A shining example of how religion can foster a twisted view of morality.

[US Cardinal Raymond Burke] has spoken out again, telling an interviewer that gay couples and divorced and remarried Catholics who are trying to live good and faithful lives are still like “the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

No, they aren’t. Not at all. You can have reservations about unilateral divorce, especially if it’s done with cruelty or brutality, but it’s still not a close relative of murder.

“If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn’t any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin,” Burke said in an interview with LifeSiteNews, a U.S.-based web service focused on battling abortion and promoting other conservative causes.

Nonsense. Burke’s church considers the rape of children not a “mortal” sin. That’s all you need to know about Burke’s church.

“And to give the impression that somehow there’s something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the (Catholic) Church has always and everywhere taught,” said Burke, who spoke to LifeSiteNews in Rome.

Asked if being “kind” and “generous” and “dedicated” is enough, Burke replied: “Of course it’s not. It’s like the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

He’s a moral monster, but then that’s how the Catholic church is. There are good people in it, but they’re good in spite of the evil shite the Vatican talks, not because of it.

On the surface, Burke’s comments break little theological ground; the church has always taught that sin is sin, and some sins are especially serious. For example, cohabitation, homosexual relations and adultery (which is how the Catholic Church views the relations of a couple who are divorced and remarried without annulling the first marriage) are viewed as mortal sins, as is murder.

But not the rape of children. Not the rape of children by priests they’ve been told to respect and obey and consider close to god.

Burke, 66, has raised eyebrows, and made headlines, with previous comments. Earlier this year, he argued that the church has become too “feminized” and he blamed the introduction of altar girls more than 20 years ago for the decline in vocations to the church’s all-male priesthood.

The cardinal also blamed gay clergy for the church’s sexual abuse crisis, saying priests “who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity” were the ones who molested children.

Yeah. It’s always the bitches’ fault.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Silicon Valley pretends to love mavericky types but really it’s numbingly conformist in some very obvious ways…such as in being ridiculously absent-minded about the existence of women.

Ellen Pao sued a venture capital firm for gender discrimination and lost, but the trial spilled a lot of crappy beans.

Not only have weeks of testimony revealed a collection of boorish, unsavory and at times unwittingly misogynist attitudes at one of the tech industry’s most storied financial institutions, the case has also come to stand for something bigger than itself. It has blown open a conversation about the status of women in an industry that, for all its talk of transparency and progress, has always been buttoned up about its shortcomings.

Thanks to Ms. Pao, and notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, the secrets are suddenly out in the open. In tweets, in text messages and at tech gatherings like TED and South by Southwest, the case has been virtually all that anyone could talk about during the last few weeks.

We keep rediscovering sexism as if it were a brand new thing. “Ohhh will you look at that, we don’t treat women as equals. Who knew??”

After the Pao testimony, former employees of Facebook and of Twitter have filed gender-discrimination suits against those companies, which have denied the accusations.

Sexist?? Facebook and Twitter??? Inconceivable!

Anita Hill’s testimony didn’t keep Clarence Thomas off the bench, tragically, but it did put sexual harassment in the public spotlight. (And that rapidly brought it to an end! Oh wait, no it didn’t.)

The Kleiner-Pao trial has prompted a similar discussion because the series of large and small slights that Ms. Pao contends she suffered at the hands of her male colleagues and bosses at Kleiner has resonated with women across the industry, and it has turned a light on problems that many men around here have long kept under wraps.

Listen. Can you hear it? That murmur in the distance? A billion Dear Muslimas stir and yawn and pull their socks on.

“What usually happens when you have something like this happen to you at work is that you negotiate a settlement with a gag order,” said Melinda Byerley, a marketing consultant who has worked in the tech industry for more than a decade. “They pay you to be quiet. This happens all over Silicon Valley — they will write you a severance agreement outlining X number of months’ salary, X number of shares, and along with that is a gag order.”

