Whooping around the clock

Dec 8th, 2013 1:08 pm | By

From last month, an article by Julia Joffe in the New Republic about the joys of having whooping cough, with thanks to Jenny McCarthy. Non-sincere thanks to Jenny McCarthy.

At this writing, I have been coughing for 72 days. Not on and off coughing, but continuously, every day and every night, for two and a half months. And not just coughing, but whooping: doubled over, body clenched, sucking violently for air, my face reddening and my eyes watering. Sometimes, I cough so hard, I vomit. Other times, I pee myself. Both of these symptoms have become blessedly less frequent, and I have yet to break a rib coughing—also a common side effect. Nor do I still have the fatigue that felled me, often, at my desk and made me sleep for 16 hours a night on the weekends. Now I rarely choke on things like water, though it turns out laughing, which I do a lot of, is an easy trigger for a violent, paralyzing cough that doctors refer to not as a cough, but a paroxysm.

There’s more, a lot more. About all that while at work, all that while eating at a restaurant, all that while going on tv to discuss world events, all that while interviewing a subject. And about children with all that.

There’s a reason that we associate the whooping cough with the Dickensian: It is. The illness has, since the introduction of a pertussis vaccine in 1940, has been conquered in the developed world. For two or three generations, we’ve come to think of it as an ailment suffered in sub-Saharan Africa or in Brontë novels. And for two or three generations, it was.

Until, that is, the anti-vaccination movement really got going in the last few years. Led by discredited doctors and, incredibly, a former Playmate, the movement has frightened new parents with claptrap about autism, Alzheimer’s, aluminum, and formaldehyde. The movement that was once a fringe freak show has become a menace, with foot soldiers whose main weapon is their self-righteousness. For them, vaccinating their children is merely a consumer choice, like joining an organic food co-op or sending their kids to a Montessori school or drinking coconut water.

I would add to that: it’s a “consumer choice” with extra added smug virtue, like joining an organic food co-op or sending their kids to a Montessori school. The people do it think it’s right-on and meritorious and thoughtfully nonconformist.

The problem is that it is not an individual choice; it is a choice that acutely affects the rest of us. Vaccinations work by creating something called herd immunity: When most of a population is immunized against a disease, it protects even those in it who are not vaccinated, either because they are pregnant or babies or old or sick. For herd immunity to work, 95 percent of the population needs to be immunized. But the anti-vaccinators have done a good job undermining it. In 2010, for example, only 91 percent of California kindergarteners were up to date on their shots. Unsurprisingly, California had a massive pertussis outbreak.

There is nothing virtuous about causing that to happen. On the contrary.

It would be an understatement to say that pertussis and other formerly conquered childhood diseases like measles and mumps are making a resurgence. Pertussis, specifically, has come roaring back. From 2011 to 2012, reported pertussis incidences rose more than threefold in 21 states. (And that’s just reported cases. Since we’re not primed to be on the look-out for it, many people may simply not realize they have it.) In 2012, the CDC said that the number of pertussis cases was higher than at any point in 50 years. That year, Washington state declared an epidemic; this year, Texas did, too. Washington, D.C. has also seen a dramatic increase. This fall, Cincinnati reported a 283 percent increase in pertussis.

Another win for obscurantism and willful stupidity.

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Just because

Dec 8th, 2013 11:16 am | By

Michelle Goldberg also recently wrote about homeschooling as a way to shield child abuse. In the Daily Beast:

On September 9, the parents of Hana Williams, an Ethiopian teenager living in the state of Washington, were convicted of killing her. During the last year of her life, court documents show, she had lost almost 30 pounds as she was beaten, denied food, forced to sleep in a barn, and given cold outdoor showers with a garden hose. Much of the time she was kept barefoot, although she was allowed shoes if there was snow on the ground. Sometimes she was given nothing but a towel to wear. If Williams had been in school, someone might have noticed that she was underdressed and emaciated. But she was homeschooled, and so her parents, fundamentalist Christians in thrall to a harsh disciplinary philosophy, had complete privacy to punish her as they saw fit. She died naked, face down in the mud in their backyard.

Like so many things, privacy is a double-edged sword. We all want it and depend on it; we consider it a right; but god damn it can be abused. Domestic violence wouldn’t exist without privacy; “domestic” and “private” are much the same thing.

Heather Doney and Rachel Coleman, two women who themselves grew up in homeschooling families, have documented dozens of horrific cases on their website, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which launched in May. A database of local news stories and official documents, the site is searchable by category, including Fatality, Food Deprivation, Imprisonment, Physical Abuse and Sexual Abuse. Under Sexual Abuse, to take just one of them, Doney and Coleman found almost 70 victims since 2000—and those are just cases that made the papers.

Coleman, an Indiana University Ph.D. student who studies the role of children in the Christian right, does not believe that homeschooling parents are more abusive than others. Some 1.5 million Americans kids are taught at home, and there’s no reason to think that more than a small fraction of them are subject to severe violence. Indeed, Coleman says she wouldn’t even rule out homeschooling her own children. But she argues that because the practice is almost entirely unregulated in much of the country, it can make abusive situations worse, allowing parents to hide their crimes and denying kids access to outside authority. “Homeschooling enables parents to isolate children,” Coleman says. “That can enable them to abuse them.”

It’s a helluva knotty problem, because monitoring homeschooling would obviously be massively labor-intensive. If I were a bureaucrat tasked with figuring out how to do it I wouldn’t have a clue where to begin.

