Gnu Atheism on the pope:

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

Another one. From the New York Times:

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Tuesday that the state’s constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage violated the federal Constitution, the latest in a string of legal victories for gay rights and one that occurred in the heart of the Bible Belt.

The state’s ban on marriage by gay and lesbian couples is “an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit,” wrote Judge Terence C. Kern of United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, deciding a case that had languished for nine years. The amendment, he said, is based on “moral disapproval” and does not advance the state’s asserted interests in promoting heterosexual marriage or the welfare of children.

The judge stayed his ruling in anticipation that the state will appeal, but it’s a start.

…with his decision against the state’s own ban on such marriages, “Judge Kern has come to the conclusion that so many have before him — that the fundamental equality of lesbian and gay couples is guaranteed by the United States Constitution,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Rights trump religion. So there.

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

The ever so much more nice guy pope has pitched a big fit about women having the audacity to terminate their pregnancies.

He said it was was “frightful” to think about early pregnancy terminations.

Easy for him, isn’t it. It’s not his life that will be messed up and perhaps irreparably thrown off course by an unwanted pregnancy. He can afford to drool sentimentally over a process inside someone else’s body that he chooses to think of as a “baby” or even a “child.”

“It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day,” he said in part of the speech that addressed the rights of children around the world.

No, it isn’t. It is no more horrific than it is to think that there are “children” who will never see the light of day because their potential parents didn’t fuck at a particular moment. That’s just as true you know. If they fuck a little later and conceive and have the child, why, that child replaces the ones that would have seen the light of day if the parents had fucked at some other time. Omigod the horror!

Dreadful man, horrified by the absence of imagined children and completely unconcerned about the women who have to bear the children.

The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Rome says that there has been concern in some quarters of Roman Catholicism that the pope has not been putting the church’s view on abortion forcefully enough.

Our correspondent says that the Pope’s stance favouring mercy over condemnation has made more conservative Roman Catholics uneasy, but they will welcome his latest remarks.

Because they’re all about punishing and controlling women, and that’s what those shits care about.

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

Yup.

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

An Oklahoma Bill from 2009, HOUSE BILL 1330.

An Act relating to the state capital and Capitol Building; providing for legislative findings; creating the Ten Commandments Monument Display Act; authorizing the placement of a monument displaying and honoring the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol; authorizing the Secretary of State to work with certain persons in designing a monument; providing for the location for the monument; authorizing the Attorney General to defend certain challenges; providing for codification providing for noncodification; and providing an effective date.

Stupid. There shouldn’t be such a monument. It’s a horrible theocratic set of “commandments” and it doesn’t belong anywhere near any government buildings.

The ten. Protestant version.

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

III. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

IV. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.

V. Honor thy father and thy mother.

VI. Thou shalt not kill.

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VIII. Thou shalt not steal.

IX.  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

X.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods.

See? The first four are brazenly theocratic. The Oklahoma legislature has no business telling any citizen to do or not do any of those things.

Part of their rationale goes like this:

3. That the Ten Commandments represent a philosophy of Oklahomans and other Americans today, that God has ordained civil government and has delegated limited authority to civil government, that God has limited the authority of civil government, and that God has endowed people with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

That’s not a philosophy, it’s a religion, that is dependent on invocation of an imagined person who does not communicate with us. It has no business being mixed up with government.

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

Originally a comment by Irène Delse on More on the Big Questions.

Let me be the token French citizen and resident, here, and clarify a few misconceptions.

1) There is no general ban on the hidjab in France. There simply is not. Maybe Ms. Sahar al-Faifi was thinking of a recent law (enacted under the former president, right-wing leader N. Sarkozy) against the wearing of full-face veils, like niqab or burqa, in public spaces. (Wether this confusion was an honest mistake or deliberately done in order to generate F.U.D. about “islamophobia”, now, is another question.)

2) This law is a can of worms, that much is true. It was crafted as a way to combat Islamist (mostly Salafist) influence in the Muslim communities, and the government used a few high-profile incidents to justify what they saw as a “necessity” for this law: things like a niqab-clad woman refusing to take off her face veil to testify in court even though she was offered to do so in a side-room with a small number of witnesses. There was also a few jewelry thefts in Paris by men dressed up as female tourists from Saudi Arabia. The niqab served to hide their faces to security cameras in the luxury shops they “visited”! Of course (as could have been predicted by even the thickest of politicos if they had taken the time to think about social and historical circumstances), the law backfired and gave even more publicity to the ultra-conservative Islamists, who now can pose as “victims”. By the way, this law only entails first a cautioning, and then a fine for a repeat offense. But in some instances, it led to confrontation (also predictable) between the woman’s family and/or neighbours and the police, hence more incidents and heightened tensions with a part of the Muslim population. Sigh. There’s many reasons not to be a fan of Sarkozy, and this law is only one of them.

