Yelena Shesternina in the Kuwait Times gives us all a damn good scolding.

Far from everyone in the West has learned a lesson from the first cartoon war in 2005, when Jyllands-Posten, a little-known Danish newspaper, managed to cause an uproar in the whole world with just one publication. Its cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) offended 1.5 billion people. Islamic traditions prohibit the publication of any images of people, not to mention the prophet.

What lesson was everyone in the West supposed to learn from the first ‘cartoon war,’ do you suppose? That if some people decide to over-react in a deranged, disproportionate, violent, and unpredictable manner, then all the rest of us should thenceforth be afraid to say … Read the rest

Well I learned something new today.

Abstinence-only education funding has a long history of bipartisan support. There are three ways that the programs are funded in the United States…CBAE has the most stringent rules. To receive money from the fund, a sexual-education program must teach an eight-point set of guidelines, which include lessons such as: “Sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

That’s the something new that I learned – I was unaware that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects. Were you aware of that? Is it common knowledge?

Well to tell the truth I have to admit that I … Read the rest

Remember I told you about that Women’s Studies list I subscribe to? This week there’s been a busy discussion of ‘spirituality’ – but without ever bothering to actually say what that is. That makes for an extremely peculiar discussion, when people chat away about something that seems to change shape dramatically for each person. On Monday, after quite a few of these shape-shifting discussions, I asked what it meant. I got an answer, too.

I think that there are multiple definitions of “spirituality.” While
some might define it as religion by another name, others see it as
quite different from organized religions, or even belief in “higher
powers.” I would argue that spirituality & religion can be quite
different. Anzaldua’s

And from another front on the ‘shut up about religion’ campaign, there is the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and its efforts to get everyone in the whole world to respect Islam.

Islamic states are bidding to use the United Nations to limit freedom of expression and belief around the world, the global humanist body IHEU told the U.N.’s Human Rights Council on Wednesday…[T]he IHEU said the 57 members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) were also aiming to undermine the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights…Ambeyi Ligabo, a Kenyan jurist, said in a report to the Council limitations on freedom of expression in international rights pacts “are not designed to protect belief systems from external or internal