Good old Vision Forum and Doug Phillips and the bedbug-crazy idea that the Titanic is a Christian morality tale about men protecting women and children.

They’re having an Event. The whole thing was so much fun, you see, that they need to throw a party to celebrate it.

This April, the attention of the world will focus on the 100-year anniversary of the second-most famous ship in world history—the R.M.S Titanic. Next to Noah’s Ark, no other seagoing vessel has captured the imagination of so many. Certainly no event in history has done more to remind Western culture of the Christian doctrine of “women and children first.”

Christian? Doctrine? Who says? Where?

And what does he mean “first”? First to go to school? First at university? First hired? First promoted? First to inherit? First mentioned? First rewarded? First encouraged to be ambitious?

No, actually, he means “last” for all of those, when he doesn’t mean “never.”

But only one international event will be dedicated to presenting a distinctively Christian message with a historical interpretation designed to inspire the next generation to embrace and advance the ideal that men should sacrifice for women and children.

Today, Vision Forum Ministries and the Christian Boys’ and Men’s Titanic Society are pleased to invite you to join us for the Titanic 100: An International Centennial Event—the family event of the year. The Titanic 100 is a living history, home education, commemorative experience, replete with dramatic performances, music of the 1912 era, stirring messages, costume events, stories your children will remember, an interactive journey through the greatest Titanic museum in the world, and a fabulous anniversary banquet cruise on a steamer (that we hope will not sink), as we remember the 100-year anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic.

Every element of the Titanic 100 is designed to leave your family with stories they will retain for the rest of their lives, inspiring them to remember the heroism of the past and to embrace a fundamental principle of Christian civilization—that women and children are to be honored and protected.

And excluded. Don’t forget excluded. The price of being “honored and protected” is being excluded.

Vision Forum is all about turning women and girls into pseudo-Victorian angels in the house who do nothing beyond the domestic. Vision Forum attempts to train women to be limited and dependent, so that they need protection instead of being able to take care of themselves.

The Duggars enacted this on their “Look At All These Children!” show this season. “The men” all went off for a camping trip while the feeble females all stayed home. It was never discussed, it was just announced – Jim Bob and the boys go camping, Michelle and the girls don’t. I kept wondering. Did any of the girls want to go? Did any of the boys want not to go? Did anybody have any option? It seemed so rude, excluding each other that way. It reminded me of a time my sister’s husband decided to take one of his kids to work and leave the other behind. He took the boy, who was younger, and left the girl. She wanted to go too; she cried. He explained, “this is just for the men, sweety.” I felt murderous. (He’s a lawyer, by the way, not a lumberjack or a coal miner. It wasn’t obviously “just for the men” in any sense. He just meant he didn’t want any stinkin’ girls messing up his fun.)

Once Jim Bob and the boys had finished camping, Jim Bob had a Good Idea: they would all take Michelle and the girls flowers, to show them how special they are. So off they went to the flower store, and each boy chose a flower for a particular sister, and they went home and handed them out. It was gross. The males all went off and had an adventure and the females all had to stay behind, and then the males came back and passed out a patronizing little prezzy for each captive.

And then there’s the matter of class, as Julie Ingersoll points out.

As is often the case with “providential history,” the actual history is distorted to tell make specific theological points. This time what is missing is real history that an equally important criteria for access to lifeboats, and thereby survival, was the price of one’s ticket. Phillips says:

If numbers prove anything, it’s that 71% of the survivors were passengers and 29% were crew, and that in raw numbers, almost as many Third Class (174) passengers survived as did a First Class (202) and crew (212)… Other than “Women and Children first,” there wasn’t any attempt to save one class of passengers over another.

Raw numbers? Really? By percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use “raw numbers” if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers.

Shut up and have a daisy.

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

The Catholic bishops have released another Declaration of Theocracy.

Sarah Posner reports

As expected, it’s basically a rehash of the same arguments the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty has been making for almost a year. This document, though, is even more pointed and hostile than previous statements, expressing disdain for (and even a refusal to acknowledge) court rulings against the Bishops, vowing not to obey “unjust laws,” and pledging to deploy “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” to resist “totalitarian incursions against religious liberty” this summer.

In other words, theocracy. Disobey laws, disobey judges, do what the bishops say “God” says instead. That. is. theocracy.

The Bishops’ statement complains about the treatment of Christian students on college campuses, alleging that “the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage.” The CLS requires members and those wishing to hold leadership positions in the club to be professing Christians and to disavow “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle.” To gain official club status, the group requested an exemption from the school’s anti-discrimination policy, which the school denied, thus denying CLS official student organization status. In 2010, though, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the law school’s denial of official status to the group did not violate its free exercise rights. Yet the Bishops persist in claiming that this denial infringes on Christian student rights.

