So after Obama was re-elected the other day, naturally lots of people took to Twitter to call him a nigger. I mean what else do you do when you’re pissed off? Nothing, right? Because there is nothing else. There’s only whatever epithet fits the crime.

Ricky Catanzaro plays football for Xaverian High School, a private Catholic prep school in Brooklyn, NY. Students who play sports there must sign an athlete’s contract that stipulates a promise “to be a worthy representative of my teammates and coaches, abiding by school and community expectations.”

The day after the election he tweeted, “No nigger should lead this country!!! #Romney” His Twitter timeline (since removed) revealed that “nigger” is a word he regularly uses in his day-to-day vocabulary. After other people tweeted their disgust at his comment about the president, Catanzaro responded to his black critics by referring to them as “slaves” and “cotton-pickers”…

Well that’s what language is for. That’s what free speech is for. It’s for calling people niggers and faggots and cunts when you hate them. Otherwise we live in a dictatorship.

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

Stories. I was thinking about stories, earlier. Stories, narrative, interpretation, explanation; and science, evidence, testing. I forget what started the train of thought, but it was about the way stories give us explanations of why people do things that are peculiarly satisfying, and that science can be irritating when it tells us a story is wrong.

The thing about stories is that they give us permission to make unquestionable claims about what people think, and what their motivations are. We can’t do that in real life, you know. If we’re sharing a bit of gossip about Eleanora or Archibald, we don’t tell it the way a storyteller does. We narrate facts or reports, what we’ve seen or what others say they’ve seen; we don’t announce what the protagonists thought. That’s because we don’t know. Stories have opposite rules – in telling stories it’s just normal to say what everyone thinks. Homer did it all the time.

That’s interesting, isn’t it. In real life we don’t know what other people think, we just infer it from how they behave, and often we’re aware that we don’t have a clue. In reading or hearing stories, we enter an alternate world where we can be told what everyone thinks.

Why is that so peculiarly satisfying? Probably partly because we can’t do it in real life; we can’t have that comfortable sense that we understand exactly why everybody does everything. Probably also partly because it’s explanatory. There just is something satisfying about a good explanation – “good” in the sense of being a good fit and making sense of something that was a puzzle or a jumble.

I suppose I’m talking about folk psychology. I’m thinking that stories probably have a lot to do with where we get our folk psychology. I’m also wondering if they trick us into thinking we understand other minds better than we really do.

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

Deborah Hyde is at Skepticon.

On Sunday morning, I will be talking to a crowd of American atheists about belief in werewolves in post-Reformation Europe. My subject is usually consumed enthusiastically by atheists, because they find vampires and witches no sillier than angels and, in any case, studying these things leads to insights into what makes us human.

As a story, the idea of the werewolf is really very good. So are the ideas of vampires and witches. The trouble is just that stories bleed into what we take to be real, and in the case of things like witches that can have terrible results.

If the tweets are any guide, James Croft killed it at Skepticon earlier this morning, doing funny accents and acting out a comic and then inspiring everyone.

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

It makes my head hurt. Bringing more women into leadership roles so that they can force women into more submissive roles. No not Sarah Palin, no not Michelle Bachmann – the women in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt has brought with it a new  group of female politicians who say they are determined to bring more women into  leadership roles — and at the same time want to consecrate a deeply conservative Islamic vision for women in Egypt.

But if they are determined to bring more women into  leadership roles then why do they want to consecrate a deeply conservative  Islamic vision for women?

Really, people, those two things do not go together. It’s like trying to eat and vomit at the same time.

Islamists who make up the majority on the constitution-writing assembly are  racing to try to finish the document in the coming weeks to put it to a  referendum. One of the biggest fights is over an Islamist-backed clause that  would call for equality between men and women but only if it does not contradict  Islamic law, or Shariah…

Omaima Kamel, perhaps the most powerful of the Brotherhood women, defended  the clause. Kamel is a member of Morsi’s advisory team and sits on the  constitutional panel.