3) As for the hidjab or other religious garments like kippas, Sikh turbans, etc., that don’t hide the face, they are banned here in two very precise circumstances:

a) For students public schools and high-schools, on school ground and during school-organized excursions. The rest of their time, they do as they want.

b) For government workers, during their hours of work, including certain private contractors who provide a public service (like a hospital, nursing home or child-care), if they are subsidised by the national or local government.

But, and this is a very big “but”, these lregulations on religious symbols and garments have been accompanied for more than 20 years now by directives to help schools and other administrators enforce them in a conciliatory way, in order to let believers practice their religious customs (like covering their head) in a way that doesn’t attract disproportionate attention to them. For instance, a hidjab is out, but a bandanna knotted over the hair is fine, and so is any other kind of hat than a kippa. In fact, I have a colleague who is an Orthodox Jew and he’s perfectly OK with wearing a beret at work, and so is the government agency we both work for! (Berets are a commonplace style for men here, and so are bandannas and knitted hats for both sexes.)

What this means in practice is that no, a believer doesn’t have to “choose between [their] career and [their] religious/cultural identity”, as A Hermit fears, but find a style that doesn’t shout out loud “look at the religion first, but the citizen and human being last”. I hope Québec finds a way to build some similar compromise and spare themselves more political strife under the guise of religion.

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

A letter to Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, from Radha Bhatt, Marieme Helie Lucas, Nahla Mahmoud, Chris Moos, Maryam Namazie, Pragna Patel, Abhishek Phadnis, and Fatou Sow. They write to draw her attention to the increasing incidence of gender segregation on public university campuses in the United Kingdom, and to seek her intervention in the matter.

Gender segregation reinforces negative views about women, undermines their right to participate in public life on equal terms with men and disproportionately impedes women from ethnic and religious minorities, whose rights to education and gender equality are already imperilled.

Speaking of that…it’s very damn unfortunate that the only women from Muslim backgrounds the BBC saw fit to invite to participate in that Big Questions on gender segregation were there to defend it. There were plenty of people there to oppose it, good, but they were all men. It’s right that Chris and Abhishek were there because they’ve been way out front on this, but it’s a great pity that Maryam or Pragna or Nahla or Radha couldn’t have been there too, to disrupt that very strong visual in which the two shrouded women were right smack in the middle.

(There was also Tina Beattie, ironically. I say “ironically” because I think she talks awful guff about religion, but she was right on this. She interrupted David Lammy when he was talking about how he respects his constituents, he doesn’t shake hands with women when he goes to a Jewish Orthodox temple. I scowled at that and asked “you respect whom?” so I was glad that Beattie interrupted him to say the same thing and then point out that the reason for not shaking hands is in case the woman is “polluted.” Menstrual blood you know; ew ick filthy women.) (But then, he wasn’t clear about what he meant – whether it was refusal to shake hands with a woman who offered, or not offering to shake hands with a woman after shaking hands with the men. There are degrees of disrespect there.)

The letter, minus the paragraph of background that you already know:

We are compelled to seek your intercession in this matter after Universities UK (UUK), the representative body of British universities, issued, on 22 November 2013, Guidance for universities on ‘External speakers in higher education institutions’. The Guidance featured a hypothetical case study (of a visiting speaker who insisted that the audience be segregated by gender) which concluded that “assuming the side-by-side segregated seating arrangement is adopted, there does not appear to be any discrimination on gender grounds merely by imposing segregated seating”. The case study triggered a protest by students and women’s rights campaigners outside the London offices of UUK on 10 December 2013, and, following sustained criticism, was withdrawn on 13 December, pending further legal advice. (The original guidance is attached: ExternalSpeakersInHigherEducationInstitutions.)

UUK has claimed that the case study was merely ‘hypothetical’. However, besides UCL, there have been several cases of students complaining about gender segregation, for example at Leicester University and Queen Mary University London. A poll by the Times Higher Education revealed that out of 46 universities that responded, 29 do not have prohibitions against gender segregation in place. The Federation of Islamic Students Societies, for example, has issued guidelines on how to run a successful Islamic student society. These prescribe to “maintain segregation between brothers and sisters, keeping interaction between them at a minimum”.