She added: “This is how women have been doing this for more than a decade. This is tribal knowledge. It’s shared from one woman to the next.” What made Ms. Pao’s story unusual, Ms. Byerley said, was her refusal to take the quiet settlement, despite the risks to her reputation and her career.

Risks? You surely don’t mean anyone would punish her for speaking up.

Documents in the case showed that one Kleiner partner, Chi-Hua Chien, arranged a ski trip for entrepreneurs from which women were excluded. When he was asked if a female entrepreneur from one of the companies Kleiner had invested in could come along, Mr. Chien responded in an email that because the trip involved shared accommodations, women probably wouldn’t feel comfortable.

“Why don’t we punt on her and find 2 guys who are awesome,” he wrote. “We can add 4-8 women next year.” There was no ski trip the next year.

Jam tomorrow. We can add 4-8 women next year.

To several women in the industry, the most salient note in Ms. Pao’s complaint was her claim that there was a narrow band of behavior she was expected to adhere to at Kleiner. She was criticized both for being too timid and for being too aggressive, for speaking up too much and for not speaking up enough.

Is that a narrow band, or is it a zero band? Was there actually a sweet spot between talking too much and not talking enough, or did the one slam right into the other leaving no space in between? Curious minds want to know.

Worse, criticisms of her performance were vague and unspecific. In written evaluations by her peers and executives at Kleiner’s portfolio companies, Ms. Pao was often given high marks, but Kleiner partners testified that her failings were a more subtle failure of “chemistry.”

Oh, oh, call on me, I know this one! The subtle failure of chemistry was the emanations of estrogen that wafted around when she was present. Her peers and the executives just didn’t like those emanations. They found them oooooky.

“Many men in the Valley genuinely believe that their company is a meritocracy,” said Karen Catlin, a former software engineer and a former vice president of Adobe Systems. “They think that the gender problem is something that happens somewhere else.”

There’s a name for that. It’s “cognitive dissonance.” They know they’re good guys, and their company is a company of good guys, so the gender problem is something that happens somewhere else, where the guys aren’t so good.

I don’t see that changing any time soon.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And the title goes to

The National Secular Society has awarded the staff ofCharlie Hebdo the annual Secularist of the Year prize, for their courageous response to the terror attack on their Paris office.

Just one week after the attack on 7 January 2015, in which 12 people were killed, the remaining staff ofCharlie Hebdo published an edition of the magazine featuring a depiction of Mohammed and an editorial making a passionate defence of secularism and the right to free expression.

NSS president Terry Sanderson said: “Since the events of 7 January in Paris, Charlie Hebdo has become more than a magazine – it has become an ideal, a symbol of democracy, a rallying cry to those who value freedom and openness in public debate.

“The Charlie Hebdo horror has now joined the endless stream of other outrages committed in the name of Islam. The difference is that it prompted a commitment to free speech and secularism on the part of millions of people.

“Looked at objectively, blasphemy is a ridiculous concept, transparently invented to protect eminently arguable ideas from challenge.

“Ridiculous it may be, but it is also lethal.

“From the forty or so nominations that we received, there was one that could not be ignored, that was the obvious and only possible winner.”

The award was presented at the annual Secularist of the Year event, hosted by the NSS at a lunch event in central London. The lunch was attended by members, supporters and honorary associates of the National Secular Society, including Professors Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. Also present were a number of progressive Muslim campaigners and representatives of organisations working to combat Islamic extremism.

My friend Tehmina Kazi was there.

Martin Rowson, the Guardian cartoonist, accepted the award on behalf of the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo said it would donate the £5000 prize money for the award to the fund supporting the families of the murdered cartoonists.

In addition to the main Secularist of the Year award, the NSS also acknowledged a number of others for their work in the past year.

Lord Avebury was recognised with a special award for his invaluable support of the NSS, and for being a tireless advocate for secularism. Lord Avebury recently tabled a Bill to abolish chancel repair liability and has spoken out in Parliament against collective worship in schools and new legislation allowing prayers to be held as part of council meetings.

Maajid Nawaz, who couldn’t attend the event, was recognised for his work at Quilliam, countering Islamic extremism and promoting secularism.

