Sinister.

Imagine that a little-known but increasingly powerful group of ideologues had hatched a plan to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy harkening back to the Dark Ages of Europe, a time when society was governed by the laws and officials of the Catholic Church.

Suppose further that this plan had a scary simple strategy: Recruit bright, young law students; put them through an intensive indoctrination program; place them in plum internships across the country; and watch as they swim upstream until they reach the top of the legal system, where they can create, enforce, and interpret laws according to a legal philosophy infused with fundamentalist Christian theology.

Got it?

Now learn that it’s already here. Sofia Resnick and Sharona Coutts at RH Reality Check report:

Welcome to the world of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, an annual program established in 2000 by the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based nonprofit that is swiftly emerging as a major behind-the-scenes player in many of the nation’s most controversial legal cases involving reproductive rights, sexual justice, and a vast range of other moral and social disputes.

“[T]he Blackstone Fellowship inspires a distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law, and particularly in the areas of public policy and religious liberty,” states the Alliance’s public tax filing. “With this ongoing program, it’s [the Alliance’s] goal to train a new generation of lawyers who will rise to positions of influence and leadership as legal scholars, litigators, judges—perhaps even Supreme Court Justices—who will work to ensure that justice is carried out in America’s courtrooms.”

Um…help.

In Missouri, a former Blackstone Fellow, Kevin Corlew, is running for the state’s 14th congressional district in this year’s elections. Another, Bradley Cowan, is the chief of the administrative law division at the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,according to his profile on LinkedIn. And based on our review of public records, the offices of attorneys and solicitors general in at least eight states—Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia—have hosted Blackstones as interns, jobs in which fellows help draft memos and pleadings for the most powerful lawmakers in their states and, more importantly, forge the contacts that will propel them to their own positions of power.

Mind you, it’s a small number of people, however creepy. But it’s insinuated itself into some key places.

Through legal actions and its various legal training programs, the nonprofit focuses on fighting for the criminalization of abortion; against the rights of LGBT people; for so-called religious liberty (which often comes in the form of defending clients who wish to discriminate against gay people based on their religious beliefs); and for organized Christian prayer in government or public-school settings, such as its most recent victory—last week’s Supreme Court ruling upholding legislative prayer in Town of Greece v. Galloway, in which the Alliance represented the plaintiffs.

Theocrats on the march. I don’t like it.

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

Another one from Anj.

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

MCB Spokesman says he doesn’t believe in segregation between men & women but Allah (SWT) & the Prophet said they must be e.g. in gatherings

MCB Spokesman says that wife’s don’t need to obey their husbands but Allah (SWT) says that they must [Qur'an 4:34] i.e husbands have Qawama!

So I was curious about Qawama, so I looked it up. I found an article at Women Living Under Muslim Laws by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im.

 The most important principle of Shari’a influencing the status and rights of women is the notion of qawama. Qawama has its origin in verse 4:34 of the Koran which states that:

“Men have qawama (guardianship and authority) over women because of the advantage they (men) have over them (women) and because they (men) spend their property in supporting them (women)”.

According to Shari’a interpretations of this verse, men as a group are the guardians of and are superior to women as a group, and the men of a particular family are the guardians of and are superior to the women of that family.

This notion of general and specific qawama has had far reaching consequences for the status and rights of women in both the private and public domains. For example, Shari’a provides that women are disqualified from holding general public office, which involves the exercise of authority over men, because, in keeping with verse 4:34 of the Qur’an men are entitled to exercise authority over women and not the reverse.

It’s in a book; it’s a sentence in a book; therefore millions of women for hundreds of years have had their lives stunted and confined.

I have a really easy solution to this problem of men spending their property in supporting women and thus having “guardianship” over them and being superior to them. Share the support duties, and share the power and the equality. See? See how easy that is? Men shouldn’t be required to do all the money-providing, and women shouldn’t be required to be inferior. Both should be free to arrange things the way both want to. Both should be free to ignore the sentence in the 1700-years-old book. It’s just a book. There are a lot of books. Nobody has to obey that book. It’s an illusion to think you have to.