Universities UK claims that it has still not abandoned the case study, which is merely pending “review”. Instead, a number of public statements made by their Chief Executive, Nicola Dandridge, and by the organisation itself, give us reason to fear that the case study may quietly be reintroduced to the report, with purely cosmetic alterations that do not neutralise the danger it poses to gender equality and women’s rights.

We hope you will appreciate that it is difficult enough resisting gender-segregation in public spaces even with equality and human rights legislation demonstrably in our favour, and that a recurrence of this Guidance will irretrievably damage the cause of gender equality and women’s rights in Britain by emboldening the apologists of this practice.

Should you wish to investigate these incidents, we would like to forewarn you of a common misconception that has been encouraged by apologists for this practice, namely that it is “voluntary”. It is not, inasmuch as it is beyond dispute that attendees at these events are expected to sit in specific zones, on pain of eviction. The prefix “voluntary” merely implies that such events will sometimes have three sections – men’s, women’s and mixed. We hope you will agree that this token concession does little to address our principal objection to this practice, which is that it amounts to the appropriation of a public space in the name of religion or culture, in a manner that undermines the dignity of both men and women and creates a hostile, degrading and humiliating environment for women. We also hope you will concur that, for many women, particularly those from ethnic minorities, the ‘choice’ of mixed/segregated seating is often made under considerable duress.

Finally, we would also like to draw your attention to a legal note submitted to UUK by Radha Bhatt, an undergraduate student of the University of Cambridge, which provides a succinct illustration of the manifest illegality of gender segregation under Britain’s Equality Act 2010 and the European Convention on Human Rights, and reminds UUK of its Public Sector Equality Duty towards the imperatives of eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations between those who share protected characteristics.

We are concerned that beyond the cases we have brought to your attention, there is a persistent issue of discrimination through gender segregation at public universities in the UK and also elsewhere. Recently, for example, a professor at York University in Canada faced reprimand for upholding gender equality in his classroom. Gender segregation is often done in the name of respecting cultural and religious rights with culture, religion and ethnicity often presented as inextricably intertwined and seen to supersede women’s rights and equality in the hierarchy of rights.

Even though the UK is a signatory to CEDAW and despite the fact that the issue has been brought to the attention of university administrators and policy makers, public institutions in the United Kingdom continue to fail to uphold an environment free of discrimination.

We thank you for your consideration, and look forward to your intercession on this pressing human rights issue.

Yours Sincerely,

Radha Bhatt, undergraduate student of the University of Cambridge
Marieme Helie Lucas, Founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue
Nahla Mahmoud, Spokesperson of Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
Chris Moos, Secretary of LSE SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson of One Law for All and Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation
Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters
Abhishek Phadnis, President of LSE SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
Fatou Sow, International Director of Women Living Under Muslim Laws

 

 

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

A young guy from Afghanistan has been granted asylum on the grounds of his non-belief in “God” (or, specifically in his case, in “Allah”), This is believed to be a first.

The Afghan was brought up as a Muslim and fled the conflict in his native country. He arrived in the UK in 2007, aged 16. He was initially given temporary leave to remain until 2013 but during his time in England gradually turned to atheism.

Enough said. He can’t go back to Afghanistan in that condition, now can he.

[His lawyers] helped him submit his claim to the Home Office under the UN’s 1951 refugee convention, arguing that if he returned to Afghanistan he would face persecution on the grounds of religion – or in his case, lack of religious belief.

He could, the lawyers argued, face a death sentence under sharia law as an apostate unless he remained discreet about his atheist beliefs. Evidence was also presented showing that because Islam permeates every aspect of daily life and culture in Afghanistan, living discreetly would be virtually impossible.

Like for instance being shouted at by the muezzin five times a day every day. Imagine trying to be “discreetly” atheist with that racket going on.

Claire Splawn, a second-year law student at the University of Kent, prepared the case under the supervision of the clinic’s solicitor, Sheona York. Splawn said: “We argued that an atheist should be entitled to protection from persecution on the grounds of their belief in the same way as a religious person is protected.”

York added: “We are absolutely delighted for our client. We believe that this is the first time that a person has been granted asylum in this country on the basis of their atheism.

“The decision represents an important recognition that a lack of religious belief is in itself a thoughtful and seriously-held philosophical position.”

More thoughtful than religious belief itself is, if you ask me. (I know, I know, believers can be thoughtful. I know. But the belief itself? To the extent that it really is belief, as opposed to a hope or a metaphor or a way of being in communion with other people or tradition, I can’t see it as really thoughtful.)

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

Ten minutes in. The woman in the niqab is Sahar al-Faifi, a community organizer and geneticist (the caption says). She says the big question assumes there is a conflict between religious rights and human rights and there is no such conflict. Same-sex marriage is totally impermissible in Islam, she says; that is agreed upon.