The Home School Legal Defense Association was founded in 1983, just as homeschooling was catching on among an ascendant Christian right. Many in the movement believed that public schools indoctrinated children in godless secularism and saw homeschooling as a way to give their kids an education steeped in biblical values. At first, homeschoolers faced a great deal of official resistance—some states banned homeschooling outright, while others strictly limited it. During the past 30 years, though, HSLDA has successfully fought to eliminate or drastically loosen those regulations.

Even regulations about monitoring parents who have already been reported for abuse…

Earlier this year, Pennsylvania state Sen. Andrew Dinniman sponsored new legislation in response to the 2012 deaths of two young homeschooled boys in Philadelphia: 6-year-old Khalil Wime, whose parents were arrested for starving and torturing him to death, and 5-year-old Dashawn Harris, reportedly beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend for mispronouncing the word “sad” during a homeschooling lesson. He is awaiting trial for first-degree murder.

Under Dinniman’s bill, when families with recent child-abuse complaints start homeschooling, child protective services would have to be notified. The parents wouldn’t necessarily be prohibited from pulling their kids out of school, but there would be an outside risk assessment.

The homeschooling movement reacted with outrage. “Bad Bills Threaten Homeschooling Freedom” said an alert sent out by HSLDA. The organization was indignant that families that had already been investigated for abuse would be investigated a second time “just because they had decided to homeschool their children.” As of now, legislation’s future is unclear. “We have heard some concerns in questions about the bill,” said Dinniman’s legislative director, refusing to speculate on its chances.

That “just because” is telling. Yes, parents suspected of abusing their children would be subject to a risk assessment “just because” they decided to homeschool their children – imagine that! Imagine thinking that removing children from the one environment where they have ready access to adults who are not their parents might not be ideal for children subject to abuse.

 

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The empirical mismatch

Dec 7th, 2013 4:25 pm | By

Here’s a useful and enjoyable item at Brian Leiter’s blog – the full version of a letter to the Guardian by Rae Langton and John Dupré.

Your headline reads ‘Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal‘ (2 December 2013). What do scans reveal? ‘Maps of neural circuitry show women’s brains are designed for social skills and memory, men’s for perception and co-ordination’. Yet another deeply confused ‘hard-wired brain’ story. It has received much comment, not least for the empirical mismatch between the data and the conclusion, given that the cited study apparently provides ‘strong evidence for behavioural similarities between the sexes’ (Cordelia Fine, https://theconversation.com/new-insights-into-gendered-brain-wiring-or-a-perfect-case-study-in-neurosexism-21083). But there is something even more basic at stake.

Please, please, will scientists, science journalists, and readers wake up to this truism: if the mind is the brain, any mental difference will be a brain difference. Suppose there are some actual mental differences between men and women, whatever their prior causes. (Hard to imagine training up half of humanity one way, half another, without creating some differences between them.) There will then be some neural differences. Suppose you have two televisions, whose images are different. You call in the technician, who trumpets the discovery that they differ in their pattern of pixels. How remarkable! Actually, no. That bit we knew already: no difference in the images without a difference in the pixels. Same for ourselves: no difference in states of mind without a difference in states of brain. That doesn’t mean it has to be that way, or is designed to be that way. Even if your mind is your brain, that doesn’t mean ‘your brain made you do it’—as if the ‘you’ were a different being, a soul puppet whose strings are pulled by your neurons. Let’s not fall for this confusion, or we’ll take what happens to be the case, and freeze it.  We’ll take differences, however they may have come about, and make them seem inevitable and appropriate.  We don’t need this deterministic fairy-tale. It’s bad for men and women, bad for science, bad for us all.

No one will listen, of course.

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Shopping and baby Jesus

Dec 7th, 2013 4:08 pm | By

So American Atheists’ Times Square billboard was specifically intended to make Sarah Palin’s head explode?

When Sarah Palin speaks, ad nauseam, of the “war on Christmas,” she’s referring not only to attempts to secularize the holiday season in general, but also the secularization of Jesus’ birthday itself.*

*This sentence has been updated to remove a reference to Palin’s opposition to the commercialization of Christmas, because apparently she likes the commercialization of Christmas, which is confusing. 

Hmm. Maybe she likes it provided it goes hand in hand with lots of baby Jesus and his birthday? Because Jesus loved capitalism and people who get rich by paying low wages, and because if God didn’t want the planet to melt then we wouldn’t have been intelligently designed to design them. Do I have that right?

That’s why this year’s annual anti-Christmas billboard by the atheist advocacy group American Atheists seems specifically crafted to make Palin’s head explode into a million pieces. The fifteen-second digital ad, which is currently running in Times Square, contends that the “true” meaning of Christmas is not Christ, but things like gifts, the Rockettes, and, most provocatively, Chinese food, which is what Jews eat.

“If Sarah Palin is under the impression that Christmastime is about Jesus,” Dave Muscato, spokesman for American Atheists, tells Daily Intelligencer, “I invite her to take a look at any shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving. Christmastime is, and has been for a long time, about giving gifts, spending time with family and friends, eating, drinking, and being merry; volunteering or giving to charity, and a hundred other things that have nothing to do with religion.”

But Daaaaaaaaaaave – a shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving is not Christmas. It’s black Friday! Everybody knows that.

They forgot to say chocolate mince pie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBjHWij5HWY

 

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Homeschooled for good

Dec 7th, 2013 3:21 pm | By

There’s a website, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. It was founded by two women who were homeschooled themselves, Rachel Coleman and Heather Doney.

Inspired by the recent high profile deaths of several homeschooled children, including Lydia Schatz, Hana Williams, and Nubia Barahona, HIC shines a light on the dark side of homeschooling, where a lack of outside protections for homeschooled children has led to some horrifying consequences.

Homeschooling can be a useful educational tool in the hands of the right parents, but when it falls into the hands of the wrong parents the results can be disastrous, and it is the children who suffer.

