Divided Under God on the reversal in the Margaret Doughty case.

On Friday June 14th, we broke the story of Margaret Doughty, a 64-year old atheist from the UK who was told by the USCIS that in order to gain conscientious objector status, she would need to provide evidence of a religious reason for her objection “on official church stationery, attesting to the fact that [she is] a member in good standing and the church’s official position on the bearing of arms.”  This was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, as pointed out in a similar Supreme Court Case, Welsh v. United States.

The story hit the national stage, featured in articles on CNN, Huffington Post, Raw Story, RichardDawkins.net, and many others. Ms. Doughty’s case was brought to the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who wrote a letter to the USCIS on her behalf, as well as the American Humanist Association, who did the same.  Ms. Doughty’s local Congressman, Blake Farenthold, also got involved, helping to get her case escalated to the highest levels of the USCIS for review.

Today, she received an email from the congressional office with the following message from the USCIS included:

“This Service hereby withdraws the request for evidence (RFE) issued on June 7, 2013.  This Service accepts your detailed statement in satisfaction of the information requested by the RFE.  Your application for naturalization has been approved.”

Solidarity forever, eh?

More coverage -

The American Humanist Association

The Huffington Post

Salon

The BBC (via YouTube)

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

From the Secular Coalition for America newsletter:

An atheist woman, who was originally told she must join or church or her U.S. citizenship application would be rejected, yesterday was granted citizenship.

Margaret Doughty, an atheist and permanent resident of the U.S. for over 30 years, was told by immigration authorities earlier this month that she had until today, Friday June 21, to officially join a church, because her conscientious objections to war were only valid if those beliefs came from religion. On Thursday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services retracted their demand that Doughty show proof of religious affiliation and informed her that her application for naturalization had been approved.The Freedom from Religion Foundation and the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, sent letters on behalf of Doughty.

Ahhh. That’s good. That’s excellent.

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

Some game developers (is that the right name for them?) got a desirable spot at a gaming expo but then decided not to take it up after all, because of the people behind the expo.

But in the back of our minds all along, we’ve been bothered by the public stances that Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the founders of PAX’s parent organization Penny Arcade, have taken on a number of issues.

First there was the entire “Dickwolves” debacle, during which Mike said that it “felt pretty good” to “support rape culture.”

Then there were the Penny Arcade Kickstarters, one of which offered to let backers pay them $7,500 to work as a Penny Arcade intern for a day.

When critics recently raised objections about the over-the-top depiction of female characters in Dragon’s Crown, Jerry referred to opinions that differed from his own as “censorship.”

And then yesterday a panel was announced for PAX Australia entitled “Why So Serious?” Its description initially included the lines

Any titillation gets called out as sexist or misogynistic, and involve any antagonist race aside from Anglo-Saxon and you’re called a racist. It’s gone too far and when will it all end?

Hmmmyeah.

This morning we stopped pushing those long-held reservations about Jerry and Mike into the back of our minds. We talked to each other and did a simple show of hands– do any of us feel comfortable presenting Gone Home at PAX?

No hands went up.

We believe that people’s opinions and actions on social issues and business ethics are important. We believe that agreeing to pay the organizers of PAX over $1,000 for booth space, and to present our game on their showfloor for four days, provides explicit support for and tacit approval of their publicly demonstrated positions on these subjects. And we have finally come to the conclusion that we cannot support Jerry, Mike, and their organization by participating in this event.

So they’re not presenting their game at PAX.

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

Wo. Megan Carpentier at Raw Story interviews Dave Silverman at Net Roots Nation, and he has some very good things to say.

Raw Story: I notice on your lanyard that’s you’re wearing the “Trust Women” button from NARAL, and I know there’s been a lot of controversies within atheism over the last few months about the confluence of atheism and feminism, and sexism within the atheist community. Obviously, there was a very big blow-up after the feminism and secularism conference because of some remarks made by a male atheist that reinforced sexist tropes. How do you think that atheists can address these problems within the community and address the kind of language that’s been used to marginalize women?

Wo. She’s been paying attention.

Silverman: That’s a difficult question, and it’s a big question. The reason I’m wearing this NARAL pin is because I’m a feminist. I’m a proud feminist. And I’ve always been a feminist. Now, American Atheists is not a feminist organization, but I believe pretty firmly that feminism is the inevitable result of atheism, that sexism is rooted in religion. And that’s not a perfect thing, there are other roots of it, the paternalistic societies.