In a recent interview on state TV, she said that without the phrasing,  certain rights that Shariah gives to men and not to women could be overturned — such as men’s right to marry up to four women or inheritance laws that give a  greater to share to men than women. Such polygamy and inheritance laws existed  during the Mubarak era and in most Muslim countries.

Kamel, a 51-year-old doctor, dismissed fears that hardliners would use the  clause to pass harsh restrictions on women, saying only rulings of Shariah that  are “firmly established, with no controversy around them,” like polygamy and  inheritance, could be applied.

Oh great – only stuff like polygamy and unequal inheritance, which are totes uncontroversial.

Kamel goes on to say that issues of FGM “do not bother anyone, we have bigger issues” – which is grotesque, given what FGM is and what the experience of it is like.

It’s terrible. Of course the MB wants women like that in “leadership roles” – as figureheads to persuade everyone that women are just delighted with theocratic rules that make them inferiors.

Happy Malala Day.

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

It’s Malala day today. It’s global.

People around the world are expected to hold vigils and demonstrations honoring Malala and calling for the 32 million girls worldwide who are denied education to be allowed to go to school.

Pakistani prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf saluted Malala’s courage and urged his countrymen to stand against the extremist mindset that led to her attack.

That’s sweet. But…when I say “global” I mean partly global. I don’t mean Malala’s own hometown, for instance. It’s not Malala day in Mingora, not openly.

But in Mingora, the threat of further Taliban reprisals casts a fearful shadow, and students at Malala’s Khushal Public School were forced to honor her in private.

“We held a special prayer for Malala today in our school assembly and also lit candles,” school principal Mariam Khalid said.

“We did not organize any open event because our school and its students still face a security threat.”

Though their bid to kill Malala failed, the Taliban have said they will attack any woman who stands against them and fears are so great that Khalid said even speaking to the media could put students’ lives in danger.

Because that’s how it is. We can all have decent lives in which we can pursue our dreams only on the sufferance of violent thugs. If there are enough violent thugs determined not to let us and not enough law and civil society and policing to stop them, then we can’t.

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

A bit of wisdom from Dan Fincke on Facebook.

Stop saying it’s pointless to debate. People change their minds. They just change them slowly, over time, and often imperceptibly.

It’s true you know. People do change their minds. They do; we do; you do; I do.

We all know this when we think about it, right? We can easily think of things we’ve changed our minds about. We do it multiple times every day. If we learn something new and it sticks, we’ve changed our mind. Debates can include information as well as argument, so it would be very odd if all debates were pointless. Even stubborn people with bad Dunning-Kruger effect can learn something sometimes.

That’s another reason for not letting stalkers and harassers and name-callers take over your blog, by the way. It’s easier to be optimistic about debate when it’s a good debate than when it’s a festival of shit-flinging.

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

If your website’s full of assholes, it’s your fault, says Anil Dash.

…as I reflected back on the wonderful, meaningful conversations I’ve had in the last dozen years of this blog, I realized that one of the reasons people don’t understand how I’ve had such a wonderful response from all of you over the years is because they simply don’t believe great conversations can happen on the web. Fortunately, I have seen so much proof to the contrary.

Why are they so cynical about conversation on the web? Because a company like Google thinks it’s okay to sell video ads on YouTube above conversations that are filled with vile, anonymous comments. Because almost every great newspaper in America believes that it’s more important to get a few more page views on their website than to encourage meaningful discourse about current events within their community, even if many of those page views will be off-putting to the good people who are offended by the content of the comments. And because lots of publishers think that any conversation is good if it boosts traffic stats.

Well, the odds are I’ve been doing this blogging thing longer than you, so let me tell you what I’ve learned: When you engage with a community online in a constructive way, it can be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life. It doesn’t have to be polite, or neat and tidy, or full of everyone agreeing with each other. It just has to not be hateful and destructive.

Makes sense to me.

H/t Chris Lawson

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

Deeyah has a powerful, moving article about honour culture and making a documentary film about the murder of Banaz Mahmod.

I grew up in a community where Honour is a social currency that defines our lives from the moment we are born.

Having honour is often the most sought after, protected and prized asset that speaks to the status and reputation of a family within their community. The burden of honour is most often placed on the behaviour of women. This collective sense of honour and shame has for centuries confined the movement, freedom of choice and restricted the uninhibited expression of ourselves.