HIC documents and archives cases where homeschooling was not in the best interest of the child and was instead used as a means to isolate, abuse, and neglect, resulting in exceedingly harmful or fatal outcomes. This is for Lydia, Hana, Nubia, the children of the Gravelles and Kluths, and all of those whose stories we may never hear.

Warning: This site’s content includes mention of severe child abuse, torture, and untimely death and contains pictures of children who died under such conditions.

The most recent post there is about Miranda Crockett. [trigger warning - abuse, murder]

10-year-old Miranda Crocket was tied up when she drowned in an ice cold bathtub, the culmination of months of abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriend. Miranda lived alone with her father, Dan Crockett, until her father’s girlfriend, Chandra Rose, moved in with them with her three children, aged 4, 6, and 11, in the summer of 2012. Miranda was withdrawn from school and was homeschooled by Chandra that fall alongside Chandra’s children. Chandra claims that Miranda threatened her children, and that the abuse she heaped on the girl was retaliation. Chandra locked Miranda in the bathroom, tied her up, forced her to take ice baths, and shut her in a hard plastic storage box barely big enough to fit her body. The day Miranda died, she had escaped from the locked bathroom and Miranda had retaliated by tying her hands to her ankles, tying a cord around her neck to cause her discomfort, shutting her in the storage box for several hours and, ultimately, putting her in the ice cold bath where she drowned.

If she hadn’t been taken out of school, she could have asked for help. Children don’t always do that, because they’re afraid to, but the possibility would have been there. But she was taken out of school and “homeschooled” – which being interpreted means, tortured to death.

The Oregonian reported last March:

The judge also unsealed court documents that for the first time publicly revealed what happened in the Fairview apartment the girl shared with her father, Rose and Rose’s children, ages 4, 6 and 11. It describes abuse heightened by Miranda’s isolation after she left the public school system so Rose could home-school her with the other children.

According to the probable cause affidavit, Rose told police that in the hours before paramedics arrived at the apartment, Miranda had escaped from the bathroom and wouldn’t tell Rose what she used to unlock the door. Rose said she tied the girl’s hands to her ankles with scarves and uninflated balloons. She also tied a cord around the girl’s neck and legs to try to make her uncomfortable.

She placed the child in the fetal position in the storage box, leaving her there for 30 minutes to three hours. Rose also put Miranda in an icy cold bath.

Miranda was home “schooled” all right.

 

 

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Disgust and closets and out campaigns

Dec 7th, 2013 11:46 am | By

Chris Stedman has a piece at Religion News Service arguing against the claim that atheism coming out of the closet is comparable to the movement for LGBT rights.

Austin Cline claims on About.com’s atheism section that “atheists [are] hated more than gays,” and bestselling author Richard Dawkins has frequently compared the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) rights movement to the atheist movement—drawing heavily from the LGBTQ rights movement for his “Out Campaign,” which encourages atheists to “come out.” And these are just a few examples in a long line of well-intentioned atheist activists and organizations—who generally consider themselves LGBTQ allies—comparing the LGBTQ rights movement to the atheist movement.

There are things about this comparison that, on the surface, make sense: atheists and LGBTQs are marginalized communities that deviate from normative ideas about how people should live, that often share an experience of needing to reveal our identities to others (sometimes with terrible consequences), and that experience social stigma.

But.

He’s right, it’s not a great comparison. Mind you, comparisons often work by comparing a single aspect of the X and Y as opposed to comparing the entirety of each, and in that sense, as Chris says, this one makes sense at least on the surface. But his point is to underline the reasons it doesn’t work as a comparison.

Anti-atheist bias does exist, of course—particularly in other parts of the world—and it should be strongly condemned and combated. The prevalence of violence in the U.S. motivated by an anti-atheist bias, however, is more than eclipsed by violence motivated by heterosexism.

In 2012 the FBI reported that the largest percentage of reported hate crimes were those motivated by racial bias. After that, the next largest percentages of hate crimes were motivated by bias against sexual orientation and against religion (primarily against Jews and Muslims). But of the reported hate crimes motivated by bias against religious belief (18.7% of all hate crimes), only 0.9% stemmed from an anti-atheist/agnostic bias. In other words, the magnitude of violence against atheists and agnostics does not begin to compare to what many other communities experience.

There’s an odd thing about that FBI report though. It doesn’t include women as a category:

By bias motivation

An analysis of data for victims of single-bias hate crime incidents showed that:

  • 48.5 percent of the victims were targeted because of the offender’s bias against a race.
  • 19.2 percent were targeted because of a bias against a particular sexual orientation.
  • 18.7 percent were victimized because of a bias against a religious belief.
  • 12.1 percent were victimized because of a bias against an ethnicity/national origin.
  • 1.4 percent were targeted because of a bias against a disability.

That’s it; that’s the list of categories. Because, what, there are no crimes in which the victims are targeted because of the offender’s bias against women? That can’t be right…

Chris goes on to zero in on what I think is a very important point, which is that the root of a lot of violent hatred is disgust:

A myriad of religious and political institutions have perpetuated and sustained anti-LGBTQ attitudes throughout history, and these attitudes are still frequently expressed and enforced through religion—but calling religion the source would be misguided. (Besides: if atheists consider religion to be human-created, then it follows that anti-gay attitudes come from humans who sometimes express them through religion.) Instead of originating from religion, studies suggest that negative attitudes toward gay people are influenced by intuitive, moral disapproval linked to the emotion of disgust. An important series of studies from Paul Bloom and Joshua Knobe at Yale University, David A. Pizarro at Cornell University, and Yoel Inbar at Tilburg University suggest a strong link between disgust and negative attitudes toward homosexuality. Because of this link, anti-gay attitudes are frequently articulated through the rhetoric of disgust or dehumanization—“homosexual activity just isn’t natural” or “homosexuality is an illness” being two common examples. Sometimes this rhetoric is religious, but it seems to reflect an emotional source that’s ultimately not.

