Heather and I will be having a live show on BlogTV tonight at 10:30 PM Eastern time. If you haven’t been there before, it’s a live stream attached to a chatroom where anyone can stop by and participate. It’s hectic, crowded, and great fun. If you have any ideas for topics to discuss during the show, we welcome your suggestions. Just go to http://www.blogtv.com/people/ZJemptv, and you’ll be there.
Update: Our show is now concluded. Thanks to the 500+ people who stopped by!
For those who rightfully wanted further confirmation of Thunderf00t’s intrusion into the FTB private mailing list (details here), Thunderf00t himself has now helpfully provided that:
So a week or so ago a guy called Michael Payton who works for CFI Canada (Center for Inquiry) put up a tweet about finding FTB unreadable. Now it turns out ironically Michael is on FTBs side on the issue of harassment policies at conferences (well mostly), however that didn’t matter if he was going to speak ill of freethoughtblogs and this precipitated an angry torrent of twitters from at least one FTBer and another to write an entire blog post about it (promoted by PZ Myers of course), and as with all such posts on FTB he (Payton) was repeatedly branded in the comments section with pejorative terms such as misogynist and MRA (the irony being that he posted an article on skepchick ‘speaking out against hate against women‘ FACEPALM). Indeed it turned out that merely hours after this tweet, CFI Canada had been contacted with calls for his dismissal. Yes his real life job was being threatened because of one tweet about FTBs!
That was a pretty disturbing turn of events having someones job targeted so quickly after a single tweet about FTBs, and after a brief chat with Michael, and knowing that FTB were going ballistic about this on their secret backchannel with some THIRTY messages being circulated on the backchannel about his single tweet, let him know what they were saying about him (naturally no personal details were passed on). Michael did not want to know, he did not need to know that personal info.
This is some of the chatter I passed on to Michael.
Nowhere does he even attempt to justify breaking into the mailing list immediately after he was officially removed – something he did a whole month before any of us said anything about Michael Payton. At the time he did that, there were no remarks about Michael Payton for him to take umbrage at. It was just something he did for whatever inscrutable reasons he needed to convince himself that this was acceptable behavior.
Also, that “chatter” on the mailing list was my email:
Just an early warning, I’m strongly leaning towards publicly making a minor deal of this – not focusing on Payton exclusively, but just as an example of the general attitude of dismissing all of FTB despite not being familiar with hardly any of us – *unless* there’s either an actual apology to us or some kind of sufficient reason for why it would be a bad idea to draw attention to his remarks at this time, such as a relevant illness. I’m usually not one to get involved in internal disputes in the movement, but if a national leader of the SCA or American Atheists had been so openly dismissive of FTB as a whole, I imagine we wouldn’t just let that pass unnoticed. So I’d just like to know if there’s any good reason why I shouldn’t do this, even if I can’t necessarily be privy to the details of it.
Yes, I said that. And so what? I’d say it again – I did say it again – and nothing about it excuses Thunderf00t’s actions. The fact that I said such a thing is not grounds for breaching the privacy of the mailing list or forwarding this email to outside parties, because what I said was not of such a nature that the act of saying it meant immediately abandoning any expectation of privacy. Michael Payton, national executive director of CFI Canada, was making absurd overgeneralizations about Freethought Blogs on Twitter. I drew attention to this and commented on it. And before I did, I asked others if there might be more to the situation that I wasn’t aware of, in case there was any reason why posting about this would be inadvisable.
Nothing about this is even remotely out of line. But for the crime of publicly disagreeing with someone’s public statements, and talking about this with others, Thunderf00t decided that I deserved to have my private email passed along to Michael Payton himself.
So, Thunderf00t, just how far does this line of reasoning extend? Do you plan to break into everyone’s private email, just in case they might eventually plan on writing something critical about someone and you need to show this to the world? Will this then retroactively justify your unauthorized access of their information, too? Is everyone else entitled to intrude upon your privacy for the same reasons, or are you the only one who’s entitled to decide whether other people are allowed to discuss things in confidence?