You can not be who you are, you can not express your needs, hopes and opinions as an individual if they are in conflict with the greater good and reputation of the family, the community, the collective.  If you grow up in a community defined by these patriarchal concepts of honour and social structures these are the parameters you are expected to live by. This is true for my own life and experiences as well.

Any strong expression of yourself, of autonomy, is not acceptable and can be punished by a variety of consequences from abuse, threats, intimidation, excommunication by the group, violence and the most extreme manifestation: taking someone’s life; murdering someone in the name of honour because their expression of the individual self was not in accordance with the group expectations.

There are people, even people who consider themselves progressive, who think that’s a good thing. I think they don’t properly consider what it means.

One particular thing Deeyah says is so sad.

What has upset me greatly from the very beginning of this project is how absent Banaz was from her own story.  What I mean by that is whenever you see a film or a piece on tv about someone who has passed you will always have family members, friends, people who knew the person sharing their love, their memories and thoughts about the person who has died, they often show family home videos, photos and other momentoes.  In this film that was just not the case at all.

Absent from her own story. It’s terrible.

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

The Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society yesterday received an “official warning” from the Student Union, which will be on record until the end of spring term provided they “watch their behavior” – which presumably means they name no more fruits “Mohammed,” neither pears nor grapes nor papayas.

Oh yeah?

Mohammed

Aisha

Ayatollah Khomeini

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

Women are such bitches. When they are firefighters, what they do is, they work along with their colleagues to put out fires. How bitchy is that!

Firefighters on Wednesday, responded to burning garbage receptacles in Meah Shearim. When some of the locals realized one of the firefighters was a woman, they began pelting her with whatever objects they could find. She was injured in her back lightly after being struck with a bottle.

Serves her right. Bitch.

The very first comment there sees this clearly.

There is no shortage of men capable of firefighting. Women are unnecesary and it is untznius for them to do it.

Exactly! Nobody needs women to put out no stinkin fires, and they need to stay indoors so that real people can get on with things.

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

In Australia a Detective Chief Inspector in NSW has written a letter to the Premier. He’s been a cop for 35 years.

Having spent most of those years at the coal face I have seen the worst society can dredge up, particularly the evil of paedophilia within the Catholic Church.

That’s noteworthy, isn’t it – the worst he’s seen is within an institution that is supposed to stand for the ultimate in Goodness.

Often the church knows but does nothing other than protect the paedophile and its own reputation. It certainly doesn’t report abuse as revealed by the current Victorian inquiry.

I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church. None of that stops at the Victorian border.

Read that carefully. Pretend you’ve never heard about this before. The church silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence.

Maybe after a few more decades and a few thousand more letters like that, something will be done.

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

A guest post at Skepchick by Laura Stone, a blogger at Hey, Don’t Judge Me, about her son and high school bullying. He’s attempted suicide three times because of it.

I’ve heard that I’m a terrible mother for leaving my child in a situation where he’s being brutalized. That he needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps and beat the hell out of his attackers. That he needs more Jesus in his life. That if he only smiles back at the bullies, why, their hearts will grow three sizes that day and they’ll all be BFFs.

Because a soft answer turneth away wrath…

Except of course when it doesn’t. Except when the bullies are bullying because it is fun for them and they are not about to stop it. Real, dedicated bullies get real pleasure out of their chosen hobby. It’s a mistake to overlook that.

…my son is an atheist (see: logic) and happens to be gay. Getting good with Jesus, prayer circles, etc., none of that works since he’s seen as The Enemy. He is gay, you can’t pray that away (not to mention that he doesn’t believe in prayer anyway), so he fails on both counts for the “compassionate” Christians, reinforcing his Enemy status. His attackers are all active, vocal Christians–-mostly the Southern Evangelical sort–-so that goes back to that logic loop of his.

Pick any one of those three traits, and in his attackers’ minds it’s the reason for his “undesirable” qualities. He’s gay because he’s an atheist. He’s an atheist because he’s gay. He’s a gay atheist because he’s “retarded.” These are all things that have actually been said to him.

