Presented without comment.
Hat tip to Kay Vee of Black Freethinkers. [Website], [Facebook], [Radio/Podcast]
SCA
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The one way we lost in the battle for the SCA
We pointed out Justin Vacula’s feet of clay, and nearly a thousand signatures were collected on the petition demanding that SCA either address his misdeeds by forcing him out or stand by those misdeeds. Vacula has stepped down from his position after this controversy didn’t go away.
Which naturally means “the terrorists” and “bullies” have won. (According to the real bullies, the anti-feminist and anti-woman contingents of our movement.)
Continue reading “The one way we lost in the battle for the SCA”
The SCA’s decision making process
You might be interested in this comment at WWJTD by Michael Gobaud:
JT, you may already know this, but all these phone conferences the SCA has been doing in their national expansion effort have been recorded and put online for anyone to listen to (you can even scan through the recordings to particular speakers, very useful). Anyway, I just listened to the first 2 PA conferences to see exactly how Justin was made co-chair of the PA chapter (this is all very interesting to me because I might become a co-chair of the NV chapter, I don’t really know much about Justin). So you might wanna listen to those recordings to see the process of Justin’s appointment, it was actually very enlightening for me because I wanted to understand your complaint better.
Holding clay feet to witch-burning fires
One of the more ridiculous memes that’s gained a disproportionate amount of traction in the freethought community is that of “witch hunts”. It’s the idea that there’s some roving band of bloggers and commenters hunting for the least appearance of deviation from the One True Path and punishing with extreme prejudice without evidence or empathy. It’s that if you dare speak up, you’ll be unfairly tarred and silenced and black-bagged and murdered and possibly eaten.
This band is invariably called “FTB”, “FTBullies”, “FTB and Skepchick”, or some mutation of the network’s name that includes the word “from” or “feminist”. Lately the smear also applies to atheism plus — mostly because that label, in being inclusive of outgroups, makes an outgroup of bigots and misogynists. Doesn’t matter if the people involved are actually from either network — it’s enough to use our site name as a shibboleth, to associate it with this opposition-to-the-haters as though that’s somehow a bad thing.
What’s actually going on here, though, is significantly different.
Continue reading “Holding clay feet to witch-burning fires”
The uniform groupthink of The Freethought Borg
Look! Look at how identical our opinions are on everything! This latest spate of opinionation on the SCA’s new hire pretty much proves that we’re all cookie-cutter and identical around these parts.
When I say interesting, I mean in the sense that I’m highly ambivalent about it. On the one, obvious hand, Rogers is someone who has supported politicians and a party that have worked very hard to marginalize us. She has propped up the party of the religious right and apparently done it well. That does not endear her to me, to say the least.
On the other hand, she will be my lobbyist, not my new best friend or even nifty human being, and my lobbyist on specific issues where we do agree. It’s my understanding that Rogers is pro-choice, supports gay rights, and really is a strong proponent of secularism.
Beyond that, this is an opportunity to test whether there are any inroads to be made in dealing with Republicans on our issues. In fact, this is probably the best test that such a strategy could have. We’ve been saying forever that demanding our rights protects the rights of everyone. We’ll see whether Rogers can get that message where it is so very badly needed. I can think of longer paths to reach our goals, but few that would be steeper. But if it doesn’t work here, with Rogers on the job, I think we can safely say, “No, and this is why”, to anyone advocating a similar path in the future.
I have no idea what the fucke these fucken idiots at the Secular Coalition for America were thinking hiring this sleazy right-wing asshole as their new Executive Director. She has spent nearly her entire professional life carrying water for the worst of the right-wing slime that have relied on the theocratic jeezus freak impulses of our most ignorant and hateful pig-people citizens to gain political power and then used that political power to push more and more pig-people religious and racial hate into the political sphere, and oh yeah, fucked uppe every fucken thing they touched: the economy, civil rights, foreign policy, our national physical infrastructure, education, etc.
NO ROOM FOR NUANCE HERE FOLKS! If you’ve got an opinion different from the groupthink, it’ll be ground into uniformity in no time fast! See how both of these bloggers… use articles, and verbs, and adjectives. In English! Using the Latin alphabet!