Helen Bailey and Elaine Hession were acknowledged for their efforts in helping the National Secular Society campaign to abolish chancel repair liability.

A number of previous Secularist of the Year winners attended the event, including Peter Tatchell, who was awarded the prize in 2012, and Safak Pavey, the Turkish opposition MP who was named Secularist of the Year in 2014.

Hold your pens up high.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Richard Dawkins tweeted yesterday:

changerofbits ‏@changerofbits 21 hours ago
@RichardDawkins Why are trusting anything to Jonathan Monsarrat at RDF/SPI? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/02413623115/bogus-lawsuit-plus-threats-to-those-who-write-about-it-leads-to-epic-response.shtml … Because he’ll sue you if you don’t?

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins
@changerofbits If, by RDF, you mean the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Monsarrat has no connection with it.

At the Richard Dawkins Foundation:

Here’s another one.

And then there’s this public Facebook announcement in 2013:

Call for Volunteers

Johnny Monsarrat is a volunteer traveling with the Richard Dawkins book tour, which is coming to DC on Sep 29 and 30.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation is about to announce some big new projects and to make an impact with the media and decision-makers, we need numbers. Our goal is to add 100,000 signups to our newsletter by November 1. At each event, we need a dozen volunteers to help us work a table in the lobby, speak with people, and pass around clipboards with sign up forms. Free tickets to the event will be provided to volunteers on the evening of the event IF it is not sold out.

Please contact Johnny directly via email if you can help: johnny@secularconnect.org

And there’s Johnny Monsarrat’s own page at the Secular Policy Institute:

Click to enlarge.

So, no connection with the Richard Dawkins Foundation? No connection at all?

Really?

H/t Hj Hornbeck

Updating to add: More – lots more – in a new post by Hj Hornbeck.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

An ad aimed at Brendan O’Neill and people who admire him.

It’s not fake. It’s from a campaign for Basics, a clothing company in Chennai. Here’s the ad with the man in question.

Source

It’s the Clarkson-O’Neill version of “manhood” – be the biggest bully you can possibly be, and congratulate yourself on being it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The BBC provides a suitably barely-literate piece on the subject of the closure of Loaded magazine.

Loaded magazine, one of the so-called “lads’ magazines” of the mid-1990s, is to close down, publisher Simian said.

…

At its peak, its diet of football, alcohol, and music brought it a six-figure readership. But as it went through several ownership changes, circulation fell.

Loaded and other “lads’ mags” attracted criticism from feminists and others for the number of scantily-clad women in each edition.

Because feminists and others have the daft idea that women shouldn’t be considered consumer items along with alcohol and music.

Analysis: David Sillito, media and arts correspondent

Drinking, football, drugs, music and pictures of girls usually wearing only underwear or less, Loaded defined the “lad” culture of the 1990s. But things have moved on. Sales have in 15 years fallen from 350, 000 to around 30, 000. Its weekly rival Nuts has already gone under.

However, that does not mean the market for girls, games, gadgets and a visual mixture – of funny, revolting and humiliating pictures has died – it’s just migrated to Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and hundreds of other websites.

See what I mean about barely-literate? Yeesh.

The Lad Bible, for instance, is only three years old but is in Britain receiving (according to Alexa web analytics) more web traffic than the two leading online papers – the Daily Mail and The Guardian.

Magazine culture is dying not “Lad Culture” and you can see it every time you log on.

Was the copy editor home with a cold that day or what?

Anyway, Loaded is leaving but “Lad Culture” lives on, to cheers and confetti from Brendan O’Neill.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ted Cruz might first of all want to get his facts straight.

Speaking to the Texas Tribune on Tuesday, Cruz said that contemporary “global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers.”

“You know it used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier,” he said.

Nuh-uh-uh. It was not accepted scientific wisdom that the Earth was flat in Galileo’s day. (Think about it. If it had been, why the hell would Cristoforo Colombo have sailed west in the expectation of reaching China?) It hadn’t been for a long time.