That’s profoundly interesting to me. I see religion as a kind of bullying, but normally a covert, disguised, dressed up kind. It’s fascinating that high school theists, with their undeveloped frontal cortices, make it completely literal and undisguised.

What does affect your children is your hate. Your intolerance. Your snide comments at the dinner table about how “that one isn’t giving his parents grandchildren.” Your limp-wristed, high-voiced impression of the teenage boy that loves fashion, not footballs. The dirty face you make at the young woman that prefers overalls and short hair to tight dresses and ornate accessories. Every time you use the phrase “short bus.” Each instance of you grabbing your bag tighter as a black man walks towards you on the street or a person of Middle Eastern descent gets in line at the airport.

My son is autistic, atheist, and gay, and your assumption that he is one or all of those things because he’s “retarded” or “doesn’t have Jesus” is a continuing lesson in hatred that you’re teaching your children. And you have got to stop using the R-word word as an insult. Wow, does it make you look stupid and mean. My son isn’t looking for “special” treatment or “special” attention. He gets it because it’s the result of nice little Christian boys that jam his head in the toilet at school to “clean him” of his sins, and that’s just the stuff they do that I can print here. Trust me when I say he would really prefer to not get that kind of “special” attention ever again in his life.

You may be wondering where this high school is. It’s in Texas.

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

If girls of 16 are being raped, then the thing to do is, lower the age of marriage so that they can be raped by their husbands instead of by anybody who happens along.

For a full ten days after she was abducted and raped by a group of
 men, the teenager told no-one, terrified by the men’s threats 
and their claim that they would distribute photographs they had
 taken during the attack.

When she did eventually tell her mother,
 things got even worse; her father, a gardener, unable to bear the
 trauma of what had happened to his daughter and the indignity of such
 photographs being passed around, swallowed pesticide.

In the following days, police arrested and charged seven men, all 
members of a higher caste. But the response to what took place by 
certain elements of society – a suggestion that the age of marriage
 should be be lowered to reduce rapes, and that such attacks were 
triggered by eating ‘Western’ fast-food – sparked both a wave of
 anger and a debate about India’s attitudes towards women that has
 gripped the country
.

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

The parents who murdered their 15-year-old daughter Anusha by dousing her with acid explain their side of the story.

In the latest twist to a saga that has created outrage across South Asia, where acid attacks are common, the parents of the 15-year-old girl gave an interview in which they justified their actions. They said their elder daughter had previously brought “dishonour” to their family and that they would not tolerate it again.

Ah well that changes everything.

Speaking from his cell to the BBC, Mr Zafar said: “There was a boy who came by on a motorcycle. She turned to look at him twice. I told her before not to do that – it’s wrong. People talk about us because our older daughter was the same way.”

She turned to look at a boy? She turned to look at a boy, and for that her parents threw acid on her?

The mind tries to grasp it, and fails.

Anusha’s mother said her daughter had pleaded with her and said her glance at the passing boy had been nothing more than an accident. “She said, ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, I won’t do it again’,” said the mother. “By then I had thrown the acid. It was her destiny to die this way.”

Oh is that right. Too bad it wasn’t her destiny to be born to parents who would actually love her and protect her like normal human beings. You horrible fucks.

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

It’s close, still too close to call for sure definite, but it’s going the right way so…I’m optimistic. Referendum 74 legalizing same-sex marriage in Washington state is currently at 52-48 in favor.

Election parties in Seattle spilled out into the streets in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where police closed off several blocks for an outdoor election celebration of President Barack Obama’s re-election, and where more than 1,000 people were dancing and chanting “74, 74, 74.”

The measure was losing in 31 of the state’s 39 counties. But it had its strongest lead – 65 percent of the vote – in King County, the state’s largest county and home to Seattle.

State Sen. Ed Murray, a Democratic gay lawmaker from Seattle who sponsored the marriage law that passed the Legislature, said he felt confident that Washington state’s numbers would hold.

“We’re almost there, and we should celebrate,” he said.