Yes, and that also very much applies to hatred of women. I’m lucky enough to be reminded of this any time I want to be (and often when I don’t); I can just look up what people are saying about me on Twitter for instance. (And if I don’t there will always be someone new who tweets some friendly disgust at me.) Like “Mykeru” for example.

mike

Mykeru @Mykeru
@chsvns You just dropped that into #feministselfie By the way, do you know Ophelia Benson queefs talcum powder?

Sexual disgust at its finest. Wholly irrelevant to anything, just an expression of sexual disgust for the sake of it. Once you notice that kind of thing, you notice how pervasive it is. It’s sad. All the little baby girls napping in their cribs today…they’ll all grow up to be the target of sexual disgust sooner or later.

Anyway I think Chris is right about this. Chris is right and Leon Kass is profoundly, horribly wrong. Disgust is not a good source of moral intuitions.

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Great blasphemers in history

Dec 7th, 2013 10:09 am | By

Dan pointed out in a comment on Exodus 33 that

There a famous nineteenth century cartoon of Moses seeing God’s “back parts” that was one of those citied in the prosecution of The Freethinker for blasphemy.

Which is fabulous because I write a monthly column for The Freethinker, so I feel all connected up to blasphemous history, which is a thing I like feeling all connected up to.

I hit Google and found a Wiki page all about it: Martyrdom of a Freethinker: Blasphemy, Secularism and the Trials of G. W. Foote.

The aim of this project has been to assess the trial of G. W. Foote and his associates W. J. Ramsey and Henry Kempe for blasphemy in 1883. The tr[ia]l was instigated after Foote published the Christmas 1882 number of his magazine the Freethinker, which contained a series of ‘blasphemous’ articles and cartoons.

Dave Silverman’s jokes about God’s butt are part of the Christmas festivities in the US this year. Parallels or what?!

The Secular community produced a number of publications at this time such as the Secular Chronicle, Secular Review, National Reformer and the Agnostic Annual all with varying degrees of success. G. W. Foote was one of the N.S.S’s leading figures, becoming president in 1890, and his Freethinker[3] was the most outrageous and forward of all of these publications. Foote’s witticisms, ridicule and use of cartoons to attack the core values of Christianity, combined with the very affordable price of one penny, threw his atheistic and Secular beliefs out for the masses to absorb or be repulsed by. It was the deliberately confrontational nature of the Freethinker that would arguably lead to its author’s arrest and sentence to twelve months confinement with hard labour.

Again – this is what American Atheists does and is: it’s the most deliberately “outrageous and forward” aka provocative of all the secular and humanist and atheist organizations. It throws atheistic and secular beliefs out for the masses to absorb or be repulsed by, by advertising on billboards and talking to Bill O’Reilly, among other things. It all fits, I tell you!

On the 26th of February 1883, after two separate trials, the first resulting in a hung jury, the second passing a sentence of guilty for Blasphemous Libel, Henry Kempe was sentenced to three months imprisonment, W. J. Ramsey was sentenced to nine months and G. W. Foote as editor of the Freethinker was sentenced to twelve months imprisonment with hard labour.

Which is really pretty horrifying.

The Freethinker began using cartoons early in 1882 with a series called “Comic Bible Sketches”[4] after Foote saw similar items in a French periodical. In his first indictment the image “Divine Illumination” alone earned three counts.<ref>Marsh, p. 141.</ref> The 1882 Christmas number of the Freethinker would use illustrations to their maximum effect when the series “New Life of Christ” was published.[5] The cartoons used in the Freethinker used real lines from the bible and accompanied them with a humorous illustration often taking the words at their most literal. Of particular note is the cartoon “Moses Getting a Back View” in which we see, emerging from the clouds, what appears to be God’s behind in patched trousers. An ambiguous protrusion from his rear – depending on how the reader perceives it – could be a loose bit of material or a classic example of early British toilet humour.

God’s bottom! back

 Source: https://wiki.leeds.ac.uk/index.php/File:Moses.jpg

Happy holidays.

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For allegedly hurting religious sentiments

Dec 6th, 2013 4:51 pm | By

They’re heckling Taslima again.

An FIR was registered against me last night. They do not like my tweets that I posted on November 6.

LUCKNOW/KOLKATA: An FIR has been lodged against controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen for allegedly hurting religious sentiments following a complaint by a prominent Muslim cleric of Uttar Pradesh, a charge which the author said shocked her.

The case was lodged at Kotwali police station by Hasan Raza Khan Noori Miyan, son of the “sajjadanasheen” of Dargah-e-Ala Hazrat Maulana Subhan Raza Khan Subhani Miyan, who objected to certain tweets by Nasreen against clerics on November 6, police sources said here on Thursday.

In the complaint, it was alleged that with her remarks against clerics on Twitter the writer had hurt the feelings of the Muslim community. (more…)

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Plaintiff’s treating physician suspected

Dec 6th, 2013 4:18 pm | By

Continuing the close reading of the Complaint in Means v US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

One startling item is # 38, on page 6, in the sequence in which the Complaint describes the chain of events. This is about the second time the hospital sent Means home.

38 After Plaintiff’s temperature went down, MHP sent Plaintiff home again. At the time MHP sent Plaintiff home, Plaintiff’s treating physician suspected she had chorioamnionitis, a significant bacterial infection that can cause serious damage to a woman’s health, including infertility and even death. However, MHP did not inform Plaintiff of this possible infection.

