ABC News reported yesterday that 800,000 rifle sights that will be provided to the U.S. Marine Corps will have coded references to New Testament Bible passages. The inscriptions include references to Second Corinthians of the New Testament and to the books of Revelation. Citations Trijicon, a Michigan-based company, is providing the sights under a $660 million multi-year contract.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps said their services weren’t aware of the markings, and that officials are figuring out what steps to take now that the issue has been brought to light. Given Trijicon’s values statement, however, the revelation shouldn’t be too much of a shock. According to their website, “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals.” In addition, the group dismissed concerns about the coded sights by saying the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.”

But not only should those who embrace non-Biblical values be worried about these coded sights. If our military has any appearance of waging a religious war in the Middle East, it’s dangerous to all of us and a threat to our mission to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan—particularly considering Iraqi soldiers are being trained by our military with rifles that are outfitted with these sights. As Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation says, “It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” and will play into the hands of “those who are calling this a Crusade.”

Iowa State Representative Dawn Pettengill (R) is proposing a resolution that would change the Iowa constitution to require lawmakers to say “so help me God” when being sworn into office. According to the Associated Press, Pettengill cares little about whether the proposal would offend lawmakers who don’t believe in God, saying that it’s offensive to her own faith not to require the phrase in the oath.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he’s checking with other lawmakers to see if there’s interest in moving forward with the resolution (it hasn’t been filed yet), but if any of them are at all familiar with Constitutional law they’d be wise to advise him to drop the matter. The ACLU and other groups are closely watching this issue, and no doubt someone will sue if such a measure were to move forward. And such a legal suit is very likely to win. There are all sorts of Constitutional protections this proposed resolution would violate, such as both religion clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Free Speech Clause (most everyone is familiar with the Constitutional prohibition on restricting free speech—well, compelled speech also counts as violating free speech rights). Moreover, Article VI clearly states that the U.S. Constitution trumps state law on these issues.

But even if under the exceedingly unlikely scenario Iowa lawmakers aren’t aware of such Constitutional law, they should eschew Pettengill’s proposal based on simple principles of fairness and common sense. Besides being Constitutionally prohibited, anyone who understands the Golden Rule also understands that it’s wrong to require a nontheist to profess faith in God—just as much as it would be to require someone of faith to profess their disbelief in God. And such a requirement would do nothing to ensure the veracity of a person’s statement or promote reverence for the propaganda promoted therein, but rather would serve to undermine respect for the very ideas such a law would ostensibly advance.

By now you’ve heard of the devastating 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday. As international aid starts to arrive, tens of thousands are feared dead, and countless more are homeless, injured, and still on their own.

As the international community responds, Humanist Charities, a project of the American Humanist Association, has established a Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund that will direct your donations to relief projects in Haiti.

For up-to-the-minute news updates on the situation in Haiti, I highly recommend that you visit Talking Points Memo’s Haiti Quake Wire. And for more information on other organizations that are providing immediate aid and relief in Haiti, I recommend visiting the Huffington Post‘s continuously updated How You Can Help page, which lists several dozen organizations that are responding to the Haiti quake.

A French lawmaker is stirring up controversy with a new proposal to ban women in France from appearing in public with veils or other coverings over their faces:

PARIS (AP) — A top lawmaker from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative party filed legislation on Tuesday to bar Muslim women in France from appearing in public wearing veils that hide their faces.

The bill by lawmaker Jean-Francois Cope, who heads the UMP party in the National Assembly, or lower house, has sparked criticism from some of his political allies. The speaker of the lower house, Bernard Accoyer, called Cope’s move “premature.”

Cope’s proposed law follows in the footsteps of a 2004 law that bans headscarves and nearly all other religious clothing and accessories from French public schools.

Why would such a ban be warranted? The Associated Press tells us:

Only a tiny minority of Muslim women in France wear the more extreme covering — which is not required by Islam. However, Islam is the No. 2 religion in France after Roman Catholicism, and authorities worry that such dress may be a gateway to extremism. They also say it amounts to an insult to women and to France’s secular foundations.

Even as I am a strong believer in promoting secularism in civil society and a strong wall between church and state, as a matter of principle I am opposed to laws restricting individual religious expression, especially one so wide-ranging as to ban a type of religious clothing from any public display whatsoever. This is an affront to religious freedom, which must be guaranteed in any democratic society.

But let’s consider a little more what the consequences of a ban such as this would be. French law enforcement officers would be empowered (and indeed required) to enforce certain standards of dress on the streets of French cities, towns, and villages. And who would be singled out? Muslim women. Picture for a moment the image of French police stopping a Muslim woman and giving her a citation for wearing a veil, which is an item of clothing that she either is being pressured to wear by her culture, religion, and family, or wants to wear under her own volition. And for this religious and cultural expression, whether or not it reflects her own desires, she receives a fine that the Associated Press reports could amount up to €750 (US$1,070).

How do you think that would make her feel? How do you think that would make other members of the French Muslim community feel? Would they feel welcome in France? Would they feel like that had a greater role to play in French society? Or would they feel singled out due to their religion?

I’m sympathetic to the argument that face coverings are a sign of the oppression of women within Islam. I think that this is frequently the case, and anyway, face coverings are fundamentally unequal because Muslim men do not have to alter their appearance in such a way to appear in public. But banning face coverings is not a helpful response, because it does nothing to empower women. It removes a visible sign of France’s growing Muslim population from the streets (which, in my opinion, may be one of the author’s chief goals), but what about directly improving the lives of women?

You cannot empower women by instituting a law telling them what they can and cannot wear in public. To be truly empowered, Muslim women in France need access to the educational, cultural, and economic resources that give them the opportunity to flourish as women of their own respective cultures, their own religion, and as members of the greater society and culture of France.