But really when we’re talking about how we’re dealing with this, it’s hard because atheism is all about free speech, atheism is all about open communication, and some atheists are simply not nice people. And just like some Christians are not nice people, and some Jews are not nice people, some atheists are simply not nice people. And there’s a lot of people who are in that middle area, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding. So what I think has to happen is that the feminist voice in atheism has to be protected — protected may be not the right word, but I’ll use it anyways. The voice of feminist has to be protected, it has to be amplified, it has to be helped by the men in atheism and by the women as well. We have to make a stand that says, “It’s just obvious that men and women are equal and it’s also obvious that rape jokes sent to feminist speakers and sent to feminist bloggers, that’s not what good people do.”

At the crux of that, I’ve said many times that the atheism movement is the good guys. We are the good guys! We strive for equality, not advantage, that’s what makes us the good guys. Good guys don’t act like that. They don’t act like that to our enemies, and they don’t act like that to our allies. I have seen people within the atheist movement treat other atheists more poorly than I would treat the worst of our adversaries, and that shames me. That makes me ashamed of them.

I think the Women in Secularism Conference was a huge success, in my personal opinion. I was there, and I though it was great, and it was also packed full — and packed full larger than the first one (it was the second conference), and I hope there’s going to be a WISC 3, I hope there will be a third one. And I think that even if there isn’t, I think the feminist voice in atheism is going to continue to expand, as it should, I think it’s going to diversify more, and we are seeing that diversification within the feminist movement, within the atheism movement. And what I hope, and what I think will happen, is that the atheist movement on the whole will see the anti-feminists for what they are and drop them. And I think that’s going to happen.

I’ll do what I can to help!

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

So how about that Paula Deen, huh? First there’s the whole thing with producing recipes for cheeseburgers served between two doughnuts while diabetic, and then there’s the racism. Isn’t American life interesting?

She has faced a volley of criticism this week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used racial slurs, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.

Part of her down-home charm, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the idea?

Ms. Deen has managed to offend even her most uncritical fans before, most recently in January 2012 when she announced her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes on the same day she endorsed the diabetes drug Victoza and a lucrative collaboration with Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer. Because she had built her career on a no-holds-barred approach to sugar and fat (creating recipes like a cheeseburger patty sandwiched between two doughnuts and a Better than Sex cake made with cake mix, pudding mix, and heavy cream), she was roundly criticized for encouraging an unhealthy diet for others, hiding her illness and then trying to profit from it.

Well I’ve always liked Lidia Bastianich better anyway.

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

Guest post by Eamon Knight and AJ Milne.

Eamon Knight, starting with a silly claim by Rabbi Sacks:

you cannot expect the foundations of western civilisation to crumble and leave the rest of the building intact.

I see this fallacious metaphor often enough that it deserves a name. A society is not a building; it does not rest on its history in the same sense a building rests on its footings. A society is more like a living organism, with the capability of continually renewing and even resculpting itself (think of the radical transformation of insect larvae into adults).

(But if we do want to run with the civil engineering metaphor, note that these days, we can even replace the footings of large historic buildings in situ, eg. replacing rotted wooden pilings with modern materials like concrete and polymers. And in fact Western societies have been gradually, over the last few centuries, replacing the rotten wood of _a priori_ moral order with secular ethics based on known human needs.)

AJ Milne, starting with Eamon’s retort:

I see this fallacious metaphor often enough that it deserves a name. A society is not a building; it does not rest on its history in the same sense a building rests on its footings. A society is more like a living organism, with the capability of continually renewing and even resculpting itself (think of the radical transformation of insect larvae into adults).

Now that’s actually a decent metaphor, right there.

And re replacing rotting wood, exactly. And it’s not like it’s a new thing, either.

It isn’t like this is actually such an obscure phenomenon, Dear Mr. Sacks. But let’s review all the same, as apparently you’re in the slow class…

See, the earliest human civilizations of any size were fairly brutal affairs by modern standards. And there’s something of a continuum from those to what the various modern states try to make work now. I figure the earliest monarches are a little better than straight out dictatorships really only in that succession is worked out ahead of time, and the relative continuity of the hierarchy did, over time, allow a somewhat persistent social contract between the rulers and the ruled, which could then evolve to something a little less brutally one-sided. If you were lucky, anyway. As in: if it’s been worked out the king actually has to try people (or at least people with any title) in public and declare the charges, his son is generally expected to follow the same rules if he wants to get along as well as he did with folk who might care and might also be armed and/or tempermental.