Wow. The physician suspected Means had chorioamnionitis, and didn’t tell her and didn’t treat her. The physician didn’t even admit her.

That’s just staggering.

And yet – when a public health educator in Muskegon working on a federally funded public health surveillance project on infant and fetal mortality discovered the case along with four others, and brought them to the attention of MHP during a meeting with the Vice President of Mission Services of MHP, Joseph O’Meara, O’Meara was fine with the whole setup. Item 57, on page 8:

57 Mr. O’Meara explained to the public health educator that upon review of Plaintiff’s chart by a MHP physician, MHP’s decision not to induce labor was proper because Defendant USCCB’s Directives prohibited MHP from inducing labor in that situation.

A piece of shocking medical malpractice was “proper” because the bishops.

Items 69 and 70 on pages 10-11.

69 Directive 45’s prohibition of “material cooperation” with respect to the provision of pregnancy termination services directs Catholic health care services to refrain from informing patients about the availability of and/or need for pregnancy termination procedures if the fetus is not viable.

70 Directive 45 does not allow providers at Catholic health care services to inform patients about the availability of and/or need for pregnancy termination procedures if the fetus is not viable when the pregnancy itself places the pregnant woman at risk of harm.

The directives don’t permit them even to inform. And some hospitals, and some networks of hospitals, obey the directives. The directives are there, and it’s dangerous and reckless to assume that no hospitals obey them.

73-77 on page 11 spell out the unsettling organizational structure.

 73 Defendant Stanley Urban is the current Chair and Defendants Robert Ladenburger and Mary Mollison are former Chairs of Catholic Health Ministries (“CHM”), an unincorporated foreign entity that required MHP to adhere to the Directives.

74. The decision that MHP would adhere to Defendant USCCB’s Directives was made by CHM in the Eastern District of Michigan.

75. CHM is not an incorporated entity under the laws of any state in the United States or any foreign country.

76. As Chairs of the unincorporated entity CHM, Defendants Urban, Ladenburger and Mollison are personally and/or vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of CHM.

77. In 2000, CHM was established as a public juridic person by an agency within the Vatican under “canon law,” a recognized foreign legal system.

A recognized foreign legal system is telling US hospitals what to do, including not treating or even informing women who need emergency abortions.

This has got to stop.

 

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Atheist solidarity

Dec 6th, 2013 2:59 pm | By

Oh sure. Of course. See a photo of people sending a message of solidarity to imprisoned atheists in majority-Muslim countries, a photo organized by Maryam Namazie, the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and inspiration for Councils of Ex-Muslims elsewhere such as Morocco, France, North America.

In that photo we’re all holding messages we composed for the purpose. Mine said “WE ARE ATHEIST. WE ARE WITH YOU.”

Stephanie Zvan, Ophelia Benson, Brianne Bilyeu, Maryam Namazie, Jason Thibeault, Kate Donovan, Miriam Mogilevski, PZ Myers, Ashley Miller. Photo by Brian D. Engler.

See that, I say, and photoshop it for a rather different purpose.

Embedded image permalink

 That’s atheist solidarity for you. I’m sure the persecuted atheists in majority-Muslim countries are very grateful.

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Exodus 33

Dec 6th, 2013 2:19 pm | By

There’s a bit in the bible, in Exodus, where Moses tells God, let me get a look at you, because otherwise how the hell do all these people know I’m not just making it up? And God says ok, because I like you, Moses, and I even remember your name. So they make a date.

Here’s the King James version:

17 And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.

18 And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.

19 And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

21 And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

Can’t see the face, because that would be lethal, but can see the butt.

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Free

Dec 6th, 2013 12:32 pm | By

Sarah Moglia has a beautiful Skepchick post on Mandela.

I lived in South Africa for half a year while studying at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The program was entirely focused on human rights, and in every single class I took, he was talked about. My South African friends spoke about him with reverence. I mean, his nickname was “Madiba” (father) for a reason. I visited Cape Town for a few days after my exams. I was fortunate enough to visit Robben Island, where he was imprisoned for 20 years. When you arrive on the island, the entire field leading up to the first building is covered in yellow flowers. It seems odd that the scene of such terrible atrocities is now covered in such beauty. (The album of photos I took on my trip is viewable here.)

Odd, but fitting.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say he was one of the best people humanity has ever seen. The South African Constitution that was created during his presidency was the first constitution in the world to include sexual orientation under its anti-discrimination policies (it is widely considered one of the most progressive constitutions in the world). I know that Nelson Mandela and my experiences in South Africa have greatly shaped who I am as a person. I can only imagine how influential he has been to millions of other people worldwide. To close, I will share one of my favorite quotes of his: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Thank you for everything, Madiba. If you would like to send a message to Mandela’s family, you can send one here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdcWSJD2_9A

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No matches

Dec 6th, 2013 11:57 am | By

The Dayna Morales story looks worse than ever. Huffington Post reports.

The waitress who posted an image of “anti-gay” receipt, and who received thousands of dollars in donations because of it, has been suspended from her job in New Jersey pending an ongoing investigation.

Claims she made about donating the money to charity have also come into question.

If she didn’t donate the money…she could be in serious trouble now, I’m guessing. That would be fraud; bilking people of money.

On Tuesday, the Asbury Park Press noted Morales has been suspended from her position at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, N.J.

“Ms. Morales is currently not on our employee schedule while are still working to complete our investigation,” the restaurant posted on Facebook Nov. 29.

The investigation is set to be complete “very soon,” according to the Asbury Park Press.

