San Diego Christian College has fired one of its employees for having pre-marital sex. The employee is suing the school, but I don’t think she has a case since she signed a contract saying she wouldn’t have sex as part of her employment.

That’s not the point. The point is that ordinarily a person with so much as a compassionate cell in their body wouldn’t dream of firing an otherwise capable employee, who is about to raise a child rather than abort a fetus, because of doing something pleasurable without going through the proper ritual first. But introduce religion, and even that modicum of religion can be undershot, all while believing you are more moral, rather than arbitrarily cruel.

This is why religion and all of its dogmas must be opposed.

One of the students who was interviewed said “she knew the rules”. Yes, but those rules are foolish. Does the college have the right to implement their own rules? Sure. They could have a rule that says employees can’t exercise. But the right to believe/do foolish things comes with promise of criticism for those things, as well as the promise of disdain when you prioritize those rules over the well-being of people.

Again, this is why religion draws our ire. I imagine this woman could do something harmful to herself like eat 3 gallons of ice cream every night, and the school wouldn’t care. But having sex without a ring on the proper finger? Fire her ass immediately. Our rules should never be set in opposition to compassion and, when they are, compassion should always win out. This is the standard that allows us to say that Christianity is not only immoral, but terribly so. It is the only standard that allows us to be aligned with humanity exclusively.

And if god is not aligned with humanity, then to hell with him. And if believers owe more allegiance to the dogmas of their religion than to humanity, then to hell with them. We cannot be allies at that point. And if, as they will surely say, their dogmas are aligned with humanity’s best interests, then we shouldn’t need those dogmas, as we are perfectly capable of figuring out what is best for humanity ourselves.

Of course, all we need are stories like this to realize what an immense hurdle religions are to human happiness and empathy.