To my surprise – I’m always surprised, no matter how repeatedly I see these things; I seem to be incurably naïve – I’m seeing people on Twitter complaining about “radical feminists” making connections between Elliot Rodger’s noisy explicit hatred of women and his murder of some women. It turns out it’s “selfish” and “grandstanding” to make this connection, even though Elliot Rodgers made it himself.

Steve Zara @sjzara

I see a really important question – can the extremely common harassment of women be enabling of violence? I have no idea.

Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale

@sjzara Plus, the #YesAllWomen thing is a fear-mongering stunt that encourages women to see themselves as perpetual victims. Fuck that.

Steve Zara @sjzara

@mirandachale My particular concern is that it’s grandstanding fuelled by tragedy.

Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale

@sjzara Exactly. People who take advantage of a tragedy in that way are extremely selfish. It’s heartbreaking to see, really.

“Grandstanding fuelled by tragedy”? What does that even mean? People are making the connection between noisy misogyny and violence to…show off? Why would that be the case? How would that work?

Am I “grandstanding” for instance when I pay a lot of attention – public, blog post and social media attention – to the kidnapping and enslavement of schoolgirls in Nigeria by a violently misogynist group of Islamists? Is that “grandstanding”? Is it grandstanding to make a connection between Boko Haram’s misogynist theocratic views and its actions?

And what is “extremely selfish” about making a connection between misogyny and violence? What is even a little bit selfish about that? I don’t see it; I can’t see it.

These aren’t the scruffy pseudonymous photoshoppers, these are serious people, yet here they are fretting (or raging) about the “grandstanding” and “extreme selfishness” of people who see a connection between pervasive misogyny and an incident of violence against women.

It’s baffling.

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

There’s also a good article in The Bell Jar on Elliott Rodger and his hatred of women and misogyny in general.

He was an active member of the “PUAhate, an online forum (which has been down since the shootings) dedicated to “revealing the scams, deception and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to mislead men and profit from them.” And just to clarify, they’re not revealing these scams because of how vile and misogynistic they are, but rather because these men have tried these techniques and still failed to trick women into sleeping with them. These are men who both feel entitled to have sex with women and also blame all women everywhere for not fucking them. See, they want to have sex with a woman because that’s what they deservejust for being dudes, but they also hate women for withholding what they view as rightfully theirs. And I mean, boy do they ever hate women. The PUAhate forum has, according to an article on The Hairpin, threads with titles like “Are ugly women completely useless to society?” and “Have any hot women ever committed suicide?”

Most men like that don’t kill women. I bet most of them don’t treat women very well though.

Last night, shortly before going on his killing spree, Rodger posted a video on YouTube to serve as his manifesto. In it, he declares that he’s a 22 year old virgin, and then goes on to say:

‘College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness. It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me. But I will punish you all for it,’ he says in the video, which runs to almost seven minutes.

‘I’m going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoilt, stuck-up, blonde slut that I see inside there. All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them,’

‘I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one. The true alpha male …’

Once at a book group, years ago, we asked about the roots of misogyny, and a guy there gave exactly that explanation. He gave it as one who experienced it that way, too, which was slightly unnerving.

This is what the Men’s Rights Movement teaches its members. Especially vulnerable, lonely young men who have a hard time relating to women. It teaches them that women, and especially feminist women, are to blame for their unhappiness. It teaches them that women lie, that they cheat, trick and manipulate. It teaches them that men as a social class are dominant over women and that they are entitled to women’s bodies. It teaches them that women who won’t give them what they want deserve some kind of punishment.

We need to talk about this. The media, especially, needs to address this. We live in a culture that constantly devalues women in a million little different ways, and that culture has evolved to include a vast online community of men who take that devaluation to its natural conclusion: brutal, violent hatred of women. And I don’t mean that all these men have been physically violent towards women, but rather that they use violent, degrading, dehumanizing language when discussing women. Whose bodies, just as a reminder, they feel completely entitled to.

It’s not a good arrangement.

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

Simon collected posts by Elliot Rodger on the Bodybuilding.com forum in a Storify. Rodgers is the guy who shot a bunch of people in Santa Barbara because nobody liked him and because women are shit. Be warned.