That’s one of the things state religions maybe did for civilization: having a proper royal cult turned the tyrant into a king, and the state religions Constantine and Uthman found convenient for their purposes did much the same job. That’s one of the ways religious flakes maybe get to declare their preferred superstition a ‘foundation’…

But it hardly means anyone* wants the pharoahs back. Shocking, I guess, how we’ve allowed that particular bit of masonry to ‘crumble’, too, innit.

And the reality is, against the fable propagandists like Sacks sell, it was never about an absolute code. The code was always being worked out and modified over time by humans; it’s just that over the same time, this process has become somewhat less obscurantist. Time was once you declared yourself god and had a priesthood dutifully inform the people regularly that they’d better bow if they knew what was good for them; time moves on and if you had sufficient political acumen maybe you pick your holy man and holy book, or edit it to fit the needs, à la Constantine, and then thereafter if you get a little selective about which rules the constabulary actually bother to enforce, well, again, let’s be practical; who’s going to check whose shirt is of mixed fibres anyway? (Mind, this presents problems, sure; fundamentalists will fundament, given half a chance, and having that canon around was always a hazard that way, but anyway, we’re working with what we got, here…)

And then take that celebrated Magna Carta; it has a proper ‘in God’s name’ on it, somewhere, but it was a treaty made effectively at the point of a sword (and at best very selectively followed for generations after and only revived as the Rule To Follow somewhat conveniently by a parliamentarian who liked the cut of its jib much, much later). And now lots of modern parliaments argue like mad about what the law’s to be, and if you’re paying attention, what actually winds up written, it’s about a lot of things and power and politics and stability and who may actually protest and who may actually pay and who may actually show up to vote and so on… But some clerk will still have the job of stamping some god’s name on the finished document at the end of the day to make it all official-like, all the same. This is a little more naked than were those earlier emperors who would declare themselves god and then work out just what they could get their barons to tithe as a more practical matter behind closed doors, but the principle’s much the same.

Now you can protest legislation isn’t morality, but again, the latter’s essentially the same phenomenon, and they do reflect one another. And they do evolve similarly, and are similarly subject to revision. And we do, again, work them out, bit by bit, between ourselves, as we bump up against one another, fight and argue and sometimes get along. We’re social beasts with this curious thing about us called culture that can change vastly faster than can our biology, and change it does.

So, seriously: Sacks thinks the Gnus aren’t thinking about this? Huh. Cute…

I might be more impressed with his self-serving, tediously overexposed smear, if I could see he were. Or at least that he were reporting it with the faintest interest in reflecting something remotely like the reality our civilization has lived.

(*/Or wait, in fairness, there’s probably people who do. So let’s keep outvoting them, shall we?)

Part deux

I figure I kinda know the minds of hacks like Sacks by now. Next it’s gonna be, oh, look, religion did this great thing, made kings from tyrants, isn’t that great, hallelujah, yadda yadda…

Let’s not oversell anything. Kings may be a mite better, sure. A little more stability, a few fewer revolutions and violent bloodlettings over succession, that’s nice, sure…

But until it’s been tamed by time and politics and angry mobs and rebel barons, that’s the only thing that’s better about a monarchy. And lots of places the only way you get anything near a modern democracy out of that is when those pesky and frequently very ugly Enlightenment revolutions get rolling, and various dark threats about nooses made of intestines are uttered. Some places it’s less marked and total than those revolutions, but even there it’s a messy business often beginning in the streets; you don’t get to Elizabeth II and her largely ceremonial role from Henry VIII without a few very ugly brawls. And claiming any religion has a whole hell of a lot to do with any of that is again, typically facile and self-serving. Note that, sure, it took off in Christian Europe first, but it’s not like we particularly see the religious authorities universally egging it on, either, nor is it ever real clear it’s the religion that has a lot to do with that so much as the wealth and prosperity spreading more generally through society, the causes of which may have as much to do with geography as human creeds. And at a more meta level, sure, the priesthood sometimes does get closer to the people than the king they’re supposed to support, and the politics gets complicated, and you get your Romeros and your revolution theology, but that’s no more surprising than the fact that sometimes the people working in the secret police start realizing what they’re supporting with their work really isn’t in their long-term interest either.

And none of this, of course, again, makes the underlying code laid down by any particular religion at any particular time sacred, nor the religion itself that important, nor at all indispensable. Publicly run programs and less formal community and social groups fill vast areas of the civic roles the old state religions took (public education, especially, not that the religion is always so happy about letting that go). What’s worth discussing at any time, sure, is how well those are filling needs, and that will always be a complicated story, and secular democracies, as relatively new phenomena, are always working on those, and societies in general always tuning, always fiddling, and probably always will be. But this isn’t a sign of some dreadful underlying malaise or decay; it’s the hallmarks of the living, dynamic, changeable things our societies all are.

