Camels With Hammers

Archive for the ‘LGBTQAA’ Category

Openly Bisexual and Non-theist Woman (Who Rejected Parents’ Mormonism) Runs For U.S. Congress

Kyrsten Sinema is a Democrat from Phoenix who has resigned her seat in the Arizona state senate to run for the state’s new 9th Congressional District. She is a bisexual with a history of advocacy for gay rights. She is also a non-theist of some variety who openly participated in a 2010 event marking the creation [...]

Wiccan Theology and Sexual Equality

An intriguing feature of Wicca is that sexual equality is built directly into its theology.  The Farrars stress the balance of male and female polarities in the divine (1981: ch. XV).  Buckland urges gender equality: “both the God and the Goddess are important and should be equally revered.  There should be balance” (1986: 22, his [...]

Christian Children: The True Victims of the War on Christmas

This is so well done: War On Christmas PSA Your Thoughts?

An Atheist’s Reply To Rick Perry

James Kotecki responds to this. Friendly Atheist has a reply of their own up too. Your Thoughts?

Religious and Moral Conviction Provision Dropped From Anti-Bullying Law

On Sunday, I wrote a dialogue debating the pros and cons of specifically exempting statements of “sincere religious or moral convictions” from being taken as bullying in an anti-bullying law for schools. I’m only seeing now that on Monday there was big news about the proposed exception that sparked this debate: Gay and Muslim groups [...]

Have You Ever Wished The View Was More Islamophobic?

And homophobic? And that it featured more pouting privileged Christian fundamentalists crying victim because they cannot impose a theocracy but are forced to respect the existence of gays and Muslims? And that it starred Victoria Jackson descending into the 9th Circle of Self-Parody? Well then you’re in luck. Meet the mesmerizingly awful Politichicks: via Greg [...]

Bullying or Debating? Religious Privilege or Freedom of Speech?

Jaime: Did you see the Republicans just endorsed the right to bully in schools as long as it’s done in the name of religion. Kelly: They did not. Jaime: Yes. They did. They perversely added to anti-bullying bill the right to bully as long as such bullying was based on “sincerely held religious or moral convictions.” [...]

The Woman King

I read the PZ’s post about the decision of Patrick Henry High School’s students to vote a lesbian couple to be homecoming king and queen. It put a big smile on my face and this awesome song started playing in my head: Listen to it as you help to Pharyngulate the poll on whether the students’ judgment made sense. [...]

Homosexuality As Naturally Good Part 1: Laying Out Objections To Ethical Naturalism, Some On Behalf Of Gays

I intend to lay out the case for the ethical goodness of homosexuality for homosexual people in a way that is consistent with my funadmentally naturalistic ethical theory. Many philosophers, natural scientists, social scientists, and laypeople alike are averse about trying to base ethical judgments on appeals to nature. And there are a number of [...]

Colbert on Whether Being Gay is a Choice

The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive Your Thoughts?

Memorializing Suicides Without Heroizing Suicide

Gay blogger Jim Burroway believes that Lady Gaga’s advocacy for the LGBT community is genuine and passionate but worries about a backfire effect of her decision to prominently dedicate a song to one of her young fans who took his life recently: as I watch this video of her performing “Hair” and dedicating it to Jamey Rodemeyer at [...]

The Overdue End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVAgz6iyK6A&feature=player_embedded Commenting on this enormously popular, moving video of an Alabama soldier coming out to his father on the day that the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” finally went into effect, Andrew Sullivan analyzed, reminisced, and celebrated: This is gay America, ladies and gentlemen: the ordinariness, the humanity, the pain, the promise. And the [...]

Clerk In New York Refuses To Sign Marriage Licences For Gay Married Couples

Ledyard town clerk Rose Marie Belforti tacitly admits to imposing theocratic law on her constituents in blatant disregard for the actual laws she is tasked with enforcing: That all changed in August when Belforti sent a letter to the Ledyard town board two weeks after the Marriage Equality Act became law in New York, allowing [...]

The Evils of the Sermon on the Mount (Part 1)

Progressives, regardless of whether they are liberal Christians or non-believers, like to accuse fundamentalist Christians of ignoring Jesus’s supposed message of love and tolerance which is supposedly epitomized by his remarks in the Sermon on the Mount. Actually reading the Bible, Jesus does not actually always live up to the billing progressives give him as [...]

Did Theocrats Swing Weiner’s District Republican?

Robbie George, the conservative Princeton Professor who opposes same-sex marriage, writes of an under-reported influence in Weiner’s Queens district (NY-9): In the run up to the election, a group of Orthodox rabbis, most from Brooklyn, but including others, notably Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and Rabbi Simcha Bunim Cohen, two nationally prominent Orthodox Jewish authorities, published a [...]

A Living Illustration of the Problem With Trying To Love The Gay Person But Hate Her Gayness

The AP reports: Barbara Von Aspern loves her daughter, “thinks the world” of the person her daughter intends to marry and believes the pair should have the same legal rights as anyone else. It pains her, but Von Aspern is going to skip their wedding. Her daughter, Von Aspern explains, is marrying another woman. “We [...]

Scapegoating Through Song, Swedish Style

If you know how to sing in Swedish, sing along, otherwise be sure the subtitles are on (the cc button on the YouTube player): Via Friendly Atheist Your Thoughts?

Santorum’s Hypocrisy and Backwardness on Questions of Epistemic Authority

My thoughts:

Gays, Jesus, and Judging

In response to my earlier post praising a young Christian man who reached out with love to what he thought was a lesbian couple being berated by a cruel and judgmental waitress, Justin writes: Not to point out the obvious, but homosexuality is a sin, You have indeed not pointed out anything obvious.  Homosexuality is [...]

Trans Woman Assaulted At Baltimore McDonald's

Joe.My.God explains: Baltimore police have made two arrests in the brutal attack on a transgender woman at a McDonald’s, where staffers filmed the assault with their cell phones, then urged the assailants to flee before police arrived. The only person that appears to come to the victim’s aid is an elderly female customer, although the restaurant’s [...]

Dan Savage on Nightline

An amusing as expected profile: Your Thoughts?

Meet Jesy Littlejohn, Founder of "Rainbow Bridge", Grove City College’s Unrecognized LGBTQ Awareness Group

Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges.  Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the [...]

The Problem of Muslim Homophobia In Britain

Johann Hari goes into detail about how bad it is: Here’s a few portents from the East End that we have chosen to ignore. In May 2008, a 15 year old Muslim girl tells her teacher she thinks she might be gay, and the Muslim teacher in a state-funded comprehensive tells her “there are no [...]

Daily Hilarity: Immersion Therapy For Homosexuals

Rather than subjecting our gay friends to the cruelties of “aversion therapy” for the sake of appeasing homophobes, perhaps instead we should just cure the homophobes of their irrational fear of gays using “immersion therapy”. Your Thoughts?

TOP Q: "How Is It Fair To Question Other People’s Identity-Forming Beliefs While Demanding Respect For One’s Own Belief-Formed Identities?"

I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves.  They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]