Link Roundup
Recent videos, news and blog posts from various sources.
RRRW hatefest against LGBT people.
You Are Friends With an Atheist
If you live in the United States, you are almost certainly friends with at least one atheist, agnostic, nonbeliever, skeptic, or unaffiliated humanist, whether you know it or not. And your friend almost certainly endures prejudice and unequal treatment, whether you know it or not. And your friend is roughly as decent, good, loyal, honest, courageous, and generous as your other friends, and you know it.
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Those who get along without God are not lynched or stoned in this country, but neither do they have equal rights or acceptance. They encounter prejudice and cruelty on a personal level often. They pay taxes that support “faith based” programs and discriminatory organizations, as well as proselytization in the military, they see religion and religious based pseudo-science imposed on their children in public schools, and the stigma attached to their free-mindedness restricts their participation in public life. There are probably 20 atheists in Congress, but only one who admits it, and he won’t use the word. President Obama’s parents were both atheists, whether or not they used that word for it, and he got along fine without religion but would not have gone far in politics had he not adopted it.
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Pastor may have lost post over Prop 8
Surprise! It’s not because he supported “traditional marriage” or advocated for Proposition 8. So much for the claim that religious people are being persecuted by us for pushing their bigotry masquerading as religious beliefs.
The pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Sacramento was removed from his post by the denomination’s regional leadership Monday without explanation. LGBT activists believe his firing, which began in earnest in January, is likely the result of his ordination of three gay parishioners to leadership positions within the congregation and his staunch opposition to Proposition 8.
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Why should it matter to you if Proposition. 8 is upheld by the Supreme Court, especially if you aren’t gay and you don’t care about anyone who is gay? The bottom line: Are you part of any minority — single mothers, people over 60, Mormons, children of alcoholics, truck drivers? If so, your legal rights could change if the California Supreme Court rules to uphold Proposition. 8.
Right now, Californians are supposed to be treated equally under the law, and there are equal protection laws that allow residents to fight discriminatory treatment when it happens. By upholding Proposition 8, the Supreme Court will make the new law of the land “equal protection by majority rule.” If you are part of the majority, you get equal protection. If you aren’t, you don’t, whenever enough people vote away your right to be treated equally.
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How important are your equal protection rights? Are you ready to lose them?
Virginity Fetish: How Our Obsession With “Sexual Purity” Hurts Women
There is a moral panic in America over young women’s sexuality — and it’s entirely misplaced. Girls “going wild” aren’t damaging a generation of women, the myth of sexual purity is. The lie of virginity — the idea that such a thing even exists — is ensuring that young women’s perception of themselves is inextricable from their bodies, and that their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality. It’s time to teach our daughters that their ability to be good people depends on their being good people, not on whether or not they’re sexually active.
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If we’re to truly understand the purity myth, we have to recognize that this modernized virgin/whore dichotomy is not only leading young women to damage themselves by internalizing the double standard, but also contributing to a social and political climate that is increasingly antagonistic to women and our rights.
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10 Years After Matthew Shepard and Media Still Can’t Get It Right
Ten years ago, a gay University of Wyoming student was picked up at a bar by two young men, driven out to the middle of nowhere, pistol-whipped, tortured, robbed, tied to a fence and left for dead. Eighteen hours later he was found — still alive but comatose — by a bicyclist, who at first thought the seemingly lifeless body, its face completely covered in blood except for the skin-colored trails left by tears, was a “scarecrow.”
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Perhaps fearing a hate crimes bill that protects gay, lesbian, and transgender people will soon be enacted — thanks to a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and the president — many media conservatives have seen fit to maliciously attack the legislation, just as 20/20 twisted and misreported the events surrounding Shepard’s death.
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Reporters, hosts, anchors, and pundits — indeed, all Americans — are free to feel and speak as they wish about the gay, lesbian, and transgender community. It’s their right, even if they aren’t being honest. Unfortunately, too many have chosen to use this freedom with complete disregard for the facts.
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Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O’Connor: Secularists and atheists are “not fully human”.
Antigay Activists Falsely Report APA Change of View Regarding ‘Gay Gene’
The notion that a single gene might determine sexual orientation was briefly proposed and swiftly rejected in the early 1990s.
That hasn’t stopped antigay activists from circulating the myth that, because numerous researchers in the past decade have found a mix of biological factors and possibly other unknown factors in the formation of sexual orientation, therefore these experts must believe in the existence of a single “gay gene.”
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WorldNetDaily, LifeSiteNews, Virtue Online, and Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth all parroted A. Dean Byrd of NARTH, who repeated his previous false assertions that “activist researchers” have contended anytime in the past decade that there is a gay gene.The antigay activists (Byrd included) illogically contend that, because there is no single gene that determines sexual orientation, therefore sexual orientation is caused entirely by the environment — lousy parents, in particular — and therefore, they insist, anyone can “change” their sexual orientation with sufficient right-wing Christian brainwashing.