In her original post about the alleged incident, Morales wrote “I served in the Marines to keep ignorant people like them free.” She said she intended to donate the money she received from supporters around the world to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Now, Bridgewater Patch is reporting Morales’ supposed donation could not be verified with the Wounded Warrior Project as of Wednesday. A representative from the nonprofit checked for donations under her name and zip code and found no matches. However, the rep noted the donation could’ve been made under a different name or zip code.

Sigh. Way to poison the well, Dayna Morales.

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Christian Voice and the BBC

Dec 6th, 2013 11:02 am | By

Stephen Green at “Christian Voice” is indignant that the BBC is a partly secular organization.

The Daily Mail has run a story about the BBC employing more atheists and non-believers than Christians after submitting a Freedom of Information request.

An internal BBC survey indeed found that just 22.5 per cent of all staff professed to be Christians, but 43% of staff did not respond to the survey.  The Daily Mail said the Christians were outnumbered by atheists and those of no faith, at 23.5 per cent, but that figure was arrived at by adding the professing atheists (8.9%) to those of no faith (14.6%).  Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs totalled 3.2% while ‘others’ were 2.6%, and 5.2% preferred not to say.

The Daily Mail’s Jonathan Petrie said ‘the new research has been seized on by critics who accuse the Corporation of bias against Christianity and marginalising the faith in its output’.  He quoted BBC veteran Roger Bolton, who until recently presented BBC Radio 4’s religious current affairs programme, ‘Sunday’, as saying: ‘There is an inbuilt but unconscious bias against religion, fuelled by the fact staff are not representative of the public. It is not a conspiracy but it needs a correction.’

Why would it need a correction? Why would the BBC have to be more pro-religion?

The Mail has certainly sensationalised the story, but it remains that BBC staff as a whole are unrepresentative of the population at large, where, according to the last census, around 72% claimed to be Christian, with just 15.5% saying they had no religion.  At the BBC, out of those who have volunteered information, 39.5% claim to be Christian, 15.6% atheist and 25.6% of no religion.  Other religions are similar to the proportions in the population.

I bet I know another way that BBC staff as a whole are unrepresentative of the population at large; I bet they have more than average levels of education. Why? Because of the nature of the job. You could say the same thing about lawyers (for just one example).

There’s an obvious connection, though BBC veteran Roger Bolton might call it bias against religion to spell it out. I’ll spell it out anyway. There’s an obvious connection between more education and more critical thinking about conventional wisdom such as religion. People who spend more time getting an education have more opportunities to be exposed to questions about religion, and people who ask questions about religion. It’s not hugely surprising that there’s a correlation (assuming there is one) between having the education needed to work for the BBC, and being non-religious.

I suppose that’s why outlets like the Daily Mail and people like Stephen Green feel they have to resort to bullying tactics like demanding more “representation” for untenable views.

Green then, taking a leaf from Bill Donohue’s book, quotes himself in a blog post he himself wrote:

In July 2006, a veteran BBC executive told a meeting called to address the problem of anti-Christian bias: ‘There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.  ‘Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC’s culture, that it is very hard to change it.’

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, responded:

‘It would be good to know the religious break-down of people in BBC top jobs, because it rather seems as if the Christians at the BBC have either a secularist world-view or little vision of how to turn the place upside down, as the early Apostles were accused of doing.  Putting the comments from Andrew Marr and Jeremy Vine together, it just seems far easier to be atheistic and gay than to be normal and Christian at the BBC.’

Seriously. He’s quoting himself, in the third person. Did he forget that he shows as the author right at the top of the page?

‘The real problem is not the lack of Christian programming, but the fact that no world-view other than a tedious atheist outlook informs normal programming content.  The BBC really should have the decency to acknowledge there are valid points of view other than the grindingly politically-correct anti-Christ atheism held by the majority of its staff.

‘Christians in soaps are always portrayed as weak, or stupid, or bigoted. Meanwhile, story-lines are concocted to introduce homosexuals whenever possible and to show favoured religious minorities in a good light.

Note how automatically he treats “homosexuals” as illegitimate intrusions forced on decent Christians by an atheist minority.

In passing he takes a swipe at Professor Alice Roberts, who replies in a comment:

I wanted to register my disquiet at the paragraph in which I am described as a “fanatical evolutionist”. Like most biologists, I think that evolution through natural selection best explains the diversity of life on this planet; this is not a minority view and not necessarily incompatible with religious belief: many Christians accept evolution.

However, I felt moved to respond to the criticisms of the series Origins of Us, and set the record straight. Firstly, the criticisms do BBC Science an injustice. Even if I wanted to present my own opinions and speculation (in any other way than clearly flagging them as such) the BBC would not allow me to do this in a science programme. Secondly, the criticism levelled at me brings my own academic integrity into question. Every hypothesis and fact discussed or presented in the programme is already “out there”, in peer reviewed scientific publications. BBC Science (and I myself) are very careful about the factual basis of such programmes, and extremely careful to differentiate between fact and opinion.

The “vacuous subjective claims” to which Mr Stephen Green alludes are facts based on peer-reviewed scientific research. I am also surprised that Mr Green suggests I presented the extremely outdated “savannah hypothesis” as current science – this is something that was critically appraised and research suggesting, instead, an arboreal origin for bipedalism was put forward. The idea that tool-using and tool-making may have influenced the shape of our hands is, again, not idle speculation but based on published research. Any change in anatomy which leads to a survival advantage (whether that’s an adaptation helping survival in a particular natural environment or an adaptation which makes you better at making technology which helps you to survive) is likely to be selected for.

I realise that few readers of this website will read my response objectively, but I object strongly to the criticism that my programmes with the BBC have lacked objectivity and include “idle speculation”. That can only be true if you believe that the numerous academic papers which form the backbone of such a series are also “idle speculation”.