But it doesn’t mean for me to actually project my belief into my action allowing myself to discriminate against them. So that’s, that’s – you know, the human rights and the religious rights are in align. There is no conflict between the two.

See what she did there? She completely contradicted herself. She said there is no conflict, and then she promptly described a conflict. Same-sex marriage is right out in Islam, but she doesn’t get to act on that. Why not? Because acting on it would violate human rights!

They get onto the French “ban” on the hijab, and al-Faifi says if there were such a thing in Britain she would be stuck at home, she wouldn’t be able to go out. Which is nonsense, because the French “ban” isn’t a ban everywhere, it applies only in government buildings. Nobody points that out. The presenter asks her to remind everyone why she hides her face and she says “it’s an act of worship and it’s modesty.”

It’s “an act of worship.” Why? Why is sticking a piece of black cloth over your face “an act of worship”? Why is it an act of worship only for women?

I think that’s just some grandiose words that don’t mean anything, to explain a stupid and nasty custom that stifles women.

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

Never never be born a girl in Afghanistan. Never.

A girl who says she is nine years old was captured at a checkpoint in Afghanistan wearing a suicide vest. The BBC reports her story as she told it.

It was late evening, the mullah was calling for prayers and my brother took me outside and told me to put on this vest. He showed me how to operate it, and I said: “I can’t – what if it doesn’t work?” And he said: ‘It will, don’t worry.’

I was scared and he took the vest back from me and he hit me hard, and I felt scared. Then [he gave me back the vest and] left me near the checkpoint where he said I had to operate it.

She wandered off and slept in the desert that night, and in the morning a soldier from the checkpoint found her.

When I told the commander my story he told me to go back home and I said: “No, they beat me there and I am not treated well.”

He said: “OK, well if you’re not going home then we have to take you to the provincial capital.” That’s when they brought me [to Lashkar Gah and] I spoke to another commander, the senior commander, and that’s how I come to be here.

Even if the government says it will guarantee my safety I am not going back – the same thing will happen again. They told me: “If you don’t do it this time, we will make you do it again.”

That’s a loving family she has.

My father came here and told me to go back and I said: “No, I will kill myself rather than go with you.”

I don’t have a mother, I have a stepmother and she was not very nice to me.

I did everything at home. I cooked, I made bread, I washed clothes, I cleaned the whole house and they still weren’t happy – they would treat me badly, as if I was a slave.

I didn’t go to school because they didn’t let me. I can’t read a word, I can’t pronounce anything. It’s because I wasn’t taught – nobody taught me how… of course I want to go to school.

My brother told me: “You’re here in this world and you will die. You are not here to learn or to do other things or to expect that your word will carry any weight. You are here just to die and do your duty.”

Never, never, never be born a girl in Afghanistan.

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

From last week, the BBC reports another political murder in northwest Pakistan.

On a hot and humid night in late August, a small group quietly scales the wall of a mud-brick house in a village near Pakistan’s north-western town of Akora Khatak.

In the dim, starlit courtyard, they make out the figures of a man and a woman lying in two separate charpoy cots, sleeping. About 15 minutes later, they walk out through the main door, leaving the couple in pools of blood.

So we know roughly what’s coming. The two were of the “wrong” family or ethnic group or caste for each other; or the woman had been ordered to marry someone else; or the woman’s younger brother had been accused of something or other.

The code is simple: Any contact, even just communication between a man and a woman outside of customary wedlock is considered a breach of the honour of the woman’s family, and gives it the right to seek bloody revenge.

The woman’s family must first kill her and then go after the man.

The mere expression of suspicion by the woman’s family is enough evidence and the community demands no further proof.

The mere expression of suspicion is enough to justify murder of two people, no questions asked. So if a woman’s brother or father gets irritated with her, he can simply express suspicion and wham, she’s gone. (I’m betting it doesn’t work if a woman’s sister or mother tries to use that trick, because obviously a woman’s claim is worth less than nothing.)

One person who hopes to change that is Rukhsana Bibi, now a widow, who claims that she survived an “honour killing” in a village near Akora Khatak and has taken the unusual step of publicly speaking out, trying to seek justice through the legal system.

Ms Bibi suffered horrific chest and leg injuries when she and husband, Mohammad Yunus, were victims of a brutal attack while they lay sleeping in the courtyard in Akora Khatak. Her husband was murdered, but Ms Bibi survived with seven bullets in her body: two in the chest, three in the left leg and two in the left hip.

