Moving on, from the sadistic to the ridiculous – Birmingham Council won’t let its staff read atheist websites. (So can Birmingham Council staffers read B&W? I wonder. I know B&W is banned in Iran [yes, I am proud of that, and so would you be, so quit staring] so perhaps its Bluecoat Software can detect heterodoxy just as well as Iran can. I’d love to know.)

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity…The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other

Next up we have an Archbishop in the Philippines saying why contraception is such a bad terrible wicked thing.

Archbishop Lagdameo argued the bill would not solve the problems of population growth but would only undermine the dignity of marriage and endanger women. He said that artificial contraceptives cause physical and psychological harm to women.

Whereas having children that they don’t want to have causes no physical and psychological harm to women at all, good heavens no. Women are invariably better off if they are forced to produce as many children as they can churn out, no matter how poor they are, no matter how much they might prefer to have one child or two children that they could … Read the rest

More bullshit from the Catholic News Agency.

Colorado for Equal Rights, an organization backing a measure on the Colorado ballot that would define a person in the state’s Constitution as “any human being from the moment of fertilization,” has released a list of over 70 physicians and pharmacists from around the United States who agree that a person includes any human from the moment of conception.

‘Any human being from the moment of fertilization’…That’s an interesting idea: a microscopic fertilized egg is a human being and a person, even though of course…it isn’t. Let’s define everything that way. A daffodil bulb is a daffodil. A swallow’s egg is a swallow. A caterpillar is a butterfly. A truckload of boards … Read the rest

The Cairo Declaration differs sharply from the Universal Declaration overall in its emphatic rejection of universalism, in rejecting the UD’s ‘without exception’ in favour of firm, decided exceptions. In the detail, the CD differs from the UD in its avoidance of clarity, precision and openness and hence accountability and reliability. The Cairo Declaration injects exceptions into its concept of human rights, without spelling out exactly what they entail; this introduces a whole new element of doubt, uncertainty and fear into what is supposed to be a human rights document. Worse, it presents itself as a human rights document (of sorts) when in fact it puts anyone who subscribes to it in the position of (perhaps unknowingly) endorsing laws, restrictions … Read the rest