As the ACLU’s Paul Cates noted when the case was pending before the Court in early 2010:

If the court were to accept CLS’s claim that religious beliefs trump the need to abide by non-discrimination rules, all non-discrimination laws—the laws we have put in place to guarantee everyone an equal opportunity to earn a living, find housing and to obtain access to critical services including health care—would be in jeopardy.

And we would be living under a theocracy. That would be bad. Resist the bishops.

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

Let’s reverse all trends toward greater freedom in order to attract more rabid reactionaries. What a good plan!

A London University may become the first in the country to ban alcohol from part of its campus to attract more Muslim students, its Vice Chancellor has said.

It could ban women from part of its campus, too, or it could ban just women with naked heads, or it could split the difference and ban just women not in burqas. Would that be a good plan?

London Metropolitan University is considering banning the sale of alcohol from some parts of the campus because a “high percentage” of students consider drinking “immoral,” Prof Malcolm Gillies said.

One-fifth of the University’s students are Muslim, and of those the majority are women. It is an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to provide drink-free areas, Prof Gillies told a conference, adding he was “not a great fan of alchol on campus”.

It’s likely that a high percentage of students consider bans on alcohol immoral, too. Four fifths of the University’s students are not Muslim; is there an issue of “cultural sensitivity” to refrain from banning alcohol in places where it’s currently allowed?

Professor Gillies said the University was “much more cautious” about the portrayal of sex on campus than universities had been 30 or 40 years ago, the Times Higher Education reported.

Many of its female Muslim students “can only really go to university within four miles of home and have to be delivered and picked up by a close male relative”, he said.

“Now we’ve got a younger generation that are often exceedingly conservative, and we need to be much more cautious about [sex] too.”

Power to the conservatives! Let’s everybody go backward! Soon no women will be allowed to do anything unless accompanied by a close male relative. Utopia!

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

Rebecca took it.

It’s nicer than that stinking letter.

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

What Jessica Ahlquist got in the mail.

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

Another purveyor of candy warns that without candy everyone will turn to heroin.

Another producer of slasher movies warns that without slasher movies people will start driving their cars up onto the sidewalks.

Another executive of a tobacco company warns that without cigarettes everyone will weigh 800 lbs and all the chairs will break.

Another bishop warns that without Christianity you get Stalin and Hitler, and the Telegraph solemnly reports it as if it were both important and true.

The Rt Rev Mark Davies used his Easter Homily to express anxiety at the consequences of undermining Britain’s religious heritage.

He cited the recent history of Europe to voice fears extremism would fill the void if Christianity was [sic] weakened.

“It has, indeed, been the experience of this past century, as both Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have observed[,] how the most poisonous ideologies have arisen within the Christian nations of Europe,” he said.

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

So now they’ve started arresting women…

An Idaho woman arrested for inducing her own abortion is taking her case to federal court. Jennie Linn McCormack was charged last year under an obscure Idaho law for ending her pregnancy with RU-486.

…

McCormack won’t talk about the day she had an abortion. She’s following her attorney’s advice. But here’s what the public record says.

In late 2010, McCormack learned she was pregnant. The father was out of the picture. Her youngest was barely two and she was living off child support checks.

Getting an abortion would have cost at least $500 and required multiple trips back and forth to a clinic hours away. So, McCormack turned to the rising number of Internet suppliers of abortion pills.

Now, this is where the story gets more complicated. RU-486 is medically recommended only within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. It turns out that  McCormack was way past that although she said she didn’t realize it at the time.

After she aborted the fetus she was horrified by how far along it seemed. Possibly as much as 20 weeks. McCormack confided in a friend. It was this friend’s sister that tipped off the police.

The police, who knocked on the door…

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

Remember the baby girl in Bangalore whose father punched her because he wanted a boy?

Well, she died.

For nearly a week, the three-month-old fought as hard as she could in hospital, despite a father who established through brute force that she was unwanted. This morning, Baby Afreen died 30 minutes after a cardiac arrest in a government hospital – the third that she visited in the last seven days with her teenaged mother. She was buried later in the day.

Baby Afreen’s father, Umar Farooq, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly assaulting his only child. He has reportedly confessed to the police that he hit his only child because he had wanted a son. Afreen’s mother, Reshma Bano, is 19 years old. She has offered conflicting accounts of how often her husband hit the baby.