Women don’t deserve rights. They are evil, sadistic beasts who whore themselves out to degenerate men and ignore the men who actually deserve them.

I’m tired of seeing losers with hot chicks Seriously, today at my college I saw this short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic, and he had a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat. What on earth is up with that?!?!? I would climb mount Everest 10 times just to have a girl like that with me. I drive a BMW coupe and I’ve struggled all my life to get a girlfriend. What’s wrong with this world? Does anyone else get disturbed and offended when you see sights like this? Someone make sense of this ridiculousness.

Well, it makes a good point. It’s been my life struggle to get a beautiful, white girl; while that guy seemed to get one to hang out with him easily, despite having a worse car and being less white than me. I deserve her more. She should be in my passenger seat.

No hot blonde in his car, so out come the guns.

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

So now I’ve looked at it.

This is what it is; it is this.

Policy Recommendations on Tax Policy

[an image of a tax form with a pen lying across it]

The same tax rules should apply to all non-profit organizations, whether religious or secular. Because of separation of church and state, government should not provide tax loopholes to religious organizations, or excuse them from the disclosures that non-religious organizations must make.

Find an overview of our public policy recommendations touching on:

• Tax Loopholes for Religious Organizations

• Political Endorsement from the Pulpit

That’s it, that’s what there is. There’s nothing more. That’s their resource for us on the subject of policy on tax policy.

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

So you go to the Global Secular Council’s Issues section, which it has seven of which.

Constitutional Law
Discrimination
Education
Health and Safety
International
Military
Tax Policy

Already that looks odd, because how can constitutional law be global? And are they pronouncing on tax policy for the whole world? And the global military? And if they’re global, isn’t is all supposed to be international, so why is there an International section?

So we’ll look at them.

Constitutional Law

Uh oh. Bad start. The image, for one -

I recognize it. Lots of people will recognize it. It’s not global. It’s Murkan.

And the first paragraph -

The first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights is the right of every American to a secular government that does not subscribe to religious beliefs or prohibit citizen engagement in private religious practices. It is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. A religion having many members, or an action being popular, provides no constitutional argument in favor of entangling religion and law.

Guys guys guys guys – what are you thinking? This is strictly American; United Statesean. Have you completely forgotten that you called yourself global? This is not global.

It’s also, frankly, not interesting or useful. Why do we need this new thing to teach everyone the alphabet? We’ve already got lots of secular and atheist lawyers. We don’t need to start at the beginning.

They tell us to go look at their recommendations.

Find an overview of our public policy recommendations touching on:

-a menu of six items. Ok, I pick The Free Exercise Clause. What do I get? Three short bland paragraphs. Guys guys guys guys the subject is bigger than that, more complicated than that, more interesting than that. What on earth is the point of this supposed to be?

And, as I mentioned, it’s entirely American. There’s nothing global about it.

This gets more embarrassing the more I look at it. It’s like the “Brights” fiasco blown up into a whole pseudo-”Council” thingummy.

Ok going back a step what do we find under the “Issue” where they do turn their attention to the “global” – the Issue called “International.”

Policy Recommendations on International Issues

Freedom of religion, belief, and expression are fundamental American values. They are enshrined in the Constitution and echoed in international human rights law. As a leader in the international community, the U.S. should actively participate in global efforts to protect these vital freedoms.

That’s it. That’s all there is. I swear; I’m not making it up. You can see for yourself. Well there is a graphic of a world map, so at least we can see that they know there’s a world outside the US.

I wouldn’t mind if they’d just set up a blog for themselves. Of course not! I think everyone should have a blog. But they tell us they’re YOUR RESOURCE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY. This isn’t much of a resource center. They tell us they’ve got a lock on the smartest people in the world to do this thing. They tell us they’re global.

Nope, nope, nope, nope.

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

The Global Secular tweeter is still saying opposite things from one tweet to the next – on the one hand it’s trying hard, it means well, it’s acting in good faith, it’s in earnest – on the other hand it calls me “my dear @OpheliaBenson” and “Ms Ophelia.”

On the one hand it’s totally answering our questions, on the other hand it favorites a tweet telling it to ignore criticism because it’s utterly baseless and obsessive.

