campaigns have changed laws and social attitudes. The underlying philosophy of modern humanism has reached maturity through Corliss Lamont, Paul Kurtz and others. What, though, of this application in everyday life today? We have only half constructed the 'somewhere to stand' which Archimedes needed to build a human-based order. This I believe, is central to why there are not more acknowledged humanists in Britain .,.

The BHA is moving away from. the reinforcement of one popular image of secular people -- that generally incorrect picture of a band of aggressive god-haters with a desire for vengeance. Instead we aim to present humanism as the positive outlook that it is, in today's terms. We should ensure that humanism today provides the basis for future civilisation,

The Plain View

'Humanism claims to be distinctively the lay view of the world. It is the ordinary way of taking hold of the world, straightforwardly, by contrast with the mysteries, the far-fetched, the ancestral and the immemorial. Contrary to what many suspect or complain of, humanism not only has no mumbo-jumbo, it has no experts. Intellectuals and the man in the street speak the same language as here. Humanism is the Plain View' - H. J. Blackham quoted in Humanism in Scotland, Vol 2 No 2, Summer 1995)