But last week, with her baby bruised and bitten, Reshma rushed to hospital.  Afreen arrived at Bangalore’s Vani Vilas hospital three days ago, with bleeding and swelling in her brain. This morning, doctors say, she slipped into a coma after a series of convulsions that began last evening.  Doctors have been circumspect about revealing the details of the physical abuse she suffered, but they say she had bite marks and burns.

…

Her parents say Farooq had a record of beating Reshma. Policemen dissuaded them from registering a complaint. “Give him a chance, let them work it out,” was the advice they allegedly offered to Reshma’s father, Abdul Karim.

Give him a chance to what? Hit harder? Hit more often? Bite? Burn?

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

There’s a very good article about Leo Igwe in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian.

The heated face-off between Igwe and Ukpabio’s followers that took place in July 2009 is part of a continuing battle for the country’s soul. In the one camp, there are people like Igwe, a humanist who fights superstition because of the savage effect it has on the country’s children. Ukpabio and a growing horde of pastors just like her, such as David Oyedepo and Celestine Effiong, make up the other group. They are the ever-growing number of evangelists whose fame and fortune comes from irrational beliefs and their livelihood is dependent on the hysterical fear associated with witchcraft that exists in Nigeria’s fundamentalist, Christian south.

…

A tireless champion of critical thinking, Igwe works to help bring relief to the victims of superstitious crimes. He also helps children who are abandoned in Nigeria because they are identified as witches.

A year after Igwe was attacked by Ukpabio’s followers, the “lady apostle” herself took him to court along with members of local government and the police. Ukpabio was seeking $1.3-million because, she alleged, Igwe and the state was infringing on her freedom to practice religion. Ukpabio was seeking “an order of perpetual injunction” restraining Igwe and his fellow respondents from stopping her church’s “right to practice their religion and the Christian religious belief in the existence of God, Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, witchcraft, heaven and hellfire.” The judge dismissed Ukpabio’s application.

Their “right to practice their religion” – so they try that game in Nigeria too.

At times, the union has had to petition the Nigerian government to get the police to stop harassing Igwe and his family because of the work the humanist does. Online, you will find numerous websites libelling Igwe because he openly challenges Ukpabio, who preys on the weak with her practice of “witchcraft deliverance”. This is a process of exorcism during which Ukpabio expels demonic spirits from the possessed.

In the region of Akwa Ibom, a small girl was said to be possessed by a demon a few years ago. The child was a five-year-old by the name of Esther, whose mother had died. In this particular region, an illness is often said to be instigated by the curse of a neighbour, or more tragically, by a child in the family. Esther became the demon who was cast out.

“I rescued her twice when she was about five years old after she was accused of killing her mother,” said Igwe. “She was driven out and went to live in the local market. A man of about 40 took Esther back to his home and was having sex with her. I was shocked when I heard about it. I took this girl and I handed her over to the government. Later, I found out that Esther had fled because the government doesn’t take proper care of these children.”

I published Leo’s article about rescuing Esther for the second time, including heart-rending photographs that he took. It’s sad that she fled.

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

Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic Wire gives a lot of background on John Derbyshire’s…erm…views on race.

Derbyshire doesn’t say that black people, especially women, are pathetically stupid people doomed to live on the dole (For a good example of that, check out the 1941 Looney Tunes cartoon Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs.) Instead, he says that the black women who work at the DMV are mean and stupid because they’re genetically destined to be so. From his recent essay:

The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low… There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high… “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.

Derbyshire does not call Obama a hustler who has hoodwinked gullible whites. Instead, when he implies Obama is a product of Affirmative Action, he presents it as a sendup of uppity liberals consumed by white guilt. On Obama’s background, November 5, 2008:

He was a red-diaper baby, offspring of a love-the-world, hate-America sixties gal and an African socialist in the Mugabe mould, raised by leftish grandparents addled with “Uncle Tim” racial guilt, and mentored by a hard-Left labor radical.

There’s a lot more.

And then underneath there’s a whole slew of racist comments.

Urgh.

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

This too is from last month. You probably already know about it. I saw a headline or two, but didn’t follow it up. Dozens of Iraqi teenagers with emo haircuts were stoned to death.

Pictures below the fold.

Activists told the Lebanon-based al-Akhbar daily that at least 90 Iraqi teenagers with “emo” appearances have been stoned to death by the Moral Police in the country in the past month. The violent crackdown against “emo” Iraqi teenagers came after the Iraqi interior ministry declared them as “devil worshippers.”

“The ‘Emo phenomenon’ or devil worshiping is being probed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate it as soon as possible since it’s detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger,” according to a statement by the interior ministry.

And by “eliminate it” they mean “smash the teenage boys with rocks.” That kind of interior ministry; that kind of Moral Police.