Miranda Celeste Hale @mirandachale

@SecularCouncil I wouldn’t bother trying to reason w/those who are currently attacking you. Their criticism is utterly baseless & obsessive

Matt Penfold @mattpenfold_UK

@mirandachale@SecularCouncilDo you really want to be admitting that lack of racial and national diversity is not something to worry about?

Secular Council @SecularCouncil

@mattpenfold_UK@mirandachale Said it was something to worry about, several times. And, that we are working on it!

But then why favorite a tweet urging you to ignore critics and saying, untruthfully, that the criticism is utterly baseless & obsessive?

At this point I wouldn’t “follow” these “leaders” out of a malodorous swamp full of hungry alligators and mosquitoes.

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

The New York Times religion reporter Mark Oppenheimer did a big piece yesterday on ex-Muslims at Women in Secularism 3. 

Anyone leaving a close-knit belief-based community risks parental disappointment, rejection by friends and relatives, and charges of self-loathing. The process can be especially difficult and isolating for women who have grown up Muslim, who are sometimes accused of trying to assimilate into a Western culture that despises them.

“It was incredibly painful,” Heina Dadabhoy, 26, said during a discussion called “Women Leaving Religion,” which also featured three former Christians and one formerly observant Jew, the novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. “My entire life, my identity, was being a good Muslim woman.”

That was a great panel – it was a week ago, Saturday morning, before the one I was on, about multiculturalism.

There are few role models for former Muslims, and although the religion’s history contains some notable skeptics, very few of them are women. Today, Muslim feminists like Irshad Manji and Amina Wadud advocate more liberal attitudes toward women in Islam, but neither has left the faith. And many atheists resist identifying with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-American (by way of the Netherlands) whose vehement criticism of Islam is seen, even by many other atheists, as harsh.

One group that seeks to bridge that gap is Ex-Muslims of North America, which had an information table in the exhibition hall. Members of the group, founded last year in Washington and Toronto, recognize that their efforts might seem radical to some, and take precautions when admitting new members. Those interested in joining are interviewed in person before they are told where the next meeting will be held. The group has grown quickly to about a dozen chapters, in cities including Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York and San Francisco.

One of the group’s founders who was at the conference, Sadaf Ali, 23, an Afghan-Canadian, said that she had once been “a fairly practicing Muslim.”

But she was a rebellious child – but she also struggled with depression and thought the Quran would help.

But as a university student, her feelings began to change.

“As I started to investigate the religion, I realized I was talking to myself,” Ms. Ali said. “Nobody was listening to me. I had just entered the University of Toronto, and critical thinking was a big part of my studies. I have an art history and writing background, and I realized every verse I had come across” — in the Quran — “was explicitly or implicitly sexist.”

Quickly, her faith crumbled.

And now she is free.

The members of Ex-Muslims are adamant that they respect others’ right to practice Islam. The group’s motto is “No Bigotry and No Apologism,” and text on its website is inclusive: “We understand that Muslims come in all varieties, and we do not and will not partake in erasing the diversity within the world’s Muslims.”

But they are equally adamant that it is still too difficult for Muslims inclined to atheism to follow their thinking where it may lead. Whereas skeptical Christians or Jews can take refuge in reformist wings of their tradition, religious Muslims generally insist on the literal truth of the Quran.

“I would say it’s maybe 0.1 percent who are willing to challenge the foundations of the faith,” said Nas Ishmael, another founder of the Ex-Muslims group who attended the conference.

It was thrilling to meet them all, with Taslima as the magnet.

I talked to Mark Oppenheimer on the phone yesterday, about a different subject.

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

Still working hard to build ties with the secular community…or something…

Matt Penfold @mattpenfold_uk 1h

@secularcouncil Of the 7 “issues” on your website only one is not about the US. Does only the US matter ? And do you know what global means?

Secular Council @SecularCouncil

We think we know what global means, @mattpenfold_UK: Our resource breadth. You’re right, though; our home base and starting focus is the US.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson

Your what? What does “resource breadth” mean? A Global Council is one that acts globally.

Secular Council @SecularCouncil

@mattpenfold_UK And we will, my dear @OpheliaBenson, we will! The Tweeters can’t stop us.

So much for the beloved “secular community” eh – if we ask our “thought leaders” questions, they will blow us off as mere pesky Tweeters.