And then we get to what happened. I called it – it was the one about the woman being promised to some other man, as if she were a piece of furniture boxed up ready for shipment.

Ms Bibi tells me that she met Mr Yunus – a student of medical technology – at a village wedding in the summer of 2011. They fell in love with each other at first sight.

Although their meetings were rare, they frequently spoke to each other on their mobile phones.

She describes how their relationship went on like this until April, when her family arranged her marriage to a distant relative, an uneducated cattle tender in her village.

Unhappy and frustrated, she and Mr Yunus decided to run away.

They married in the north-west before going into hiding in the Akora Khatak area.

Well pieces of furniture aren’t allowed to decide for themselves whom to marry.

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

And in Mauritania – another journalist, another criticism of Mo, another “apostasy” claim, another potential death sentence. “Mo is the best thing ever and if you deny it we’ll kill you!” Well that sure convinces me.

A young journalist in Mauritania faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of apostasy for an article criticising the prophet Mohammed, AFP reported Monday (January 6th).

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was arrested January 2nd in Nouadhibou and “was convicted of lack of respect for the prophet”, a judicial source told AFP.

And then the private sector got involved.

In Nouadhibou, a businessman even offered up money to anyone willing to kill Ould Mohamed.

In describing the January 3rd incident, Nouadhibou-based journalist Mostafa el-Sayed told Magharebia that “businessman and preacher Abi Ould Ali, a resident of Nouadhibou, said during a protest against the offending article that he was willing to pay 4,000 euros to anyone who killed the young author, unless he announced his repentance within three days.”

Yet many who denounced the article were angered by the businessman’s incitement to murder, saying it pushed society towards terrorism.

Not to mention that lacking respect for “the prophet” should not be a crime in the first place, let alone a capital crime.

“Those who incite to murder want to terrorise us,” young researcher Salihy Ould Ab said. They are just a group of salafists and Islamists who want us to erase our minds and refrain from thinking and criticism.”

“They are inciting people to kill a young man just because he wrote an analytical article in which he referred to some of the positions of the Prophet Mohammed. This means that Mauritania is on the verge of entering an era of terrorism,” Ould Ab wrote on his Facebook page.

It’s good to know that there are sensible people in Mauritania along with the vigilantes and theocrats.

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

Via Yemisi - Gay Cameroonian, Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé, imprisoned for sending love text message to same-sex person, dies.

That’s appalling.

He was sent to prison in March 2011 for sending a text message declaring his love for another adult human.  The message was a simple “I’m very much in love with you”. How does such a message constitute harm? Why should this lead to imprisonment?

Cameroonian activist, Lambert Lamda, said Mbédé had been out of hospital for about a month before he died and had received no medical care during that period.  ’”His family said they were going to remove the homosexuality which is in him. I went to see him in his village. He could not stand up, he couldn’t speak.”

 He couldn’t get a visa to leave Cameroon.

In July 2013, a prominent Cameroonian gay rights activist and journalist Eric Lembembe was gruesomely murdered. Mr Lembembe’s neck and feet was broken and his face, hands, and feet burned with an iron. How many more will die before the world wakes up to its responsibility? This horrific treatment of a person because of their sexual orientation is why we bother.

Hiding under culture, religion or inhumane laws to commit crimes against humanity must be thoroughly condemned. Silence is simply acquiescence to oppression.

The hell with religion, culture and inhumane laws that allow or encourage crimes against humanity.

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

Here are Chris and Abhishek on the BBC show The Big Questions. The question, you will remember, was “Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?”

There’s also Tina Beattie, and a guy called Davis Mac-Iyalla saying yes they should, and (I skipped ahead) hot disagreement about (male) circumcision.

I skipped all the way ahead to get to the Chris and Abhishek part at about 50 minutes. They unzipped their jackets as requested to reveal the (shock-horror) Jesus and Mo T shirts.

Do they have the right to wear such T shirts? No, the woman in a hijab sitting (reluctantly) next to them says. No, another woman in a hijab in the back row says. “When you’re threatening our religion,” she explains twice. Of course, the T shirts don’t threaten her/their religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ5X_lPXnvU

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

Ah the tragedy of manhood today, having to live in a “feminized” atmosphere in which being a bully isn’t unreservedly admired by 100% of everyone. Britt Hume of Fox “News” is sad and upset about the tragedy. He blames women.

During a panel discussion on the Fox News show Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz asked if [Governor Chris] Christie’s “bully image” was hurting him after his administration was accused for closing part of the busiest bridge in the world to hurt his political opponents.

“I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks,” Hume opined.