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

A terrific event in London on August 6 – so all you people who are gathering for the World Humanist Congress in Oxford August 8th could go to this:

“How to Make Enemies and Alienate People – the Philosophy of Offensive and Inappropriate Language”

It’s hosted by our friend Bernard Hurley.

The growth of social media has given an unprecedented opportunity for those who wish to gratuitously offend to actually do so but it has also given an opportunity for those who wish to take offence at mere criticism to express such offence. It’s clear that someone who uses offensive language is doing more than just conveying information, but what exactly are they doing? The job of the philosopher is to clarify, rather than to prescribe and it seems to me that there is urgent need for clarification today. However there has been very little discussion about how offensive language fits into the Philosophy of Language. Drawing on some ideas of Michael Dummett, I shall make some suggestion about how such language might work.

This lecture is part of the 2014 Kant’s Cave Lecture series. As is usual at these lectures there will be plenty of time for discussion afterwards.

http://pfalondon.org/kant.html

Wednesday August 6 at 7:30 p.m.

Exmouth Arms, 1 Starcross Street, NW1 2HR London

I would go to that like a shot if it weren’t 6000 miles away. For many of you it’s just around the corner or a few stops on the tube.

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

More Choudary, because he’s just that good.

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

Some images from the “Rally against Hindu Oppression of Muslims in India” http://www.demotix.com/news/4699759/anjem-choudray-protests-hindu-oppression-muslims#media-4699699 … Khilafah is the answer to India’s problems!

See what he did there? He presents a photo from a Rally against Hindu Oppression of Muslims in India and in the photo we see a poster that shouts ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD! So the idea is that Hindu oppression of Muslims will end because it will be replaced by Muslim oppression of Hindus and everyone else.

What could possibly go wrong?

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

How about a little exegesis on a short sermon by Anjem Choudary:

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

VOTING for anyone to legislate laws is an Act of SHIRK. Remember that Allah will forgive all sins except that partners be set up besides him

Spoken like a true boss-man, Mafia don, tyrant, dictator, king. The one thing that’s not forgivable is the failure to be submissive enough to The One Top Guy. Everything else – torture, murder, enslaving schoolgirls, gang-rape – is forgivable, but not bowing down to Just That One Dude is not forgivable. Why is that?

It’s the principle of the thing.

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

Eg-zactly.

Via Muslim and Exmuslim Women for Secularism

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

That nonsense about Obama not wanting to call Boko Haram terrorists? It’s just another stupid right-wing talking point.

Aside from attacking Michelle Obama for publicly showing concern and lying about President Obama, one of the major spokes in the conservative effort to politicize the kidnapping of 284 schoolgirls in Nigeria has been to criticize the Obama administration for not designating Boko Haram (the group responsible for the abductions) a terrorist organization.

Why, then, is there all this video of President Obama calling Boko Haram a terrorist organization, long before the State Department changed its designation?

The mainstream media has also picked up the narrative. In fact, way back in July of 2013, CNN asked “Why hasn’t the Obama administration labeled ‘Boko Haram’ a terrorist organization?”, when, the month before, there actually was an Obama administration official who called Boko Haram a terrorist organization. Maybe you recognize him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JovoLb5HnhA

Another playful lie shot down.

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

And Jon Stewart retorted.

Stewart tore into Boko Haram and said that #BringBackOurGirls actually proves Twitter can be more useful than you might think at pressuring people to do something. And so in reaction to Limbaugh rolling his eyes at the hashtag activism, Stewart came up with a new hashtag for people to use: #F*ckYouRush. Stewart even contrasted the people speaking out on the girls’ behalf with “that f*cking guy” Limbaugh to show what the two sides are in this argument.

I don’t know. Some people just really should get better hobbies.

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

Via

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

The Law Society is not going to withdraw its practice note on what it takes to be the correct interpretation of “Sharia succession rules.” The Lawyers’ Secular Society has a response.

The LSS had written a detailed open letter to the Law Society on 24 April 2014 with very specific questions (here). Two weeks later, on 8 May 2014, the Law Society eventually responded to that letter (here) but it failed to answer almost all of the LSS’s questions, with no explanation for this refusal.

The LSS also took part in a large public protest outside the Law Society’s offices in Chancery Lane, London on 28 April 2014, alongside human rights campaigners and women’s rights campaigners, but this appears to have had no effect on the Law Society. (You can listen to LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian’s speech here and you can read it here.)

Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, has now intervened in the debate and told the Law Society it must not “undermine” British legal principles with its guidance.

Commenting, LSS Secretary Charlie Klendjian said:

“Naturally we are very disappointed – and actually shocked – at the Law Society’s decision to keep its disturbing sharia practice note despite huge public criticism.

“It is not the Law Society’s business to offer guidance on Islamic theology, even if there is “demand” for it, because this gives sharia law the respectability and credibility of a legal discipline within our jurisdiction. And it is not the business of any organisation which claims, as the Law Society does, to have a “strong record” on equalities, and which says it aims “to help the profession to promote equalities, inclusion and diversity”, to give guidance to its members which explicitly discriminates against women, non-Muslims, “illegitimate children” and adopted children. The reality is that sharia law is anything but equality, inclusion and diversity.”

Well it is diversity. It’s diverse from things like equality and inclusion.

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

Religious privilege? What do you mean? I don’t see any religious privilege.

Oh, you mean this?

A Harvard club’s plans to stage a satanic “black Mass” were abruptly cancelled Monday after drawing fire from the Archdiocese of Boston and condemnation from the president of the Ivy League school.

Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the New York-based Satanic Temple, told the Boston Globe late Monday that the event was called off because no venue was available.

“Everyone involved, outside of the Satanic Temple, got really scared,” Greaves told the newspaper. “And I don’t necessarily blame them, because I understand that they were getting a lot of vitriolic hate mail, and I don’t think they expected it.”

Greaves was not immediately available for further comment.

A petition to stop the black Mass had garnered 60,000 signatures, according to Aurora Griffin, president of the Harvard Student Catholic Association.

Well but you have to understand – Boston is an officially Catholic city. That’s been decided. The archdiocese gets to say what can happen in and around Boston because Boston is Catholic. They’re not going to say what can happen in your city…unless it too is a Catholic city of course.

The history of black Masses is murky, but Catholics say the intent of such ceremonies is obvious: to mock their rituals and beliefs. The Masses often parody Catholic sacraments, such as Communion, and liturgical vestments.

And obviously that simply cannot be allowed. No one can mock Catholic rituals and beliefs – that’s a national rule, not just a Boston one.

Harvard University President Drew Faust called the plans to reenact a black Mass “abhorrent.”

“It is deeply regrettable that the organizers of this event, well aware of the offense they are causing so many others, have chosen to proceed with a form of expression that is so flagrantly disrespectful and inflammatory,” Faust continued.

The Harvard president said she would allow the black Mass to continue, citing the value of free expression on campus, but planned attend a prayer ceremony Monday night at St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge. The Boston archdiocese scheduled the event as a protest to the black Mass.

Ok I’m going to drop the sarcasm now because I’m too disgusted. That’s just pathetic. We are allowed to be disrespectful of the Catholic church.

The Satanic Temple, which announced the Harvard club’s plans last week, is also behind an effort to place a satanic statue next to a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of Oklahoma’s state Capitol.

The temple does not believe in a real devil but advocates for religious tolerance and pluralism.

Greaves said black Masses began as a protest by people who felt oppressed by their local religious cultures.

But some Catholics say the “black Mass” is more sacrilegious than satirical.

Faust, a noted historian, said:  “The ‘black Mass’ had its historical origins as a means of denigrating the Catholic Church; it mocks a deeply sacred event in Catholicism, and is highly offensive to many in the Church and beyond.”

So what? Catholicism is not some harmless pastime, it’s a massively powerful, harsh, coercive, patriarchal, sex-phobic, harmful religion and institution. However often you use the word “deeply” it remains what it is. We are allowed to mock it. “Sacrilege” is not a thing.

Robert Neugeboren, dean of students and alumni affairs at the Harvard Extension School, said Harvard did not endorse the student group’s decision to stage the black Mass.   The school provides evening and online continuing education courses.

“While we support the ability of all our students to explore difficult issues, we also encourage them to do so in ways that are sensitive to others,” he [s]aid.

Except atheists, apparently, because fuck them, apparently.

Neugeboren said the Harvard Extension School worked with students to defuse some of the controversy surrounding the ceremony.