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

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti is back, after almost ten years.

The last time I was at the Birmingham Rep, I was advised by West Midlands police to leave the building. Protests against my play Behzti (Dishonour) were becoming increasingly heated and I was told I was in danger. I arrived home in London, and hours later a police officer called to inform me of a threat to abduct and murder me. I laughed in disbelief. He didn’t laugh; he told me to get out of my flat.

The next day, after a huge demonstration outside the theatre, the Rep pulled the play. I was devastated. As the author I felt strongly that I had placed myself in the firing line, that I could and should endure the venom of the protesters. But when the Rep cancelled Behzti, it shattered me.

All because her play made “the Sikh community” look less than perfect.

My experience showed me that freedom of expression is precious, both as a gift and a right. When it is taken away, there is nothing left but abject, depressing silence. The only way of filling the void is to create anew. If artistic institutions honestly want brave work, then they must do as artists do – overcome fear in order to say what others cannot and will not, whatever the cost.

I passionately agree with the principle but have no idea if I would be able to perform it in practice. Hats off to Bhatti.

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

I was going to move on today, so as not to be a big mean ol’ bully to the Global Secular Council, but then I read yet another of its Twitter responses to me and found that moving on would not be possible.

It was alternating between rebuking me for judging them “by the color of their skin” and saying they are working hard on diversity. Well that’s unclear. What do they mean by “working hard on diversity” if it has nothing to do with “the color of their skin”? “Diversity” is simply a (very stale by now) buzzword used for the purpose of avoiding the mention of race (aka “skin color”) or sex or national origin etc etc. The Twitter account seemed to want to have it both ways – to sneer from a great height at talk of “skin color” while still patting itself on the back for “working on diversity.” (Then there’s a separate question of why it didn’t do this “working on diversity” before it went live instead of after – a question I also asked and got no real answer to.)

So I asked.

@SecularCouncil Which is it? You hate judging by skin or you work hard on diversity?

Secular Council @SecularCouncil 15 h

Both! They are not mutually exclusive. We hate exclusion or hate based on skin-color. We love inclusion across the board.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h

So you’re accusing me of exclusion or hate. On what grounds?

Secular Council @SecularCouncil 15 h

Nope! Not accusing you of anything, except poor word choice in describing what you don’t like about our Council members.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h

What’s wrong with it? I said you need to add “some people who are NOT pale US/UK males” – point being that’s not global.

Secular Council @SecularCouncil 14 h

We already discussed our use of the word Global, Ophelia, and we’re still very sorry it offends you.

See why I had to give up the idea of leaving the Global council alone? That reply is so clueless, so rude, so patronizing, so off the mark, so petulant, so stupid – that leaving it alone just isn’t an option.

This is our “movement” too after all. It’s our “community” too. Ridiculous clueless arrogant shit like this gives us all a bad name. If we all look the other way they’ll just keep at it.

But cheer up, there’s also a bonus hilarity.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h

Do you have a list of approved euphemisms?

Audra LA @Audra_LA 14h

Are you serious? Pale is not a slur and accurately describes your lack of diversity.

Secular Council @SecularCouncil 14h

We already discussed our use of the word Global, Ophelia, and we’re still very sorry it offends you.

Corvus Whiteneck @CorvusWhiteneck 12h

“We love inclusion across the board” … unless we’re talking about a publicity photo. @OpheliaBenson

Secular Council @SecularCouncil 11h

Unfortunately, you can only take photos with people who are currently at dinner with you.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha really? That’s the only time and place you can take photos? I did not know that!

No, I’m kidding, that’s wrong. Secular Council is wrong. You can take photos at other times and in other situations. Especially publicity photos. Especially especially publicity photos for your shiny new Global group that you’re setting up. You know what you can even do? You can arrange to do that photo specially. You can do it not as part of dinner with some of your pals, but as a special appointment that you set up and meet because it’s that important.

But clearly this is part of their problem. Their idea of who this Global Council should be is…their pals. The people they have dinner with. The gang. Oh and then it turns out they’re mostly men and they’re all pale and they’re not Global…and it turns out a few people ask them rude questions about that…so it turns out they have to do something about that before more people notice…but surely while they scurry to do that it will help to explain that they simply set up their Global Council with people they like to have dinner with. That way everyone will understand, surely. Surely.