Oh I know. It’s so sad. All Governor Christie did was create a colossal traffic jam for his own purely selfish reasons. In normal times, before all this feminization nonsense, who would have objected to that? No one! All those people stuck on the approach to the George Washington Bridge, breathing exhaust fumes and late for work – would they have frowned on a little piece of mischief like that? No in thunder! Because in those days men were men and women were at home putting the corn flakes away and nobody had anything but love for bullying and spite.

“Feminized!” Fox News contributor Lauren Ashburn gasped.

“Atmosphere,” Hume nodded. “By which I mean that men today have learned the lesson the hard way that if you act like kind of an old-fashioned guy’s guy, you’re in constant danger of slipping out and saying something that’s going to get you in trouble and make you look like a sexist or make you look like you seem thuggish or whatever. That’s the atmosphere in which we operate.”

“This guy is very much an old-fashioned masculine, muscular guy,” he added. “And there are political risks associated with that. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but that’s how it is.”

Of course it shouldn’t be. Good god. If a guy is big and muscular well then he should be punching his subordinates every chance he gets. Anything else is a surrender to the forces of feminization! This terrible smothering atmosphere in which adults are expected to refrain from abusing their muscles or even their political office which they earned fair and square by being big and muscular – well it’s a scandal, that’s all. God damn sissy women killing all the buzzes.

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

Dave Ricks posted the link to Emily Lakdawalla’s post on why rocks are evenly spaced on Mars so I read it so now I have to share it More.

On Mars there are rocks everywhere. The difference is that Mars’ landscape is shaped in large part by impact processes. Far-away impacts can toss rocks for miles, and they fall where they land. So it’s not particularly surprising that you see rocks everywhere, even in flat places on Mars. What is a bit surprising is their even spacing. Here’s an example of a rock-strewn landscape selected more or less at random from the early part of Spirit’s mission, when it was dashing across the flat plains to the east of its landing site toward the Columbia Hills.

NASA / JPL / Cornell / calibrated color by Daniel Crotty

She adds a closeup of some rocks and then explains how they get to be evenly spread.

…the wind doesn’t move the rocks, at least not directly. What the wind does do is lift sand; sand particles jump (or “saltate”) along the ground, knocking into each other and launching more sand particles. When the wind runs into a rock, it loops and whirls, scouring the area right in front of the rock. Over time, it digs a pit in front of the rock. At the same time, the sand that was scoured from in front of the rock gets deposited in the wind shadow behind the rock. Do this for long enough, dig a steep-sided enough pit, and one random day the rock will tip forward, rolling in the upwind direction, into the pit. Rinse and repeat, and you get rocks trooping across the landscape over time. (The press release didn’t give a time scale for this process.)

That explains how rocks can move, but how does it explain an even spacing? Well, according to the release, when you have a cluster of rocks, “those in the front of the group shield those in the middle or on the edges from the wind, Pelletier said. Because the middle and outer rocks are not directly hit by the wind, the wind creates pits to the sides of those rocks. Therefore, they roll to the side, not directly into the wind, and the cluster begins to spread out.”

Well how stinkin’ cool is that? Not to mention the photo.

We live in interesting times.

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

More from Ann Elizabeth Mayer’s long article A “Benign” Apartheid: How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized.

Taking advantage of the failure of CEDAW expressly to rule out any culture-based justifications for gender discrimination and playing to cultural relativist sympathies, states have frequently resorted to culture to defend discriminatory laws and policies. For example, many Muslim countries have entered reservations when ratifying CEDAW, saying that they must qualify their obligations in order to uphold Islamic law and speaking as if it were obvious that women’s rights had to be sacrificed where conflicting religious precepts were at stake.87 Appeals to Islam may be used in combination with appeals to the complementarity thesis, with claims being made that countries are obliged to treat women in ways that
recognize women’s different nature and the different roles that women should play, ideas that are often linked to religious teachings that are imbued with patriarchal ideas. For example, Morocco included language in its reservation to Article 16 of CEDAW giving men and women equality in the family, saying: “Equality of this kind is considered incompatible with the Islamic Shariah, which guarantees to each of the spouses right and responsibilities within a framework of equilibrium and complementarity in order to preserve the sacred bond of matrimony;” and Egypt in reserving to the same article said it was doing so in the interests of upholding Islamic law in which “women are accorded rights equivalent to those of their spouses so as to ensure a just balance between them.”88

87 See Rebecca Cook, Reservations to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 30 VA. J. INT’L L. 643, 687-91, 694-95, 701-06 (1990); Belinda Clark, The Vienna Convention Reservations Regime and the Convention on Discrimination Against Women, 85 AM. J. INT’L L. 285, 291, 299-300, 310-12, 371 (1991); Jane Connors, The Women’s Convention in the Muslim World, in FEMINISM AND ISLAM: LEGAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES 351-71 (Mai Yamani ed., 1996).