H/t Małgorzata

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

This is from last month, but I missed it. Egypt’s Islamists want to do away with the category “women” and replace it with “families.”

A women’s conference organized by the dominant Islamist bloc in the Egyptian parliament has called for a council for families to replace the existing National Council for Women, a state-owned daily reported on Friday.

The conference, held Thursday on International Women’s Day, also condemned the 1978 U.N. convention against gender discrimination saying it was “incompatible with the values of Islamic sharia” law, the Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

Great. Faaaaantastic. One, forget all about women, there are no women, there are only families. Two, forget all about equal rights for women, equal rights for women are incompatible with the values of sharia.

That should just about take care of it!

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

And another thing:

Sign the petition if you haven’t already.

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

Andrew Copson was on BBC News to say what he thought about the cardinal’s yips about religious freedome and Wearing the Cross. He said it very nicely, but the cardinal won’t like it any better for that.

Andrew’s bit starts at 2:14.

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

H/t Author.

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

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on misogyny websites and blogs. It lists twelve of them, including In Mala Fide and the subreddit Men’s Rights.

In Mala Fide This blog, whose name translates from the Latin as “In Bad Faith,” describes itself in its mission statement as “[a]n online magazine dedicated to publishing heretical and unpopular ideas. Ideas that polite society considers ‘racist,’ ‘misogynistic,’ ‘homophobic,’ ‘bigoted’ or other slurs used to shut down critical thinking and maintain the web of delusions that keep our world broken and dying.” The unifying idea is this: “Feminism is a hate movement designed to disenfranchise and dehumanize men.” The site carries ads for such offerings as the HardKnight “male enhancement system,” PolishLasses (“Over 5,000 … candid photos”), and the racist 1922 classic The Revolt Against Civilization by Lothrop Stoddard.

Reddit: Mens Rights A “subreddit” of the user-generated news site Reddit, this forum describes itself as a “place for people who feel that men are currently being disadvantaged by society.” While it presents itself as a home for men seeking equality, it is notable for the anger it shows toward any program designed to help women. It also trafficks in various conspiracy theories. “Kloo2yoo,” identified as a site moderator, writes that there is “undeniable proof” of an international feminist conspiracy involving the United Nations, the Obama Administration and others, aimed at demonizing men.

A Voice for Men A Voice for Men is essentially a mouthpiece for its editor, Paul Elam, who proposes to “expose misandry [hatred of men] on all levels in our culture.” Elam tosses down the gauntlet in his mission statement: “AVfM regards feminists, manginas [a derisive term for weak men], white knights [a similar derisive term, for males who identify as feminists] and other agents of misandry as a social malignancy. We do not consider them well intentioned or honest agents for their purported goals and extend to them no more courtesy or consideration than we would clansmen [sic], skinheads, neo Nazis or other purveyors of hate.” Register-Her.com, an affiliated website that vilifies women by name who have made supposedly false rape allegations (among other crimes against masculinity), is one of Elam’s signature “anti-hate” efforts. “Why are these women not in prison?” the site asks.

It’s all become so horribly familiar.

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

A horror story from India.

The girl’s screams were brittle and desperate. Neighbors in the suburban housing complex looked up and saw a child crying for help from an upstairs balcony. She was 13 and worked as a maid for a couple who had gone on vacation to Thailand. They had left her locked inside their apartment.

After a firefighter rescued her, the girl described a life akin to slavery, child welfare officials said. Her uncle had sold her to a job placement agency, which sold her to the couple, both doctors. The girl was paid nothing. She said the couple barely fed her and beat her if her work did not meet expectations. She said they used closed-circuit cameras to make certain she did not take extra food.

“Akin to” slavery? What? How could it be any more exactly slavery? She was sold; she was not paid; she was all but starved; she was beaten; she was imprisoned. That’s not “akin to” slavery, it’s slavery itself, and of the very worst kind – brutal, sadistic, exploitative.

Honestly, what a disgusting tale – and it’s commonplace in India, so we can’t console ourselves with the thought that it’s an anomaly. How disgusting that two adults with enough intelligence and discipline and good fortune to train as doctors could treat a child that way. Think about it. Project yourselves into those two people – starving a child day in and day out, while forcing her to do your shitwork, and beating her when she doesn’t do it to your liking. Did you project? What’s it like? What does it feel like? I tried it, and I can’t really do it. I can imagine starting to act like that, but I can’t imagine going on acting like it, because the horror and guilt would stop me. It’s pretty much that simple. What I don’t understand is, why didn’t it stop them? Why doesn’t it stop people like that?