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

PZ takes a look at the Global Secular Council Debut and compares how that’s being run to how he and Ed thought about Freethought Blogs when they were setting it up.

Will they be effective? I looked at their Issues page, and it’s rather high-mindedly vague. For instance, one issue isInternational Human Rights. I’m glad they’re for ‘em, but after a scant 3 paragraphs that consist of platitudes, they present their summary:

POLICY RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. government should apply political pressure whenever possible to countries violating their international human rights obligations.

So, the Global Secular Council’s advice is that the US should do something about it?

I had to stop and laugh for about 3 minutes. I’m so glad they have all those EXPERTS to come up with that groundbreaking new POLICY RECOMMENDATION.

They’re not going to accomplish much if they’re just going to announce a set of goals on a website and then pose wisely to convince other people to go do the actual work, somehow.

I’m always going to be suspicious of an ad hoc group that assembles itself, declares itself the leader, and then tells everyone to follow on the strength of the prestige of their team. That’s not how real, functional organizations work. “BE IN CHARGE” is not a mission statement.

As a counter-example, look at Freethought Blogs. It’s an organization. When Ed Brayton and I were discussing setting it up, we did not begin by saying we’re really, really smart, and we should take charge and lead the whole atheist movement — we had a more reasonable and limited and specific goal. We wanted to set up a platform where we could write freely, and where we could create a shared space for people who wanted to promote equality and diversity within the movement…and thereby amplify the voices of all those people with broader social concerns than simply not believing in gods.

Mission, then framework to do it, and only then people to do the doing. This Global outfit seems to have thought, “Oooh we have all these shiny thought-leaders going to waste; let’s call them a GLOBAL COUNCIL so that everyone will be excited.” And now they’re surprised and puzzled that some of us are saying it seems to be a clusterfuck.

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

Originally a comment on To I, to she, to he, to they

So, quite aside from anything else here (and FTR, I completely agree with you about this org): I’m sick of ‘ideological’ being a dirty word. Having a coherent, connected set of principles that inform how you think is not a bad thing. Having words and concepts and ways of understanding based on them that frame your politics at large is a good thing.

What’s clearer to me by the day (and one of the reasons my blog’s called Godlessness in Theory) is that the limp, illiterate brand of skepticism proffered by many of the GSC’s people, which prides itself on being ‘rational’ and ‘evidence-based’ at the loss of any context anywhere, is un-ideological to a fault.

When we regularly have to explain to you the value of philosophy and sociology, the best definitions of sex and race, the actual relevance of empire to the way we talk about religions (all secular in-fights from the past year) and countless other fundamental things… that’s not a sign you’re being a Tru Skeptic and resisting Orwellian brainwashing. It’s a sign you’re failing to think in enough depth.

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

This is the music Lauren played 3 minutes before each talk or panel was scheduled to start, as a signal to everyone to come in and sit down and be quiet.

Schoolhouse Rock: Women’s Suffrage Movement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFOieRHRzh8

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

They’re adding stuff, the Top of Their Field geniuses at The Global Secular Council. We get to watch them add stuff.

They’ve added a page for something called The Bella & Stella Foundation, which has a link at the bottom of the Team page. It’s some sweet whimsy-whamsy so that we’ll know they don’t take themselves too seriously. (Right, because a few US/UK white guys declaring themselves a Global Council has no trace of taking themselves too seriously.)

These two furry heathens do not suffer fools lightly, as they are both staunch proponents of the separation of church and state. When lounging in direct sunlight, they have a propensity for summoning the unwitting to their soft stomachs. A simple enough gambit, they let others pet them for the perfectly calculated amount of time, before the naïve are swatted at with more speed than a Hitchens one-liner.

Both have advanced degrees in the theory and practice of self-cleansing, and follow in the pursuit of each other’s genius to Ph.Ds in cat-naptology.

Isn’t that just adorable? Doesn’t it make you forget all about wondering what the hell this handful of white mostly-males from the US/UK has to do with anything global? Aren’t Bella and Stella just a perfectly fine substitute for people with some actual global reach and experience? Why wonder where Taslima Nasreen and Maryam Namazie and Gita Sahgal and Pragna Patel are when you can have Bella and Stella?