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

More from the God hates women brigade.

Sajila Gujjar, 18, was a first year university student studying computer science in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

Family and friends described her as talented, intelligent and determined to make a difference.

She was especially popular among younger children in the Faqirabad neighbourhood of the city where she lived – providing them with free after-school tuition classes.

Last Saturday, Sajila left her home in the morning for university.

“It was the last day of her exams and she was looking forward to her summer holidays,” her mother recalls.

It was the last time her mother saw her.

In the afternoon, Sajila’s father Shahjahan Gujjar, received a phone call. A female suicide bomber had been used to target the students on a university bus and 14 young women were dead including his daughter.

The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, and relatives rushed there, so then the hospital was attacked by men with guns. Nurses were killed.

“This was an attack on women’s education because they want to keep us illiterate,” says Sana Bashir, a teenage biotechnology student who narrowly escaped the bombing.

She’s brave though. Appallingly brave.

Established in 2004, Sardar Bahadur Khan Women’s University is the only all-female university in the province of Balochistan.

For some tribal and conservative families in smaller towns, it was seen as the only place to send their daughters for higher education.

The bloodshed on the university campus may well change that now.

Sana feels the attack is a setback for women’s education. But she says it is not going to stop her from going back to her studies.

“We cannot let them achieve their targets [of preventing female education]. No matter what happens, I am determined to continue with my education. We cannot give up our goals we have worked so hard for.”

She shouldn’t have to be brave. It shouldn’t take appalling courage to go to university.

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

Dan Cardamon looks back on The Great War and rallies the troops. He exaggerates the time a little – it’s two years, not three – but it feels like twenty, so hyperbole makes sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYw-HjKrmY4

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

A funny bit on Hemant’s post about AA and Ed Clint and the lawsuit. One branch of the conversation somehow turned to harassment, when one wag (nymmed ”whatever”) joked that the fashion for conspiracy theories started with my documentation of harassment. Others disagreed and it went on as such things do.

Martin Wagner to Whatever

So people are harassing her on Twitter (which you admit), she complains about it (understandable), and your reply is that she has it coming. Glad we got your number on all this.

Whatever to Martin Wagner

        So people are harassing her on Twitter (which you admit)

No, I admit to no such thing. Ophelia calls it harassment. I call it a lot of shitty little comments designed to get Ophelia worked up. And it evidently works all too well.

Hahahahahaha – isn’t that great? No, it’s not harassment, it’s a lot of shitty little comments designed to get someone worked up. Totally different thing.

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

Update I had about two minutes before I had to dash off and I wanted to flag up these two posts but I didn’t have time to say anything.

I meant to say how proud I am to have Nirmukta among us.

Because of Anita’s wonderful post Why Your Daughter’s Marriage Shouldn’t Be Your Biggest Dream For Her for instance,

Placing emphasis on marriage means raising girls in a manner primarily aimed at moulding them into a societal expectation of what an ideal bride or wife should be like, instead of fostering and encouraging individual characteristics. And in a patriarchal society, these demands are never free of misogyny. The perfect wife looks like Aishwarya Rai, talks like Mother Teresa and is willing to be submissive like Sita. She is unambitious, unassertive, unaware or not demanding of her rights, and has been blessed with extra invisible hands to successfully manage all household work and (increasingly) also a job without the slightest complaints. Girls then are taught from a young age to value their looks more than their talents and skills, to place their career aspirations or financial independence secondary to the need for being married at the ‘right’ time and having kids, and to perpetuate this vicious cycle through their own daughters, all the while carrying a burden of living up to the good girl myth so as to not ‘invite’ rape, lest they become used goods. Because rape is something that is given to us when we “ask for it”, and the unit of measurement of a woman’s worth is virginity. Right?

And because of Sunil on “Brahmins Only” Housing.

A visit to their website confirms that their objective is the preservation and perpetuation of Brahmanism:

To preserve, protect, propagate and strengthen intellectual identity, integrity and self- esteem of the noble culture of Sanathana Dharma, spanning its various sampradayas and traditions represented by Acharyas and Gurus.

When we posted the image on the Indian Atheists page it got the expected amount of anger, but there were also a handful of commenters who thought this ought to be allowed. This post attempts to tease out the moral arguments for and against. (I’m not neutral on the matter and will make my position clear too.)