For instance, he said, a consecrated host – known by Catholics as the Eucharist and believed to be the actual body and blood of Christ – would not be used, he said.

Some Catholic bloggers had expressed outrage at the initial plans to use a consecrated host, calling it “sacrilegious to the highest extent.”

We’re allowed to be “sacrilegious.” We don’t buy any of the belief that make that word appear meaningful, and we’re allowed to say so.

Clooney had said the university’s reaction is insufficient, adding that Harvard’s “spiritual sensitivity” is at stake.

“Since there is no empirical way to show that one host is consecrated while another is not—consecrated hosts do not glow in the dark—there is also no way for anyone but the organizers to know whether a host used in a black mass has been consecrated or not,” Clooney said.

“Catholics at Harvard should not have to be worrying about where Monday’s host comes from.”

Ooh, ooh – he’s onto something here! There is no empirical way to show that one host is consecrated while another is not because “consecration” is a meaningless word, just like “sacrilegious.” Consecrating something doesn’t do anything, and that’s why there is no empirical way to show that one host is consecrated while another is not – see how that works? Extend that thought to all the rest of it and then calm the fuck down and let other people say what they like about Catholicism.

As the archdiocese notes, Pope Francis warned Catholics about the devil recently.

“Maybe some of you might say, ‘But, Father, how old-fashioned you are to speak about the devil in the 21^st century!’ ” the Pope said during a Mass in April.

“But look out, because the devil is present! The devil is here … even in the 21^st century! And we mustn’t be naive, right? We must learn from the Gospel how to fight against Satan.”

No, we should not, you benighted ignoramus. That kind of thinking gets you inquisitions and witch-burnings and genocides.

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

Ezra Resnick writes a Letter to a successful white male.

Congratulations! You’re a successful white male. Or, as you might prefer to put it, you’re a successful person who just happens to be a white male — why would anyone think your gender and race have anything to do with your success? That’s textbook sexism and racism. You worked hard to get where you are. You never asked for special treatment, nor do you recall ever receiving any.

There was discrimination in the past, sure, but that’s all over now. It ended one afternoon in…let’s see…1977 was it? That sounds right.

Now there is perfect total universal equality of opportunity, and all you have to do to know that is look around. Or sit in your armchair and think about looking around – it’s the same thing. People have the jobs they want. There are no signs on doors saying “Go away black people.” Everything’s worked itself out, like rocks rolling down a hillside.

You naturally assume, then, that if women or minorities are underrepresented in certain fields, they must generally be less suited for them, or less interested in them, or less inclined to do the work necessary to succeed in them.

Well obviously. There are women doctors and lawyers on tv; there are black doctors and lawyers on tv. Everything is fixed now. If you didn’t get that job it’s because you didn’t really try.

Nevertheless, you keep hearing talk about “privilege” and “unconscious bias” from people who seem unimpressed by your logical reasoning. In order to silence the agitators, perhaps there is some scientific way to demonstrate the absence of discrimination in our society?

We could perform a controlled experiment. For example, we could send emails to university professors from fictional prospective students seeking to discuss research opportunities prior to applying to a doctoral program, varying only the name of the fictional student to signal gender and race — and discover that faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from white males (particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions). Or, we could send fictitious resumes in reply to help-wanted ads, varying only the name on the resume to sound either white or African American — and discover that white names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Or, we could ask university science faculty to rate a fictional student application for a laboratory manager position, varying only the student’s name to be male or female — and discover that the male applicant was rated as significantly more competent and hireable, and was offered a higher starting salary and more career mentoring, than the (identical) female applicant. And so on.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN MAD.

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

Amanda Marcotte has bad news for the fans of the pope: he’s not as cuddly as some have been claiming.

I get the enthusiasm for “cool” Pope Francis, I really do. The idea that there could be a pope who is not clinging to a harshly medieval point of view but ready to move into the modern world is so appealing that of course we’re going to grasp onto any evidence, no matter how tenuous, that suggests that Pope Francis might be the one.

Meh. One – it’s just not possible, so attempting to grasp at evidence is pointless. The Catholic church is the Catholic church, not something else; it’s not possible to rise to the top positions by not clinging to a harshly medieval point of view. The harshly medieval point of view is what the church is for. Two, even if the pope were the nicest guy ever, the church would still be the church, and the church is a terrible institution.