At the end of the day, you committed an unambiguous and inexcusable ethical violation, and the sole defense you’ve managed to muster is that Zinnia Jones was going to say something critical of Michael Payton’s remarks. Heaven forbid. Do you know what that tells me?
It tells me you’re a pathetic, petty, flailing little whiner.
Recently, the Freethought Blogs staff received evidence indicating that some conversations from the private mailing list for FTB bloggers had apparently been leaked to outside parties by Thunderf00t. These conversations had taken place on the list over a month after Thunderf00t had been removed from Freethought Blogs and the private mailing list. Upon examination of the mailing list logs, it was found that Thunderf00t had seemingly been able to regain access to the list immediately after he was removed. Once this was known, he was removed again and prevented from joining. After this, he allegedly repeatedly attempted to re-join the list without success.
By the time we became aware of the breach, Thunderf00t had apparently been able to access all of the dozens of conversations that had taken place on the private list over the past month, during which time his access was believed to be revoked. This material contained the private real-life identities and personal information of a number of FTB contributors, as well as various behind-the-scenes matters that could have serious adverse effects if they became public knowledge.
The mailing list has always been intended to be private. Every message posted to the list contain this notification: “All emails sent to this list are confidential and private. Revealing information contained in any email sent to the list to anyone not on the list without permission of the author is strictly prohibited.” FTB’s bloggers use the list under the assumption that its contents will not be made public or read by unwelcome parties. If you’ve ever had a conversation in the privacy of your own home which you did not want to become public knowledge, Thunderf00t’s actions are the equivalent of eavesdropping and telling others what you’ve said. And if you can understand the risks inherent to such snooping, you can understand the risks to us – as well as the sense of violation. We’ve now been deprived of control over discussions that were not meant to go beyond a limited group of chosen, trusted individuals.
People have the right to maintain their own private discussion areas, and control who is allowed access to them. This holds true regardless of our personal stance on any other subjects, such as sexual harassment, women in the skeptical movement, the handling of Thunderf00t’s brief stay at FTB, or FTB’s various contributors. The need to hold private conversations is entirely legitimate, and respecting that privacy is a ground rule. Thunderf00t appears to have violated this egregiously, and his actions simply aren’t justifiable. If disagreement on certain topics warrants breaching the privacy of those you disagree with and publicizing their confidential information, the possibility of any kind of good-faith discussion simply vanishes.
Thunderf00t’s alleged actions in this situation are inexcusable under any reasonable standard of ethical behavior, no matter what his motivations are. The limits to the damage he’s now possibly able to do to members of this community, should he attempt to do so, are unknown. Rarely have I seen such outrageous conduct by anyone on YouTube or in the atheist and skeptic community, and he was one of the last people I would have expected to do this. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. It’s infuriating that anyone would dare to be so disrespectful and reckless.
Recently, the Freethought Blogs staff received evidence indicating that some conversations from the private mailing list for FTB bloggers had apparently been leaked to outside parties by Thunderf00t. These conversations had taken place on the list over a month after Thunderf00t had been removed from Freethought Blogs and the private mailing list. Upon examination of the mailing list logs, it was found that Thunderf00t had seemingly been able to regain access to the list immediately after he was removed. Once this was known, he was removed again and prevented from joining. After this, he allegedly repeatedly attempted to re-join the list without success.
By the time we became aware of the breach, Thunderf00t had apparently been able to access all of the dozens of conversations that had taken place on the private list over the past month, during which time his access was believed to be revoked. This material contained the private real-life identities and personal information of a number of FTB contributors, as well as various behind-the-scenes matters that could have serious adverse effects if they became public knowledge.
The mailing list has always been intended to be private. Every message posted to the list contain this notification: “All emails sent to this list are confidential and private. Revealing information contained in any email sent to the list to anyone not on the list without permission of the author is strictly prohibited.” FTB’s bloggers use the list under the assumption that its contents will not be made public or read by unwelcome parties. If you’ve ever had a conversation in the privacy of your own home which you did not want to become public knowledge, Thunderf00t’s actions are the equivalent of eavesdropping and telling others what you’ve said. And if you can understand the risks inherent to such snooping, you can understand the risks to us – as well as the sense of violation. We’ve now been deprived of control over discussions that were not meant to go beyond a limited group of chosen, trusted individuals.