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

Also…

Here’s how the left margin of their Twitter account looks.

Oh really? My and our resource center for international policy? Really?

What makes it that? Who says it’s that? How can it possibly be that?

There’s not a trace of internationalism in their lineup. Not a whiff. There’s not one person who’s not pale, when internationally and globally, a lot more people are not pale than are pale. This joke of a “Global” council looks as if some twenty or thirty conceited Yanks and Brits have gotten together to reinvent the East India Company. I suppose Shermer wants to play the John Stuart Mill part, since Mill used to take his trousers off every day when he got to the office.

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

Oh I see the “Global” Secular Council (populated exclusively by Anglophones from the US and the UK plus one Swedish guy) has a Twitter account. I just replied to its “We’re live!” tweet by asking what makes them “Global”. I don’t suppose they’ll reply but I would really like to know.

But also interesting is that in that tweet they included the original of the front page masthead photo that we’ve been talking about. It’s different, and different in an interesting way.

See there? On the opposite end from the Shermer-Rogers end, there’s Bill Nye – but apparently they like the Shermer grab so much that they feel it’s worth the price of not showing Bill Nye on the masthead. They want the first thing people see to be Shermer grabbing a woman and mugging like a frat boy, rather than Bill Nye not grabbing or mugging.

Strange choice.

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

Lots of people are talking about Laura Hudson’s article in Wired on how to curb online abuse. I liked this bit in particular:

Really, freedom of speech is beside the point. Facebook and Twitter want to be the locus of communities, but they seem to blanch at the notion that such communities would want to enforce norms—which, of course, are defined by shared values rather than by the outer limits of the law. Social networks could take a strong and meaningful stand against harassment simply by applying the same sort of standards in their online spaces that we already apply in our public and professional lives. That’s not a radical step; indeed, it’s literally a normal one. Wishing rape or other violence on women or using derogatory slurs, even as “jokes,” would never fly in most workplaces or communities, and those who engaged in such vitriol would be reprimanded or asked to leave. Why shouldn’t that be the response in our online lives?

Why indeed?

What would our social networks look like if their guidelines and enforcement reflected real-life community norms? If Riot’s experiments are any guide, it’s unlikely that most or even many users would deem a lot of the casual abuse, the kind that’s driving so many people out of online spaces, to be acceptable. Think about how social networks might improve if—as on the gaming sites and in real life—users had more power to reject abusive behavior. Of course, different online spaces will require different solutions, but the outlines are roughly the same: Involve users in the moderation process, set defaults that create hurdles to abuse, give clearer feedback for people who misbehave, and—above all—create a norm in which harassment simply isn’t tolerated.

Let’s do that.

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

Right Wing Watch tells us how the American Center for Law and Justice – which was founded by Pat Robertson to be the opposite of the ACLU – likes religious freedom in the dear US but not so much outside that cozy god-loving gun-toting country.

Both the European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) and the Slavic Center for Law and Justice (SCLJ) affiliates voiced support for Russia’s 2013 gag order on gay-rights advocacy. In addition, following the 2012 Pussy Riot protest, the SCLJ called for a law criminalizing religious blasphemy. One of its leading attorneys then helped draft one proposed version of the law. 

Religious freedom for me but not for thee.

Shortly after the feminist punk band Pussy Riot staged a protest at a Russian Orthodox cathedral – for which they were ultimately sentenced to two years in a penal colony for “hooliganism” – the SCLJ issued a press release endorsing the efforts of Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, an Orthodox Church official, to criminalize blasphemy, which at the time was punishable by just a small fine. The press release argued that “seemingly innocuous mischief of a few aggressive individuals led to real religious conflicts that posed a threat to people’s lives and health,” and recommending “harsh punishments” for people found guilty of blasphemy.

The press release called for Russian officials “to toughen laws against incitement of religious hatred and hostility, but also against insult to the religious feelings of the faithful and assaults against their shrines and temples. We also believe that there is an urgent need to introduce harsh punishments for disseminating such information on the Internet.”

I suppose the thinking is that religious freedom is for religious people, so blasphemy and protesting in a cathedral don’t count as religious freedom, since no religious person would do such a thing.

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