I always have this problem. I have it when trying to imagine being a Nazi grunt in charge of herding people into the gas chamber; I have it when trying to imagine being a man throwing stones at the head of a woman buried up to her neck; I have it when trying to imagine being a Saudi employer torturing her Indonesian maid. I don’t have it when trying to imagine being an Eichmann, but I have it with the up close and personal savagery. I don’t understand how normal people – people normal enough to become doctors – can do it.

It’s depressing that so many people can do it. It’s the most depressing thing about human beings.

Indian law offers limited safeguards and limited enforcement to protect such children, and public attitudes are usually permissive in a society where even in the lowest rungs of the middle class, families often have at least one live-in servant.

“There is a huge, huge demand,” said Ravi Kant, a lawyer with Shakti Vahini, a nonprofit group that combats child trafficking. “The demand is so huge that the government is tending toward regulation rather than saying our children should not work but should be in school.”

Well that’s a non sequitur. The fact that “the demand” is huge isn’t a reason for the government to meet the demand. If there were a huge demand for fresh babies to serve in high-end restaurants, would the government tend toward regulation rather than saying our babies should not be eaten?

Mala Bhandari, who runs Childline, a government hot line for child workers, said India’s urbanization and the rise of two-income families were driving demand for domestic help. Children are cheaper and more pliant than adults; Ms. Bhandari said a family might pay a child servant only $40 a month, less than half the wage commonly paid to an adult, if such servants are paid at all.

Well yes; I think we all managed to figure that much out. I think we all grasp that children are “more pliant” than adults because they’re much smaller and weaker, and that they’re cheaper for the same reasons. We get that. That part is not what’s mystifying.

Societal attitudes toward servants are often shaped by ingrained mores about caste and class. Many servants, especially children, come from poor families among the lower Hindu castes or tribal groups, often from poor states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.

Well, maybe that explains it. No doubt if I’d grown up convinced that certain people were from “lower castes” I would be able to brutalize a child the way the two doctors did. That is perhaps the best reason for saying egalitarianism should be the building block of all morality. (See the first article of the UDHR.)

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

Taslima is wasting no time. “What should women do?” she asks. “They should take off their burqas and burn them.”

That’s telling them!

So is her opening observation.

My mother used to wear a burqa with a net over her face. It reminded me of the meat safes in my grandmother’s house. Meat safe’s net was made of metal, my mother’s net was made of linen. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe.

Thwack.

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

Interesting post of PZ’s on being “good without god” and whether that’s a goal or slogan worth having.

The implication of “good” is thorough conformity. Has challenging an authority figure ever fit the definition of being good? When abolitionists broke the law by smuggling slaves into Canada, when suffragettes picketed to demand the vote,  when Stonewall erupted and Martin Luther King marched, when students protested the war in Viet Nam, were they being “good” in the general public’s understanding of the term? I don’t think so. They were being very, very naughty. Which was good. See what I mean? It’s an empty word that offers nothing but vague reassurances.

Yes I guess so. I admit I have been thinking all along that what “good” meant in that context was: not selfish, not ruthless, not brutal or predatory or greedy. I’ve been thinking it meant altruistic and generous as opposed to their opposites.

Now that PZ mentions it I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking that. It’s not self-evident, certainly. I suppose I’ve been assuming that what Christians in general mean by “good” is generous and altruistic…but is it? Am I just assuming that because I’m infected with the same anachronistic illusions that Karen Armstrong is? Am I assuming that because I’ve bought into modern goddy propaganda that religion simply equals compassion and related other-regarding virtues?

Well, but if there is modern goddy propaganda that religion simply equals compassion etc then Christians will have bought into it too, so I could still be right that that’s what they mean by the word.

I think they do, really – that’s my guess. For Quiverfull types and all the other flavors of lunatic it probably does mean obedience; it does for Mormons; but for more average Christians I think it means some variation on Charity, as in 1 Corinthians 13 type charity.

And that’s part of the appeal, for some, perhaps for many. That’s not really conformist. It’s not friendly to capitalism, for one thing. It doesn’t look with complacency on all social arrangements, because so many of them have not a damn thing to do with Charity or altruism or generosity.

One of the few persuasive things I’ve ever heard Karen Armstrong say – I think she’s the one who said it – was that real generosity is irrational, and that’s why religion is good at it. I think there’s something to that.

The two are not unconnected though. Challenging authority figures can partake of the same kind of irrational generosity. And then when you go that way you do find yourself flatly denying other people’s ideas of what is “good.” The pope and his friends for instance think the way to be extra special good and different from the selfish secular world is to be insanely concerned about human fetuses at the expense of adult female human beings. That’s the urge to be irrationally caring and generous run completely amok.

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