Regards, Professor Alice Roberts [I will post a copy of this comment on my Facebook page]

And I posted it here. I like to help.

 

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Maybe some day a Sally Potatohead

Dec 6th, 2013 10:22 am | By

From last spring, an item about Disney and 1938.

It shows a letter sent to a woman who had applied or asked about applying for a job as an animator at Disney Studios. The letter is signed by Mary Cleillegible. It says Disney doesn’t hire women as animators, for the cogent reason that Disney doesn’t hire women as animators.

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.

That’s helpful, isn’t it? Women don’t do that work, because that work is done entirely by men. For that reason “girls” are not considered. kthxbye

It’s a long time ago, but it makes me feel a bit sick even so. A door firmly slammed that simply can’t be opened. A desirable interesting job doing a new kind of art, that is formally reserved for men only, for no reason except that it is. Unapologetically. The woman who wrote the letter to ask about applying learns that it’s not something she can even attempt, The competition would naturally be fierce, but she can’t even try.

And things haven’t changed as much as they might have. I assume letters like that are no longer sent, nor are matching emails sent (I still assume) – but you could write a similar letter about the casting of Disney animation movies. That’s still almost all male. The Lion King? All male apart from one girl to play the love interest. Toy Story? All male apart from one girl to play the love interest. Toy Story 2 was a great leap forward because it added Mrs Potatohead.

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Forgotten

Dec 5th, 2013 12:50 pm | By

I hadn’t heard of Calista Springer before, that I recall. She is mentioned in a piece about homeschooling and fundamentalism (and Quiverfull and patriarchalism) in American Prospect.

Homeschooling now exists in a virtual legal void; parents have near-total authority over what their children learn and how they are disciplined. Not only are parents in 26 states not required to have their children tested but in 11 states, they don’t have to inform local schools when they’re withdrawing them. The states that require testing and registration often offer religious exemptions.

The emphasis on discipline has given rise to a cottage industry promoting harsh parenting techniques as godly. Books like To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl promise that parents can snuff out rebellious behavior with a spanking regimen that starts when infants are a few months old. The Pearls claim to have sold nearly 700,000 copies of their book, most through bulk orders from church and homeschooling groups. The combination of those disciplinary techniques with unregulated homeschooling has spawned a growing number of horror stories now being circulated by the ex-homeschoolers—including that of Calista Springer, a 16-year-old in Michigan who died in a house fire while tied to her bed after her parents removed her from public school, or Hana Williams, an Ethiopian adoptee whose Washington state parents were convicted in September of killing her with starvation and abuse in a Pearl-style system. Materials from HSLDA were found in the home of Williams’s parents.

I’ve written about the Hana Williams case here – she was murdered just an hour or two north of here – but not that horrifying item about Calista Springer.

I can’t find much about her, especially on reliable sites. A blog at CNN reported the verdict in the trial of her father and his wife (she was apparently more abducted than adopted).

Centreville, Michigan – Anthony and Marsha Springer arrived at the Centreville courtroom in green and white striped prison garb to receive their sentences from the judge, Hon. Paul Stutesman. Their daughter, Calista, died in a house fire on February 27, 2008 while chained to her bed. Soon after the fire, a long history of abuse by the couple toward Calista was revealed.

A shackled Anthony Springer spoke to the judge, apologizing for what happened to his daughter Calista, but reiterating that it wasn’t intentional and that they did the “best we could with what was available to us.” Anthony spoke about the neglect that Calista endured as a baby by her birth mother Norma Swegles. Swegles, who was present for the sentencing, muttered obscenities and was escorted out of the courtroom by the bailiff.

In his statement to the judge, Anthony Springer laid heavy blame on the Department of Human Services saying, “This system failed Calista and it failed this family and it failed seriously.”

Discipline. Another one disappears into the mist.

 

 

 

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The book that continues to inspire college sophomores

Dec 5th, 2013 9:12 am | By

C J Werleman takes a look at libertarian atheists.

In the days running up to Thanksgiving, Walmart urged its workers to donate food to their most in-need colleagues. You know, instead of Walmart having to pay said workers a livable wage. When people ask me what libertarianism looks like, I tell them that. By people I mean atheists, because for some stupid reason, far too many of my non-believer brethren have hitched their wagon to the daftest of all socio-economic theories.

It doesn’t help when atheist luminaries publicly extol their libertarianism. Penn Jillette writes, “What makes me a libertarian is what makes me an atheist—I don’t know. If I don’t know, I don’t believe….I’ll wait for real evidence and then I’ll believe.”

Oh right, because libertarianism alone among political commitments has no kind of belief at all, it’s just an empty space.

Famed science author and editor of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer says he became a libertarian after reading Ayn Rand’s tome Atlas Shrugged. Wait, what? That’s the book that continues to inspire college sophomores during the height of their masturbatory careers, typically young Republicans (nee fascists). But unless your name is Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), most people grow out of the, “Screw you, I have mine” economic principles bestowed by the Russian-born philosopher by the time they’re legally old enough to order their first beer.

Ha! Quite so. (One correction though – Ayn Rand was not a philosopher. She was a screenwriter and then a novelist.)

Atheists who embrace libertarianism often do so because they believe a governing body represents the same kind of constructed authority they’ve escaped from in regards to religion.

Which would be great if it weren’t for the tiny flaw that it’s completely simple-minded.

