Mar 13, 2017 Newsletter

Four years ago, the Government of BC denied our request to register representatives that can perform legal marriages.

Last week, we learned through a Freedom of Information request that while Humanism isn't considered a valid "religion" for the purposes of the Marriage Act, Scientology, Zen Buddhists and a group called the Canadian International Metaphysical Ministry are. The latter group appears online to exist for primary purpose of registering celebrants who then offer their services in secular and commercial, rather than religious language.

We detail these findings, plus how Humanists are able to perform marriages in Scotland, Norway, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Ontario in a report we published on Wednesday.

In that report, we make the case for the legislative or judicial changes to the Marriage Act.

It's time to end religious privilege in marriage. As we move toward the upcoming provincial election, I hope you'll ask your candidates whether they'll support such an amendment.

Tax receipts

If you donated to us online last year and haven't received your tax receipts, please check CanadaHelps here. Otherwise, if you donated by cash or cheque, our volunteer treasurer is finalizing the last tax receipts and aiming to get those out in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us.

Introducing our newest addition

We're proud to introduce the newest addition to the BC Humanist Association Team: Brent Cooper!

Brent trained as a political sociologist, and is a filmmaker and founder of The Abs-Tract Organization. He will be helping record and produce our Sunday meetings into podcasts. He's already caught up on the past three weeks, which you can now hear online.

If you want to listen to any of our older recordings, you can find them on SoundCloud or iTunes. These are all published under a Creative Commons license, so you're free to use them for your own local groups.