Meanwhile, Maine’s measure passed Tuesday night with 54 percent of the vote. The measure that passed in Maryland matched Washington state’s lead of 52-48 percent. In Minnesota, voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in their state. Gay marriage remains illegal under Minnesota state law.

Legalization could help bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in pot taxes, reduce small-time pot-related arrests and give supporters a chance to show whether decriminalization is a viable strategy in the war on drugs.

The sales won’t start until state officials make rules to govern the legal weed industry.

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

Pictures are still coming in from CSICON in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Skeptical Inquirer just posted an album of over 200 pics on Facebook, all taken by Brian Engler. You can tell everybody was having way too much fun.

The pics from the costume competition are very droll. This is one of my favorites -

Stef McGraw as the binder full of women.

Bye bye Mittens! Go away and never say another word.

Photo by Brian Engler.

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

Elizabeth Warren. Yesssssssssssssssssss!

Wut? PBS is saying all the polls are closed except Alaska and a few Rocky Mountain states. The west coast states aren’t still open? Well Washington has mail-only voting now, so the polls were never open. I hope California polls don’t close at 7.

Joe Donnelly in Indiana, not the “rape=pregnancy is God’s will” guy, Mourdock. It’s annoying that we have to pronounce Mourdock as if it were Murdoch. It’s not Murdoch.

No, California closes at 8. What are they talking about?

Rahm Emanuel is smiling.

Last time the news people knew the result well before 8 PT. I wonder if they know now.

It pays to check Paul Fidalgo.

RT @mdedora: Florida’s Amendment 8, Which Would Allow Taxpayer Money to Go to Churches, Is Defeated http://bit.ly/REsEUb

Amendment 8 defeated in Florida. Not even close.

Claire McCaskill beats Todd Akin. TODD AKIN.

The pro-rape candidates are not doing well this year.

Hurry up, Ohio.

Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

Axelrod says it’s all going according to plan.

Paul Fidalgo is in Twitter jail for tweeting so lot. He’s @PaulinJail for now.

They make it look suspensey, but they don’t mention California.

“If the president wins Florida it is over.”

The Romney camp is glum, PBS says.

I look forward to opening a window and hearing Queen Anne yelling and cheering. That’s my neighborhood, by the way, not a neighbor.

Seven minutes to west coast poll closing, when they’ll announce.

Ok maybe they don’t know yet.

RT @billmaher: Mitt to his underwear: “Magic my ass!!”

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

The BBC reports a horrible case of child abuse ending with a seven-year-old boy beaten to death with a piece of wood.

His mother, Sara Ege, 33, denies beating Yaseen Ali Ege to death at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and setting fire to his body…The jury was shown a piece of wood which the prosecution claims was used by Mrs Ege to hit her son “like a dog”.

Mrs Ege covered her ears as jurors heard the 999 call she made saying that there was a fire in the home and that her son was still upstairs…It was first thought that the boy had died in the fire and that his death was a tragic accident, the jury heard.

But a post mortem examination revealed he had died several hours before the blaze, of multiple injuries caused by being hit by a blunt instrument.

Sare Ege admitted she been hitting Yassen with a stick, in her own words, “like a dog,” for three months before the fire, the court heard…Mrs Ege admitted pouring lighter fuel over her son’s body, the jury was told, saying “I know he was gone but I was just trying to protect myself”.

Oh, well then.

How horrendous. Three months of being beaten with a stick…and in the end being killed that way. By his own mother.

But the BBC report never says why. Did he disobey? Wet the bed? Talk back?

To find out why, you have to read the Telegraph.

In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.

“I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him.

“We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months.

“I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn’t very good — after a year of practice he had only learnt a chapter.”

The court heard Mrs Ege, 32, a university graduate, and her husband, Yousuf, had enrolled Yaseen in advanced classes at their local mosque.

They wanted him to become a hafiz — an Islamic term for someone who memorises the Koran.

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

Yesterday I took a look at the Scientology building on Fountain Avenue, which is very near the hotel I stayed in on Vermont. Holy shit that place is creepy.

Think the name is big enough?

The building is a former hospital, and it’s massive. The paint job makes it very conspicuous – it’s like a blue Oz.

