Rory Fenton, President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies in the UK and Ireland, responds to the nonsense at Southbank University.

Students’ unions have a duty to protect the rights of their students, not their students’ beliefs. As President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, I’ve seen a 2013-14 academic year in which this principle has been too often forgotten. 

It’s as if there’s a nonsense pill that students have been taking.

South Bank’s Atheist Society are no stranger to hostility from their students’ union. When they were formed last year and affiliated to their union, they were accepted only on the condition that they didn’t criticise religion or

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The Student Union at Southbank University has removed a poster removed from an AHS stall at (yes this again) a freshers’ fair, on the grounds of (yes this again) “religious offense.” The poster was of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The SA displayed the well known image of the FSM on their pre-prepared stall the day before the freshers fair this week but when they returned to the stall the following day found that the posters had been removed. When they went to print some more to replace the missing posters they were stopped by union representatives who said that the posters had been deemed offensive and that it was the union that had removed them. The image parodied the Sistine

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Abhishek Phadnis reams the publishers and media outlets who refused to publish the Jesus and Mo cartoon that Maajid tweeted (and who talked as if they were occupying the moral high ground in the process, which made it all the more disgusting).

The media’s refusal to show the cartoon has elevated this ancient superstition into a masochistic national fetish, emboldening professional victims and censorious grievance-peddlers at the expense of inoffensive satirists. It has robbed the cartoonist of the presumption of innocence, by feeding insidiously into the notion among the uninitiated that the cartoon really must be beyond the pale if no outlet will show it. As Flemming Rose, the publisher of the Danish cartoons, lamented to Jytte Klausen, “once people 

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Heh heh heh

H/t Lisa Ridge… Read the rest

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Huh. I kind of vaguely though that “the atheist community” would be horrified by the DDOS attack on Saturday. Huh. I haven’t seen much of that. (But maybe I’ve missed it. That could be. I don’t see all the things.) I have seen some of the other thing – like for instance accusing us of blaming our “fellow atheists.”

Huh. No we haven’t. Not one person said “it was our fellow atheists who did this!”

But that’s ok, because the way to accuse people of something and not be held accountable for it is to preface your accusation with “I am hearing rumors that.” Then, for extra points, when someone points out that it’s a pack of lies, you say … Read the rest

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Sarah Moglia is doing a National Abortion Access Bowl-a-thon. (I like typing -a- things.) Her team is Coup de Twat. You can donate RIGHT HERE.

She says you don’t have to be as fancy as she is to support abortion access, so do it!… Read the rest

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Bill Cooke has an article about humanists helping pregnant teenage girls in Uganda at the CFI blog.

Since 2011 HALEA has been working with a group of girls in the local district it is based in. It began after a survey of its immediate neighborhood found 111 teenage mothers, nearly all out of school and unemployed. Religious superstitions are such in Uganda, that pregnant girls are often thrown out of the family home and suspended from school. Unemployed and homeless, they quickly become prey to unscrupulous relatives or to organised crime.

Faced with a daunting problem in their own back yard, HALEA supporters began by helping those girls willing to return to school. This often meant persuading the school authorities

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Deeply stupid man explains that women can’t do things like talk and give lectures in public because come on, guys, keep it real. Imagine a woman giving you a lecture. Imagine it! Are you going to listen to what she’s saying? Please! You’re not going to look at her as if she’s a wall unless you’re a wall. Amirite?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjKREDi7JG8… Read the rest

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Forbidden. Not allowed. Right out. Impermissible. Banned. Don’t even think about it.

… Read the rest

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Via PZ, who cites the American Life League, this thing of horror:

That is sick. Sick sick sick sick.… Read the rest

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Oh hahaha I just heard of a car bumper sticker I was unaware of. So I Googled it and yes it exists.

It’s also a motorcycle helmet sticker.

Here’s the sexy version hahaha

Hilarious, right?… Read the rest

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That story yesterday about Masood Ahmad, the 72-year-old doctor jailed in Pakistan for reading the Quran while Ahmadiyya? He’s out of prison and safe in the UK.… Read the rest

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Because the guy making these profound arguments is making them because he sees the DDOS attacks on FTB, SC and FF as “an opportunity for constructive dialogue.” On Ed’s page, because Ed just longs for constructive dialogue about why the DDOS on his blog network is totally understandable.

Chapter 3:

Ron B. Rown While I’m still learning about the MRM, from what I’ve come across, I think I would qualify as an MRA. But that doesn’t mean I hate women. I don’t. I’m pro equality, but anti-feminism. I’m anti-feminism because the movement’s equating so many of the evils of the world with maleness (Patriarchy). I reject the feminist culture of scoffing at and ignoring the issues and perspectives of

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One touchingly sympathetic response to the DDOS attack on FTB, Skepchick, and Feminist Frequency, in a comment on a Facebook post by Ed Brayton.

While I reject ddosing like this, to say that the ppl who disagree with the feminism of ftb, skepchick and ff is bc they want women to be doormats is absolutely ridiculous. I used to respect ppl like pz. I used to self identify as a feminist. I m still an egalitarian. I’m still pro choice, pro gay rights, left leaning, and I still can’t stand macho men and damselish women. But I want no part of this divisive with us or against us uppity atheist plus community.

Followed by

Ed, while I can see where

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As you may have seen, or figured out, or been told, FTB got hit by a DDOS attack last night. So did Skepchick and Feminist Frequency. Huh; how about that. Funny coincidence.

I’ve seen one or two people gloating about it on Twitter, but I’ve seen more people saying DDOS attacks are unacceptable, period.

Mind you, they’re also against the law.

Deep rifts.… Read the rest

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Preamble: This essay focuses on a common source of contention in discussions of accusations of rape. It is understood that for some rape survivors, this article will file under “Too Long – Didn’t Read”, purely for reasons of mental health and self-preservation. An obligatory trigger warning also applies.

It is also understood that for many people, a simple “fuck off!” is the best, and a perfectly justifiable, response to what I am calling ‘The “Good Juror” Pose. I’m tentatively offering my prescription to those best able to help, rather than making expectations of those who have been hurt.

I think there is a need, for those in a position to make a difference, for more reflection on what is actually … Read the rest

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A slice of life in Sydney.

A Sydney man has been refused bail after being charged over a live-in sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

The pair were living together in Sydney’s west.

Police sources say the 26-year-old man and the girl were “married” in an Islamic religious ceremony in the Hunter region last month.

The marriage has no legal standing in Australia because of the girl’s age.

How dare the police violate that man’s religious freedom.

Police have questioned the girl’s parents and believe they had a hand in arranging the marriage.

Detective Inspector Peter Yeomans says it is a disturbing situation.

“It’s really really unusual,” he said.

“We do have sexual assaults of minors… but this type of

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A story from Pakistan a couple of months ago:

A 72-year-old British doctor is in prison in Pakistan for “posing as a Muslim”, charges that reveal an escalating ideological fight that often spills over into violence.

Masood Ahmad is a quiet, reserved widower who returned to Pakistan to open a pharmacy in 1982 after decades of working in London to pay his children’s school fees, his family said.

He is also an Ahmadi, a sect that consider themselves Muslim but believe in a prophet after Mohammed. A 1984 Pakistani law declared them non-Muslims, and Ahmadis can be jailed for three years for posing as a Muslim or outraging Muslims’ feelings.

Some mullahs promise that killing Ahmadis earns a place in

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Now for the very bad thing: Woody Allen’s letter to the New York Times. Ashley has a thorough takedown analysis, which is how I learned there was a letter. There’s no need for me to add anything but I don’t always do these things based on need…and I can’t resist, because it’s so revolting.

TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer

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