In Cruz’s opinion, when it comes to climate change, his denier position places him alongside 17th Century scientist Galileo Galilei, who was also considered to be denying the mainstream knowledge of his day. According to Cruz’s logic, he is taking the minority view that human-caused climate change is not happening, just as Galileo took the minority view that the scientific method should be trusted over the Catholic Church.

Yeah well, that’s related to the old “they laughed when I sat down at the piano” fallacy, aka the “they laughed at Beethoven” fallacy. In the demotic: just because they laugh at you doesn’t mean you’re Beethoven. A minority view isn’t automatically true by virtue of being a minority view. Also, of course, it’s highly debatable how “mainstream” the idea of climate change is.

As the website Skeptical Science points out, “the comparison is exactly backwards.”

“Modern scientists follow the evidence-based scientific method that Galileo pioneered,” the website reads. “Skeptics who oppose scientific findings that threaten their world view are far closer to Galileo’s belief-based critics in the Catholic Church.”

President Obama seems to have gotten the analogy correct when he said in 2013 that “we don’t have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society” when it comes to doing something about climate change.

It’s more amusing, too.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via Reba Boyd Wooden of CFI-Indiana, the IndyStar shared a photo of the governor signing Indiana’s new RFRA.

Here’s a photo of Governor Mike Pence signing the controversial “religious freedom” bill this morning in a private ceremony in his Statehouse office, tweeted by official Twitter account.

We’re updating this story as fast as we’re learning more information: http://indy.st/19nosUu

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Reuters reports:

Saudi Arabia has decided to send its envoy back to Sweden, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Friday, in a move that will ease a diplomatic row over the Arab country’s human rights record.

I hope that doesn’t mean Sweden has crawled or begged or, especially, withdrawn anything Margot Wallström said.

Saudi Arabia withdrew its envoy earlier this month over Swedish criticism of the monarchy’s treatment of women and dissidents.

In January, Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom tweeted criticism of Saudi Arabia’s flogging of human rights activist blogger Raif Badawi, calling it a “cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression”.

She has also criticized policies affecting women, who cannot drive cars and need permission from a male guardian for many decisions.

Riyadh then canceled a speech Wallstrom had been due to give to the League of Arab States, and Stockholm later ended a long-standing defense cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia.

Wallström said true things about Saudi Arabia. I hope she hasn’t been forced to take any of them back.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown notes and laments a retreat from progressive values among Muslims.

The hijab, jilbab, burqa and niqab are visible signs of this retreat from progressive values.

This article will divide people. Women I respect and like wear hijabs and jilbabs to articulate their faith and identity. Others do so to follow their dreams, to go into higher education or jobs. And an increasing number are making a political statement. I am not assuming that the coverings all represent simple oppression. What I am saying is that many women who take up the veil, in any of its forms, do so without delving fully into its implications, significance or history. Their choice, even if independently made, may not be fully examined.

The claim that it’s a “choice” and that that fact preempts everything else that could be said about it is very peculiar given the existence of so many places where it’s not only not a choice, it’s enforced with violence, including lethal violence.

Huda Shaarawi set up the Egyptian women’s union in the early 1920s. One day in 1923, as she disembarked from a train in Cairo, she threw off her veil and claimed her right to be visible. Educated Iranian women started feminist magazines and campaigned against the veil around the same time. These pioneers have been written out of history or are dismissed as western stooges by some contemporary Muslim intellectuals.

After the transformative 60s, Muslim feminists resumed the fight for equality. European rule was over. It was time. The Moroccan academic Fatema Mernissi, Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi and the Pakistani scholar Riffat Hassan all argued for female emancipation. They rightly saw the veil as a a tool and symbol of oppression and subservience. Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil ( 1975) is a classic text. So too El Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve (1975).

Mona Eltahawy’s Headscarves and Hymens can now be added to that list.