There are security guards and guardish-looking people with belts festooned with surveillancey equipment all over the place. The street that runs along the east side of the fortress building is named L Ron Hubbard Way. It’s a public street but I felt very…not on public property while I was walking north on it.

It looks like fascism; it looks more like fascism than fascism did. It’s like fascism cartoonishly exaggerated and made visual.

Creepy. creepy. creepy.

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

Amy talked to Michael De Dora about what he does as CFI’s Director of Public Policy and UN rep. It’s good that she did that, because what he does is important, and he does it. (No need for self-mockery about 1st world probs here.)

Many people in the secular community seem unaware of the extremely important work that Michael De Dora and CFI are doing. They are literally on the front lines battling to protect women’s reproductive rights. They are working to ensure the separation of church and state here at home. They tirelessly rage against the oppressors of the world so that all people may eventually have freedom of religion, non religion and freedom of expression. They fight to keep religion out of the classroom and they fight to keep government funding from being funneled from public schools into religious schools. Care about freedom of speech? Then you should care about CFI’s newly launched Campaign for Free Expression.

Huh? What’s that got to do with skepticism?! 

Hey, you know what? Skepticism isn’t all CFI does. How about that.

You probably knew that. I think some people don’t know that though. I mentioned the question I got after my talk, asking why I drag feminism into skepticism, when I hadn’t been talking about skepticism at all. Skepticism is one thing but it’s not the only thing, and CFI isn’t CSI.

Amy’s on it.

What?

Not enough?

Too much social justice and not enough traditional skepticism for ya?

Well, guess what?

They even educate local government on the dangers of alternative medicine and fight to stop tax funding and insurance coverage of risky or unfounded treatments. Oh, and yeah, climate science is on their list too.

See? It’s not the only thing, but it is one thing. Deep breaths, people.

Michael’s on it, CFI is on it, they’re all on it. It’s what they do.

Could you please explain the mission of CFI’s Office of Public Policy and your active role in that policy?

The broad mission of CFI’s Office of Public Policy is to push governing bodies to enact public policies based on secular values, humanist ethical principles, and, where possible, scientific evidence. Essentially, we combine the secular and humanist worldviews, and the scientific worldview, and apply the combined perspective to policy debates. I think that this multi-faceted approach results in some very compelling arguments.

Got that? It’s a multi-faceted approach. Secular values are part of it. Secular values are what my talk was about. I’m allowed to do that.

Free expression is one of those secular values.* CFI’s OPP works to support it.

Most recently our focus has been on protecting and defending the rights to freedom of religion, belief, and expression. Historically, these rights have been fragile, and they have come under widespread attack the last couple months – especially after the release of the Internet video Innocence of Muslims, which caused protests in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

One of our main focuses on this issue has been to shed light on the growing number of cases of people being punished simply for practicing a different, or no religion, or speaking their mind. Perhaps the most prominent case, at least for the secular community, is that of Alexander Aan, the Indonesian fellow who is in jail for posting on Facebook that he is an atheist.

In order bring attention to Aan and others like his, we just launched the Campaign for Free Expression, which seeks to rally broad support for the right to freedom of speech.

In concert with that, we have been working at the United Nations to fight attempts by the leaders of several countries to implement resolutions and agreements that would in effect restrict freedom of expression. And we have been working with the State Department to put diplomatic pressure on countries that do not respect freedom of expression. The idea is that the more social support you build for a position, the more feasible political action becomes.

How do they decide what issues to take on?

We decide which issues are important largely based on our mission. We will jump on an issue if it threatens the separation between church and state, is unethical from a secular humanist perspective, or is either unaligned or even opposed to current science.

Sounds sensible to me.

*No, that doesn’t mean people should call women they dislike fucking cunts, or non-white people they dislike fucking niggers, or Jews they dislike fucking kikes, or gay women they dislike fucking dykes, or gay men they dislike fucking faggots. It means doing so should not be a crime, or punished by the state.**

**Unless it adds up to harassment or incitement. Yes it makes a difference. A playful slap is one thing, a beating is another.

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