88 For a discussion of the Moroccan and Egyptian reservations, see Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Rhetorical Strategies and Official Policies on Women’s Rights: The Merits and Drawbacks of the New World Hypocrisy, in FAITH AND FREEDOM: WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD, 106-13 (Mahnaz Afkhami ed., 1995).

Which is exactly like the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which adds a reservation to nearly every right of the form “as long as it complies with Sharia” – which of course makes many of the rights completely empty and worthless.

Although reservations by which Middle Eastern countries have sought to excuse themselves from compliance with various CEDAW provisions have been vigorously criticized by advocates of women’s rights and have also provoked objections from some other states parties, the international community has taken no effective steps to curb such reservations. One reason is that attempts to deter the practice of reservations in conflict with the object and purpose of CEDAW have met with resistance in the form of
accusations that these were tantamount to Western attacks on Islam and/or the Third World.89 An attempt made in 1987 by the CEDAW Committee to examine the basis for reservations that used Islam as the grounds for non-compliance in a study “on the status of women under Islamic laws and customs and in particular on the status and equality of women in the family” resulted in a strong diplomatic backlash.90 Muslim countries quickly rallied to stop this project, intimating that the CEDAW Committee was engaged in cultural imperialism and attacking Islam.91

Does that sound familiar? Jaw-clenchingly familiar? Yes it does. It’s what Maryam gets told all the time. It’s what got Taslima’s tv serial shut down when mullahs said it might hurt someone’s sentiments, even though the serial is not about religion. It’s what makes ostensible feminists and progressives passionately defend the hijab from criticism, always including that stupid cartoon -

 - as if criticism of the hijab were exactly the same as snatching one off someone’s head.

The study was abandoned in the face of concerted pressures from Muslim countries, proving that it was not hard to mobilize effective opposition to CEDAW by using claims grounded in Islamic culture and religion. After this episode, one appreciates that the fear of inflaming Muslim opinion may inhibit initiatives to curb the practice of CEDAW reservations that are made under an Islamic rubric. Reviewing this situation, one scholar has noted that CEDAW effectively seems to have a lesser status than other human rights conventions, being treated more as a statement of intent than as a set of internationally binding obligations, and that the culturally-sensitive nature of the content is a factor influencing countries to see CEDAW more as rhetoric than as international law.92

92 See Clark, supra note 87, at 285-86.

It’s a very bad arrangement.

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Smithsonian Magazine offers snapshots taken by Spirit and Opportunity over the past ten years.

Another bow to the engineers. They figured the two Rovers would last three months. Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity is still working, a decade in.

Check out the rounded rocks. A long-gone river?

A closeup of tiny spherical rocks clustered in a square inch of the Martian surface, captured by Opportunity. Full size version. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS/Cathy Weitz)

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Seen on Twitter:

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The facts

The story of Ryan J. Bell has created quite a bit of buzz these past few days. For those that aren’t familiar, on December 31, Bell -the former senior pastor at the Hollywood Seventh-Day Adventist Church- announced he would be “trying on” atheism for a year. As he said in a blog post announcing this:

So, I’m making it official and embarking on a new journey. I will “try on” atheism for a year. For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God. I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.

Per Dan Burke at the CNN Religion Blog:

The seeds of Bell’s journey were planted last March, when he was asked to resign as pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist congregation in Hollywood.

He had advocated for the church to allow gay and lesbian leaders, campaigned against California’s same-sex marriage ban and disputed deeply held church doctrines about the End Times.

Eventually, his theological and political liberalism became more than leaders in the denomination could bear, and he lost his career of 19 years. His faith was shaken, and for a while Bell became a “religious nomad.”

By January 3, Bell had been let go from his adjunct teaching positions at Christian at Azusa Pacific University (APU) and Fuller Theological Seminary as well as his consulting agreement with the Glendale City Seventh-day Adventist Church, leaving him with no sources of income.

On January 6, Hemant Mehta of the “Friendly Atheist” blog started an online fundraiser for Bell which has to date raised over $26,000 from an initial goal of $5,000. Mehta had originally been critical of Bell’s year long experiment.

The Narrative

On the blog post announcing the fundraiser, Mehta wrote:

I think it’s important to show that, unlike the Christian organizations, we support someone who’s willing to put his own beliefs under the microscope. Furthermore, we’ll support his experiment even if he doesn’t end up becoming an atheist.

