Ohio State is severely denying religious freedom to many people. Talbot Hall at OSU Hospitals East outright utilizes the method of Alcoholics Anonymous. Talbot Hall is the most blatant violator of law and ethics. There are very likely others such as the Counseling and Consultation Service or employee assistant programs.

The United States Supreme Court let stand two separate decisions, both ruling AA “unequivocally religious,” and thereby illegal for the applicable government usage. One of those decisions ruled AA “engages in religious activity and religious proselytization.”

Proselytizing implies AA contains a religion by definition. That the method admittedly has a spiritual formula defines the methodology as a religion. My opponents could not produce enough evidence for the high court to even hear either of the cases.

The director of the Ohio American Civil Liberties Union told me the organization has taken a case concerning a prisoner. The American Jewish Congress wrote a majestic friend of the court brief in Griffin v. Coughlin – one of the decisions the U.S. Supreme court let stand – June 11, 1996, before New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. The New York court further ruled AA “deeply religious” and “intensely religious.” An attorney with the Christian Legal Society said she completely empathizes.

The executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty, which has ministers, rabbis and Catholic nuns at the national level, has decided any government usage or promotion of the steps is illegal, as has American Atheists, Inc.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in two separate cases before federal judges, ruled private 12-stepping illegal. A powerful union with a civil liberties arm won big in a settlement agreement against California, although not in terms of money, in a case involving youth under State control.

Conform or die is an official AA position in the pamphlet “The 12 Concepts for World Service.” “We know we have to choose conformity to AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions or else face dissolution and death.” If spiritual conformity under life and death pressure is not religious, nothing is. Religious freedom does not exist for millions of Americans.

Kevin Russellsenior in sociology