The American Association of Pediatrics has released a report that favors male circumcision on the grounds that it reduces the spread of sexually-transmitted disease among promiscuous heterosexuals. Perhaps the most powerful evidence in favour of circumcision comes from randomized controlled trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. These found that, for men who have sex …
Category Archive: Human Rights
Aug 19 2012
Heroes that actually deserve the name
There are relatively few people in this world today who impress me enough for me to call them heroes. But they exist. Belatedly, imperfectly, incompletely, I would like to thank them for inspiring me and encouraging me to expect more and better things. Here, in no particular order, are some of them. Please help me …
Aug 17 2012
FRC quick to exploit shooting
On Wednesday, a young man named Floyd Corkins made an inept attack on the offices of the Family Research Council, an act of politically-motivated domestic terrorism that is no different from bombing an abortion clinic. Clearly, such actions are unjustified, indefensible, and reprehensible. Working on the theory that one bad turn deserves another, the FRC …
Jul 17 2012
On-again, off-again Target stores to sell gay wedding cards
If you’ve got a gay friend who’s getting married, you’ll soon be able to buy them a congratulatory card at Target. That’s a good thing: the more businesses who realize that gays spend money too, the more completely gays will be integrated into our consumerist society (and more importantly into the pervasive marketing and product …
Jul 16 2012
New name, same old crap
OneNewsNow reports that the Alliance Defense Fund, whose defense of bigotry and discrimination has suffered serious setbacks in recent years, is hoping to win some new support by adopting a new name. And in the best conservative Christian tradition, they’ve decided to pick a name that completely misrepresents what it is that they actually do. …
Jul 09 2012
So will Christians quit using the Internet now?
This strikes me as mind-bogglingly welcome news: Google is stepping up its activism on gay rights issues in nations with anti-homosexuality laws on the books, a company official announced Saturday as he kicked off Google’s new “Legalize Love” campaign. The campaign will focus on countries like Singapore, where certain homosexual activities are illegal, and Poland, …
May 18 2012
Who’s attacking marriage?
You hear a lot from the religious right about how marriage is under attack and how Christians need to band together to defend marriage. And yet, nobody is really attacking people’s right to get married—except people like Jayman. I don’t view marriage as a civil right (i.e., it is not like the right to life, …
May 17 2012
Defending bad definitions
I got a lot of good comments on yesterday’s post about the definition of marriage, but not everybody was happy with my description. In particular, Jayman777 wants to take me to task. It makes sense, therefore, to define marriage in terms of what the relationship between those individuals is and/or should be. Which is it? …
May 16 2012
Not all definitions of marriage are equal
The other day I was listening to yet another Christian conservative parrot the tired mantra about how liberals are trying to change the definition of marriage. My first thought was that if marriage equality changes your definition of marriage, you’ve been using a bad definition of marriage. And that got me thinking about the various …
May 10 2012
Better late than never
So President Obama has finally come out in favor of equal civil rights for gays. About damn time, and kudos to him for having the courage to do so ahead of the election instead of waiting until it was “safe” to take a stand. He should have done so years ago, but still, credit where …
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