What a disappointing response from the Christian schools and church.

Not unexpected, just disappointing.

One thing’s for sure: Bell just got a dose of reality from his experiment. A lot of atheists remain in the closet precisely because they’re afraid of the ramifications of coming out. They’re afraid of losing their families, friends, or jobs. Bell lost some of those, just for saying he was exploring life without God.

Speaking to Burke, Mehta elaborated:

“He learned what it’s like to be an atheist real fast,” said Hemant Mehta, a prominent atheist blogger and schoolteacher in Illinois.

Mehta said he knows many atheists who fear that “coming out of the closet” will jeopardize their jobs and relationships, just as in Bell’s experience.

…

“I think more than anything else, people appreciate that this guy is giving atheism a shot,” Mehta said. “I mean, he lost three jobs in the span of a week just for saying he was exploring it.”

Why I think this narrative is flawed

Let me start by saying I think Bell’s story has a lot going for it on the “Atheism vs Christianity” front. For one thing, he’s a charismatic former evangelical pastor who has decided to oppose church positions on key progressive issues. For another, he’s willing to potentially leave behind entirely the religious beliefs and practices he’s espoused for most of his adult life. All this in full public view. In addition, it’s hard not to sympathize with the plight of a father with two children who’s life is rapidly changing and has just lost his livelihood-all for seemingly just dabbling in atheism, much less being a outspoken anti-theist.

However, there are two aspects of Mehta’s narrative where I believe he is missing the mark:1) That Bell’s experience of losing his employment has somehow taught him “what it’s like to be an atheist” and 2) That the response from the schools and church that he was working for was somehow unwarranted.

It is true that many atheists keep their convictions to themselves to protect themselves from employment discrimination or harassment, or even just to avoid rocking the boat with their religious co-workers. It is also true that there are employers who would take punitive action against an employee due to a difference in religious convictions or indeed a lack of same. The reason that such retaliation is so insidious however, is that the difference in religious convictions is unrelated to the task at hand. For the vast majority of jobs in secular workplaces, a worker’s atheism is no more a help nor a hindrance then her colleague’s belief in Christianity, Islam, or any other religion.

Some atheists might nonetheless argue that Bell’s non-committal decision to simply give atheism a try ought to be a mitigating factor. To those people, I would request that they ask themselves how they would react if the situation were reversed (while recognizing that such comparisons are rarely precisely equivalent). Would they support with equal enthusiasm an atheist organization that continues to pay for the services of one of their public representatives while that representative goes on their year-long journey of spiritual discovery to blog on a website called for instance “myyearwithjesus.com”? And most importantly, would the cancellation of said employee’s contract be an example of the “jeopardy” Christians face when coming out in the workplace? I would imagine that such an argument would be met with very little sympathy if not outright laughter among even the most tolerant of atheists.

But let’s come even closer to people with Bell’s circumstances and examine members of the clergy who have become atheists with the passage of time and who face many challenges as a result. The Clergy Project is an especially valuable initiative for them. My understanding of what these clergy members typically seek for their next career stop is to transition away from being paid to serve their faith communities. I would be very surprised if many of these clergy members have the reasonable expectation of remaining employed as religious leaders or as seminary teachers after coming out as atheists.

Atheists are right to be outraged when their atheism precludes them from performing secular functions. But how many atheists feel that their opportunities in life are somehow limited by being shut out of teaching positions at Christian seminaries?

This brings me to my second objection. The flip side of atheists not having the reasonable expectation that they ought to have equal opportunities to teach at Bell’s former employers APU and Fuller is that these employers are under no obligation – legal or moral – to entertain Bell’s recent experimentation with atheism. The fact that he’s simply giving it a shot doesn’t change the fact that he is publicly stating his intention to not follow the tenets that they require him to uphold. Regardless of his admirable sincerity and pleasant demeanor, make no mistake that Bell is creating a confrontation, albeit under the guise of “just asking questions”. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would imagine that the fact that this confrontation comes just a few months after another public falling out with the same church’s leadership also played a role in their decision.

Conclusion

Sympathizing with Bell as a person is quite understandable. He’s in a tough spot for all the reasons outlined above, and these no doubt hit home with many atheists. However, animus against his employers by atheists seems misplaced.

The challenges Bell is facing only bear a superficial similarity to those that atheists face in secular workplaces dominated by Christians in the US. If we are trying to tell powerful stories that exemplify these challenges, my recommendation is that we look elsewhere.

Simon Davis is online marketing director at a health care publications company. His writing has appeared in Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. You can follow him on twitter at @SimonKnowz

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