He goes on to do that.

Nirmukta is great. I’m so pleased to have them as colleagues.

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

Margaret Doughty has decided to become a US citizen – and has hit an obstacle.

…an USCIS official asked Doughty to confirm that, when asked, she would take up arms in defense of the United States. Doughty, who had just been made to swear an oath to tell the truth (as is customary with citizenship applications), felt honor-bound to answer the question…truthfully. She responded that she would be unfailingly loyal to the United States, but that her conscience doesn’t allow her to inflict violence on another person.

The immigration agent explained that the question, in Doughty’s case, was pretty much academic. The United States does not put sexagenarians on the front lines. Doughty, however, felt helpless to change her answer, and the agent told her that was going to be a problem, claiming that the USCIS recognizes only religiously-motivated objectors (Doughty isn’t religious; she identifies as an agnostic).

This is a long-standing issue with conscientious objection: religious c.o. is accepted while non-religious c.o. is not – as if “conscientious” simply meant “religious,” which it doesn’t.

Doughty is appealing to her Congressman, Blake Farenthold, for help with her case, and has been heartened by a letter written by Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney Andrew Seidel, who let the USCIS know in no uncertain terms that the law is not on the agency’s side. Wrote Seidel:

Either the officers in Houston are inept, or they are deliberately discriminating against nonreligious applicants for naturalization.

Seidel, however, cannot act as Doughty’s attorney, and the applicant has a call in to a local immigration lawyer who might.

Let’s remind each other to keep an eye on this.

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

Boko Haram has been busy killing people again.

Residents of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, said suspected members of Boko Haram on Monday killed 22 persons in separate attacks. They said the terrorists were on a revenge mission against youth vigilante groups that have been hunting them.

The gunmen on Monday at about 3 p.m. attacked a secondary school, Ansarudeen Private School, Maiduguri, and opened fire on students writing their final year exams. Nine students were killed, while several others were seriously injured in the attack, residents of the area said.

The incident occurs less than 24 hours after gunmen attacked a school in neighbouring Yobe State, killing seven students and two teachers. Borno and Yobe, alongside Adamawa, are under emergency rule with a massive deployment of soldiers to the states.

In another incident in Borno on Monday, the gunmen attacked a group of fishermen on the banks of the Alau River, on the outskirts of Maiduguri, killing 13 of them.

Does god hate human beings? It looks that way.

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

What is the difference between Bishop Burton College in Beverley, Yorks, and the Taliban?

Not much.

A young woman was suspended from college after accusing fellow students of rape and  sexual assault, a court heard.

Three men have gone on trial at Hull Crown Court accused of abusing the woman on  campus at Bishop Burton College.

The alleged victim, who is in her late teens, gave evidence to say she was told  to leave the college after reporting the men to staff.

Bishop “Taliban” Burton College.

The woman told the jury her parents persuaded her to report it to the police  after she received a letter from the college recommending she be excluded.

“I told the college I had been sexually assaulted but I didn’t give the  details of what had happened, I just gave them an outline,” she said.

“The college said I had brought it into disrepute by having sexual actions  with a group of people.

“A couple of days later they recommended that I was excluded.

“I was upset about it and my mum persuaded me to go to the police.”

The court heard a senior member of staff at the college interviewed the  alleged victim and sent her a letter which read: “I’m writing to confirm you  have received a recommendation for exclusion from the college for bringing the  college into disrepute by demeaning sexual actions with a group of people.”

It’s because she couldn’t find four male witnesses to the assault, I suppose.

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

House Republicans have succeeded in passing a bill (which won’t make it through the Senate) demonstrating their hostility to women.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation severely restricting abortions, a move that could alienate women from the conservative party.

The bill would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization occurs, a time when a fetus begins to feel pain, Republicans said. The legislation makes exceptions for victims of rape and incest as long as they first report the crime to authorities.

And ask the Republican Party for forgiveness.

Republican leaders inserted an amendment to the bill that allows rape or incest victims to get an abortion if they reported the crime – a change abortion rights advocates said would shame and judge victims who are often reluctant to report the crime.

The legislation, called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act…

I have to go puke now.

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

There’s a study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue9Ao_bdX6Y

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

Hmm.

Right, because I’m exactly the same kind of thing as a politician and I should be subject to exactly the same kind and degree of “satire.”

Who should be doing the growing up here?

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

Meet Dan Cardamon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lIW6RsUt-s

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