“To destroy skepticism and atheism”

Another branch of Deep Rifts, this time nothing whatever to do with me (hooray!).

The story, as concisely as possible: before the Freedom From Religion Foundation had a Facebook page, someone set up a group called Freedom From Religion Foundation as a place for fans of FFRF to hang out. It apparently became rather…contentious as time went on, and meanwhile FFRF got itself a Facebook page. On Friday the publicist for FFRF posted there.

My name is Lauryn and I’m the publicist for the FFRF. Eric and other admin have been kind enough to agree to shut down this group  by June 30 and start a new group. The reason for this is because our pages have been commonly confused. [Read more…]

Defense attorneys made the shocking argument

According to Reality Check, the Texas case didn’t happen the way it was described.

It is not in dispute that the defendant, Ezekiel Gilbert, paid the victim, Lenora Frago, $150 for 30 minutes of escort services advertised on Craigslist. After Frago refused to have sex with him, the defendant shot her. Frago was paralyzed and the defendant was charged with aggravated assault.  When she died seven months later Gilbert was indicted for murder instead.

At trial, defense attorneys made the shocking argument that Gilbert was justified in shooting Frago because she had stolen from him and Texas law permits the use of deadly force to defend one’s property at night. That a defense was raised in this case based on Texas’ awful defense of property law is certainly newsworthy and even more reason to reform that law. But there is no evidence that the jury acquitted based on the defense of property law in the first place. [Read more…]

To the neglect of their duties in the home

I don’t think I knew, before yesterday, that Ireland’s constitution has a clause about women and “their duties in the home.”

It’s in Article 41, starting on page 160 of the government version.

2° The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

That’s an alarming sentence already. It sounds Vaticanesque, but I haven’t been able to find anything from the Vatican that says, as that sentence seems to, that the family is “superior to” (and thus immune from?) the law. I have a feeling I’ve written about the idea before, too, but I haven’t been able to find that either. It’s a terrible idea, though. We’re all very familiar with how common it is for someone – especially someone female – to need the protection of the law because “the family” is intent on killing her, or beating her up or locking her in her room forever or keeping her out of school. [Read more…]

Reasons not to be a prostitute in Texas

Prepare to turn pale with horror, then scarlet with rage. Prepare also to send a message to the Texas Attorney General.

A court in Texas just exonerated a man who shot and killed a woman who had refused to have sex with him. She’s dead, and he will serve no time at all.

Here’s what happened: Ezekiel Gilbert shot and killed a Craigslist escort after she left without having sex with him. His lawyer argued that since he had paid her $150 for the evening, he was justified under Texas law in shooting her because state law allows people “to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft.”

It’s legal in Texas to kill a woman for refusing to have sex?

Are you serious?

For that matter, it’s legal in Texas to kill someone for stealing $150? Provided it happens at night?

What is wrong with them?

Oh look, blue sky

I’m much more optimistic about the Dublin conference now* – and thus able to be excited about it again. It’s going to tackle important subjects, and Ireland needs it. Lucky lucky me to get to be involved.

There’s a bit of privilege for you.

The clouds really are parting here, the band of blue really is bright, the colorful sails on the many sailboats on the Sound are festive.

*Because there’s been some communication.

An invisible adjective

I’m still thinking about “privilege” and its discontents. It interestes me, for several reasons, not just the ones that have to do with Ron’s talk at Women in Secularism 2 and the disagreements and battles that ensued.

Sometimes (often in fact) people hear things that aren’t intended in the use of any particular claim or word or phrase. Words and phrases can be used in many ways, some of them less reasonable than others.

Is that enough platitudes to get us started? [Read more…]

Alabama: pastors divorce the Boy Scouts

Some Alabama pastors say they don’t want any pesky Boy Scout troops meeting in their churches now that the organization has gone all queer.

The Rev. Mike Shaw, of the First Baptist Church of Pelham and former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, says his church will no longer sponsor Troop 404 after the policy takes place next year.

“We’re not doing it out of hatred. The teachings of the scripture are very clear on this. We’re doing it because it violates the clear teaching of scripture,” Shaw told the Birmingham News.

And obviously a three thousand year old book is right about everything, and its “clear teaching” must be obeyed, and never mind what actual thinking about the issue might come up with instead.

 

 

A response

So there’s Nugent’s response to the shamelessly dishonest “Open Letters” demanding that he denounce me for doing something I didn’t in fact do. Let’s take a quick look at it.

Thank you for the various open letters and emails regarding the ongoing conflicts between some atheists and skeptics on an interacting range of issues including sexism and harassment, feminism and free speech, personal abuse and bullying, and the impact of these issues on the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin on June 29 and 30.

No. He shouldn’t be saying thank you. This is just more harassment, ramped up to trying to get me denounced or disinvited from the conference. The “Open Letters” are thick with lies. He shouldn’t be taking them at face value, or as a favor, or as a good and legitimate thing to do. [Read more…]

Justice

The hacker known as KYAnonymous went after the rapists in the Steubenville case:

he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim.

The FBI busted him, and if he’s convicted he could get a lot more time than the rapists did.

He’d read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn’t get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who’d written about the case. (You can read about her story here.) McKee gave Lostutter the players’ tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, “I was always raised to stick up for people who are getting bullied.” [Read more…]

The cumulative effects

Maureen Brian at Pharyngula, on PZ’s post about the limits to any perceived right to anonymity on the internet. She addresses a couple of commenters.

You both seem to be to be ignorant of or deliberately ignoring a key aspect of how we human beings work.

Plead innocence and confusion all you want but it is a factor which the bullies and harassers know well and exploit to the full.  Bullying and harassment work by the cumulative effects of abuse, lies, threats over time.  We may appear to brush off an individual incident but that does not mean we are unaffected or that we recover instantly from the hurt.  Bullies know and exploit this, keeping up the pressure and even working as a team so that their target never, ever recovers and can then be “teased” by which I mean abused for being over-sensitive / making it up / having no evidence. [Read more…]