But do those who choose to veil think of women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and even the west, who are prosecuted, flogged, tortured or killed for not complying? This is not a freestanding choice – it can’t be. Although we hear from vocal British hijabis and niqabis, those who are forced cannot speak out. A fully burqaed woman once turned up at my house, a graduate, covered in cuts, burns, bruises and bites. Do we know how many wounded, veiled women walk around hidden among us?

The burqa has many uses.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wo! Here’s one bit of good news amid all the horrors and fatuities – Priss Choss can’t keep his bullying letters to government ministers a secret after all.

The UK supreme court has cleared the way for the publication of secret letters written by Prince Charles to British government ministers, declaring that an attempt by the state to keep them concealed was unlawful.

The verdict – the culmination of a 10-year legal fight by the Guardian – is a significant blow for the government, which has been battling to protect the Prince of Wales from scrutiny over his “particularly frank” interventions on public policy.

In 2012, Dominic Grieve, then attorney general, said the correspondence contained the prince’s “most deeply held personal views and beliefs” and disclosure might undermine his “position of political neutrality”, which he might not easily be able to recover when king.

Interesting argument, isn’t it – the priss has been the opposite of politically neutral, so that has to be kept secret, so that people will think he’s politically neutral, even though he isn’t.

The 27 letters were sent between Charles and ministers in seven government departments in 2004 and 2005. Five of the seven judges in the supreme court ruled in favour of the Guardian’s case to see the letters. The verdict was delivered on Thursday by Lord Neuberger, the president of the court.

The judges concluded that Grieve did not have the legal power to veto a freedom of information tribunal, which had decided the memos should be published.

Cameron doesn’t see it the way I do. His government might redact parts of the letters. He thinks the royals should be meddling with government, because after all, they are the royals.

Cameron said: “This is a disappointing judgment and we will now consider how to release these letters. This is about the principle that senior members of the royal family are able to express their views to government confidentially. I think most people would agree this is fair enough.”

Not a bit of it. What’s fair about it? What’s “fair” about inheriting a right to whisper in the government’s ear?

In 2012, the tribunal ruled that the correspondence between the prince and ministers in Tony Blair’s government should be made public. The tribunal said it was in the public interest “for there to be transparency as to how and when Prince Charles seeks to influence government”.

Grieve overruled the tribunal, arguing that publication of the letters between September 2004 and April 2005 would seriously damage the Prince of Wales’s kingship.

All the more reason to make them public, you fucking fool. “Oh no, you mustn’t see the letters, because if you did, you wouldn’t want him as king at any price.” “Oh well then, you’re right, keep them hidden.” Yeah that’s not how this works.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Speaking of cartoons, and cartoonists…two cartoonists in Turkey have been sentenced to 11 months in prison for a cartoon about Erdoğan.

A senior Council of Europe (CoE) official has expressed concern over an increase in the number of criminal cases for alleged insults against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, condemning the recent sentencing of two Turkish cartoonists, Bahadır Baruter and Özer Aydoğan.

“I am very concerned about reports from Turkey indicating that there is an increase in the number of criminal cases for alleged insults against the president of the Turkish Republic. In this connection, I condemn the recent sentencing of cartoonists Bahadır Baruter and Özer Aydoğan,” CoE Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks said in a written statement March 26.

If anyone is supposed to be wide open to satire and mockery, it’s people who have real power over others, like oh say heads of state for example.

“This sentence is misguided and, along with a pattern of criminal prosecutions, sends a chilling message to media professionals and all those who want to exercise their right to free expression. I urge the authorities to decriminalize defamation, including by repealing the offence of insulting the president of the Republic, in order to restore a more serene climate in which freedom of expression can be safely exercised.”

Baruter and Aydoğan, cartoonists for the popular satirical weekly Penguen, were sentenced to 11 months in prison over a satirical piece on free speech, in which they were convicted of including a hidden gesture which was said to “insult” Erdoğan. In the cartoon, Erdoğan is seen asking whether officials at the new presidential palace in Ankara have prepared “any journalists to slaughter,” referring to ritual sacrifice in Islam, to mark his inauguration.

A popular satirical weekly, eh? Why does that sound familiar…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)