Not so, said the APA last year:
Many [researchers] think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.
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‘Coming out’ can be a trial for atheists and agnostics
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According to a religious identification survey conducted in March by Trinity College in Connecticut, about 12 per cent of Americans now identify themselves as atheist, or non-believing, while another 12 per cent describe themselves as agnostic, or unsure whether there is a God.
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Many students compare what’s taking place to the “outing” of the gay community, and describe their decision to go public with their atheism using similar terms.
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“People ask, ‘how do you live life as an atheist? How do you fit in the community?’ ” he said. Many fear getting kicked out of their homes or losing key friendships. “I know the analogy of coming out as a gay person is not perfect, but in a lot of ways it really does fit.”Many atheists say they regularly face hostility, and even threats of violence.
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Year of the Bible Resolution Contains False Claims
Rep. Thad McCotter is co-sponsoring House Resolution 121, which calls on President Obama to declare 2010 “The National Year of the Bible.” Unfortunately, the resolution contains historical inaccuracies that undermine its credibility. For instance, the resolution states:
Whereas shared Biblical beliefs unified the colonists and gave our early leaders the wisdom to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States…There are several problems with this statement. First, the notion that the colonists had “shared Biblical beliefs” that unified them is inaccurate. In reality, 11 of the 13 colonies at the time of the writing of the Constitution had established churches that denied equal rights not only to non-Christians but to other denominations of Christianity.
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Perhaps even more inaccurate is the claim that those “shared Biblical beliefs…gave our early leaders the wisdom to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”…
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We also know from what sources the ideas found in the Constitution are derived because they are spelled out in great detail in the Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. In those 85 essays, written to explain and defend the new Constitution to the people of America, the Bible is nowhere mentioned at all. Nor was the Bible ever mentioned as justification for anything during the debates at the constitutional convention in 1787. The intellectual sources for the provisions of that Constitution were found in the same places Jefferson looked to for the ideas in the Declaration, particularly Locke, Sidney and Montesquieu.
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A church lobbyist in the Telegraph’s story used the term “militant atheist”, and said that “militant atheists were attacking the children”. I’ve heard the term used before, but didn’t really think about it in depth until now. What exactly is a militant atheist? The word militant has a very strong and very negative connotation in today’s post 9/11, 3/11, 7/7, and Mumbai world. When someone says militant, what is the next thought in your head? I know for me it conjures up terrorist, extremist, guerrilla, and other less than desirable labels. The word is very much associated with violence and unrest. Naturally this is done on purpose by the religious right to discredit and demonize atheists. Trying to define their opponents with a negative label, easily repeatable slogan or caricature has been their strategy for a long time. Anyone reading a “tax and spend liberal”, or a “flip flopper”? The fact is atheists aren’t militant in the sense we think about today, if anything they could stand to be more forceful in their rejection of faith (new atheism). What purpose do these negative labels serve? Well, from an academic stand point, it’s much easier to dismiss the militant atheist, or Darwinist Dawkins, than it is to the Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Biology Dawkins.Atheists and theists alike can agree the above mentioned terrorist attacks were all done by religious militants. Ever heard of an atheist terrorist attack? No. Large religious gatherings in the Muslim world often include burning effigies, anti-American chants, threats and calls to violence against non-Muslims and the staple riotous mob. In using the term militant atheist, apologists want to stir up images of Dawkins igniting a crowd with fiery, Palin-esque speeches. Christians pal-around with Satan maybe? How about Christopher Hitchens leading a mass protest/riot with an alleged “militant atheist” fringe, burning churches and attacking believers? During the annual American Atheists Convention, did the atheist take to the streets? Did they Burn effigies of the Pope? Were there calls to harm and indeed murder theist? The fact is, you will never see anything like that. Atheist do not display the raw hostility and hatred that is found in many theist groups. Hopefully by now you can see the point I am driving at here. Just because a theist group can have moderates, and militants, doesn’t mean this structure applies to all ideological organizations. There are no militant, terrorist, or extremist atheists in the modern world…
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In the Theist/Atheist system, only one can be said to militant. To suggest otherwise is at best a misrepresentation, and at worst an outright lie.
“Confused Children” TV Ad.
Ostensibly children, who can grasp the fact that God is Himself, His own Son and the Holy Spirit–and not be traumatized by the notion that God sent his only son to Earth to be brutally slaughtered to appease Himself, will be irreparably confused and psychologically damaged by learning that some children have two mommies/daddies instead of one of each. But since when have the NOMbies ever made sense?
And speaking of NOMbies….