Robert Reich says that one of the most deceptive ideas embraced by the Ayn Rand-inspired Right is that the free market is natural, and exists outside and beyond government. He writes:

“In reality, the ‘free market’ is a bunch of rules about 1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); 2) on what terms (equal access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections?); 3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); 4) what’s private and what’s public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); 5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on. These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments don’t ‘intrude’ on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets aren’t ‘free’ of rules; the rules define them.”

And it’s simple-minded not to realize that.

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Shockingly ignorant of the state of abortion in America

Dec 5th, 2013 8:33 am | By

I mentioned that people don’t believe me when I tell them that Catholic hospitals in the US can and do refuse to perform abortions even to save a woman’s life. Here’s one. It’s the top comment on the video of my talk at the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin last June.

Draconisrex1

5 months ago

For a supposed Women’s Rights activist, Ms. Benson is shockingly ignorant of the state of abortion in America. In Ireland women are allowed to die, such as the case of  Savita Halappanavar. OTOH, even the Catholic Nun was on board for the woman in Arizona. Sure, the fucking idiot in a dress (Bishop) kicked up a fuss. But she got her abortion. Despite what Benson says, Catholic Hospitals can’t deny medically necessary abortions in the US.  They don’t like it.  But they must provide.

Wrong. I’m not the ignorant one here. Catholic hospitals can and do deny medically necessary abortions in the US.

I don’t blame Draconisrex for not knowing that, because as I keep saying, it’s horrendously under-reported and unnoticed. I do however blame Draconisrex for so rudely calling me ignorant without pausing to look it up, since I made it very clear – this was my opening point – that most Americans are unaware of this. Most people are unaware of it.

Here’s the video, in case you’re curious.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnpXTDxfF3o

 

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The only hospital in Muskegon County

Dec 5th, 2013 8:07 am | By

Let’s take a look at Tamesha Means v United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [pdf].

Plaintiff Tamesha Means brings this negligence action against the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops and others for promulgating and implementing directives that cause pregnant women who are suffering from a miscarriage to be denied appropriate medical care, including information about their condition and treatment options. These mandates, known as the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (“Directives”), do not merely set forth the opinions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (“USCCB”) on certain health care issues. Rather, the Directives require Catholic hospitals to abide by their terms, even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.

There you go. That’s the first three sentences and it sums up all we need to know right there – a much too obscure and little-noticed fact about health care in these here United States – the fact that the conference of Catholic bishops orders Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform even life-saving abortions. If you tell people this they don’t believe you. They may even call you a liar. And yet it’s true.

This urgently needs to be fixed. The federal government needs to tell the USCCB that it may not interfere with medical care, period. The feds need to tell Catholic hospitals that they have to do whatever is best for the patient, in consultation with the patient, period. No bishops.

Here’s an interesting detail:

Defendant Stanley Urban is a resident and citizen of the State of Pennsylvania. Urban is the Chair of Catholic Health Ministries, an unincorporated foreign entity that is the religious sponsor of MHP.

MHP is Mercy Health Partners, which is the hospital that gave Tamesha Means such terrible faith-based treatment. Why do we even have “religious sponsors” for hospitals? Why aren’t hospitals secular as a matter of course? They should be welcome to have all sorts of religious services available for people who want them, of course, because hospitals are obviously top of the list of places where religious people are going to want religious company and help. But that should be strictly separate from medical treatment. It’s deranged that it’s not.

Another important detail:

MHP is the only hospital in Muskegon County, Michigan.

A Catholic monopoly on hospital care in a whole county.

17. Plaintiff’s ultrasound report indicates Plaintiff had an amniotic fluid index of only 3.4 and a condition called oligohydramnios, which refers to a decreased volume of amniotic fluid due to the premature rupture of membranes.

18. MHP also diagnosed Plaintiff with preterm premature rupture of membrane, a condition in which a woman’s amniotic sac ruptures with a gestation less than 37 weeks.

19. MHP informed Plaintiff that the fetus was not yet viable.

20. MHP did not inform Plaintiff that in most cases, an amniotic fluid index of 3.4 at 18 weeks of pregnancy, in the context of premature rupture of membranes, means that the fetus will either not be born alive or will be born alive and die very shortly thereafter.

21. MHP did not inform Plaintiff about the serious risks to her health if she attempted to continue the pregnancy.

It’s medical malpractice, at the behest of Catholic bishops. At the only hospital in Muskegon County, Michigan.

We live in a fucking theocracy here.

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Respect for customs and traditions

Dec 4th, 2013 5:32 pm | By

The hostile amendments to that UN resolution on protecting the defenders of women’s rights did a lot of damage, as a matter of fact.

African nations, the Vatican, Iran, Russia, China and conservative Muslim states had sought to weaken the resolution passed by the assembly’s human rights committee, diplomats and activists said.

…

Fraught negotiations were held over the text.

African countries had insisted on highlighting respect for customs and traditions. Russia, Iran and China had called for language which insisted the rights defenders should follow national laws, diplomats and activists said.

In the end Norway agreed to delete a paragraph which said states should “strongly condemn all forms of violence against women and women human rights defenders and refrain from invoking any customs, traditions or religious consideration to avoid their obligations.”

African nations in turn withdrew a proposed amendment which said human rights defenders had to fall in line with “local situations,” diplomats said.

That’s pretty horrifying. More than 30 European countries, including Britain, France and Germany, backed out of the whole deal because of it.

The Vatican led opponents to references in the draft to the risks faced by those working on sexual and reproductive health and gender rights, activists who monitored the talks said.

Rights groups said the UN committee should have stood firm against the changes.

Women human rights defenders often “challenge traditional religious and cultural values and practices which subordinate, stigmatise or restrict women” when they take up gender and sexual rights, said Eleanor Openshaw of the International Service for Human Rights.

I’m so sick of Team No to Women’s Rights.

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