No, it’s all bad. Forget the reformist nonsense.

This weekend, Anthony Faiola reported in the Washington Post about Francis throwing his support behind exorcists, saying they are “helping people who suffer and are in need of liberation.” According to Faiola, some in the church are concerned that Francis “has not only dwelled far more on Satan in sermons and speeches than his recent predecessors have, but also sought to rekindle the Devil’s image as a supernatural entity with the forces­ of evil at his beck and call.”

And what does that get you? That gets you thinking that some people are in league with the devil. It’s dangerous stuff.

That’s not all. Despite the fact that Pope Francis received many accoladesfor taking a position against traditional authoritarianism and for criticizing the church for obsessing over birth control and homosexuality at the expense of more important issues, such as economic justice, Francis is now pushing back on the nuns who do just that. I’m talking about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group that represents 80 percent of American nuns and is focused on social justice. In the past, the Vatican has gone after LCWR for focusing on economic inequality rather than bashing contraception and homosexuality. Despite what appears to be common ground between the nuns and the pope, it seems that Francis is not changing that tune.

Of course he’s not. He’s the pope.

Barbie Latza Nadeau of the Daily Beast reports that under Pope Francis, the Vatican shows no sign of laying off the crackdown on American nuns who Pope Benedict claimed were “pushing radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Such as?

[T]he LCWR is not advocating for gay marriage or birth control. They simply don’t discuss issues of contraception and homosexuality, preferring instead to focus on issues like climate change, immigration, and assisting refugees in need of aid. Despite doing what Pope Francis supposedly wants his flock to do, however, the nuns continue to be punished and castigated by the Vatican, suggesting that the new pope is the same as the old.

So not discussing contraception and homosexuality equals radical feminism. Huh.

This is the Catholic church, people. It is what it is and not something different and better.

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

From a comment by latsot on Gervais “will continue to use offensive words like cunt, atheism & Derek”

@m0fa

I’m British too and like many other Brits I’m sick to death of your droning argument that we don’t consider “cunt” to be a gendered insult. I can speculate about a possible reason you think – or at least say – this: the insult “cunt” seems almost interchangeable with other insults, some also gendered (such as “dick”), and others not.

Unfortunately, there’s only one tiny flaw with that argument: it is bullshit. It’s bullshit partly because “cunt” is always known to be a worse insult than any of those others. It might be argued that this distinction is arbitrary; that “cunt” is considered worse solely due to historical accident independent of the more literal meaning of the word. I’d be as impressed as I would be surprised if anyone managed to come up with a plausible argument along those lines, but I think that’s what you’d have to do to realistically claim that “cunt” is not considered a gendered insult in the UK. Or perhaps you could argue that usage of “cunt” to describe female genitalia is obscure in the UK. Of course, we all know that this is anything but the case. Nobody calls someone a cunt in isolation of its anatomical meaning. You know and they know what the word means and you both know you know they know it.

Your sadly popular argument seems almost to be saying that the insult “cunt” is not gendered unless someone is being explicitly and literally compared to an actual cunt. That relying on the implicit baggage the word carries somehow renders the insult not gendered, even though everyone involved understands that baggage perfectly well.

If “cunt” used as an insult were not pretty much universally considered a greater insult than words like “dick” or “prick” and those words used with roughly the same frequency in the same sort of circumstances, then the fact that “cunt” is gendered wouldn’t be so much of a problem. But you know perfectly well that “dick” means someone casually or relatively mildly unpleasant and “cunt” means someone exceedingly, deliberately, habitually, maximally unpleasant and you know what else those words mean.

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

Hey look – live streaming from the International Space Station.

Pale blue dot close up; your house from very far away.

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

One of those “please share” items so I’m sharing it because wo.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said it best: “Turn that frown upside down oil-soaked neighbourhood, you can get a job cleaning it up if you just have the right attitude. We’ll make it worth your while. That is seriously what Kinder Morgan is arguing to the freaking Canadian government about why they should be allowed to triple the capacity of their pipeline.”

More in the Vancouver Sun.

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