People have the right to maintain their own private discussion areas, and control who is allowed access to them. This holds true regardless of our personal stance on any other subjects, such as sexual harassment, women in the skeptical movement, the handling of Thunderf00t’s brief stay at FTB, or FTB’s various contributors. The need to hold private conversations is entirely legitimate, and respecting that privacy is a ground rule. Thunderf00t appears to have violated this egregiously, and his actions simply aren’t justifiable. If disagreement on certain topics warrants breaching the privacy of those you disagree with and publicizing their confidential information, the possibility of any kind of good-faith discussion simply vanishes.
Thunderf00t’s alleged actions in this situation are inexcusable under any reasonable standard of ethical behavior, no matter what his motivations are. The limits to the damage he’s now possibly able to do to members of this community, should he attempt to do so, are unknown. Rarely have I seen such outrageous conduct by anyone on YouTube or in the atheist and skeptic community, and he was one of the last people I would have expected to do this. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement. It’s infuriating that anyone would dare to be so disrespectful and reckless.
When people feel the need to state explicitly how “tolerant” they are, it’s usually a sign that something is amiss. Such is the case with Bristol Palin’s recent blog post, where she declares that she would have no problem with a gay dance partner, but laments that others are unwilling to extend the same tolerance to certain Christian beliefs:
In their simplistic minds, the fact that I’m a Christian, that I believe in God’s plan for marriage, means that I must hate gays and must hate to even be in their presence. Well, they were right about one thing: there was hate in that media room, but the hate was theirs, not mine. …
Look, my responsibility is pretty darn clear: to treat people as I would like to be treated, to be gracious, and – yes – to uphold and advance my Christian principles in all that I do. Would I want a gay dancer to refuse to dance with me because of my beliefs? Why would I refuse to dance with a gay man because of his?
To the Left, “tolerance” means agreeing with them on, well, everything. To me, tolerance means learning to live and work with each other when we don’t agree – and won’t ever agree.
At first glance, this seems like a pretty straightforward example of tolerance: I accept you, can’t you accept me? The problem is that, in this case, the ideal of tolerance is being used to call for inaction in the face of intolerance. Palin implicitly parallels two instances of tolerance – the first is simply tolerating the existence and presence of gay people; the second is tolerating the belief that the defining feature of gay people, as embodied in their relationships, is immoral and should be legally treated as unequal.
These are clearly quite different things. Under a meaningful understanding of what tolerance is, there are indeed some beliefs that are simply unacceptable – indeed, they are intolerable. Think about it: Is there any belief that you would consider so unreasonable and inhumane that passively tolerating it, and remaining silent in the face of it, would be more unacceptable to you than speaking out and letting it be known that you’re not okay with that? For instance, do you see no difference between women voting and those who would act to prevent them from voting, or gay people holding a parade and those who would seek to suppress them by violence, or women wearing the clothes of their choice and those who demand they be cloaked in veils, or gay people merely existing and others who want to execute them? At what point do you recognize that such things are not just two sides of one coin, not just an innocuous difference of opinion, and plainly not the same?
If you can acknowledge that it is possible for certain beliefs to be so troubling that you cannot accept them, then you can understand that this is only a matter of where we draw that line. And many of us draw the line at the belief that gay people’s love is immoral and should be legally unrecognized. If our commitment to tolerance has any teeth to it, then advocating tolerance of gay people necessarily precludes being okay with such anti-gay beliefs. After all, if someone claimed to tolerate your own beliefs, how much would that really mean to you if they never spoke out in protest when others called for such homophobic Christian speech to be criminalized? Such an obligation to object should at least be familiar on a conceptual level to Christians, who have often claimed that “loving” someone demands that we tell them the unvarnished “truth” about the supposed sinfulness of their sexuality.
Calling for tolerance, at the most basic level and regardless of the specifics of what we believe ought to be tolerated, means advocating one approach to beliefs and expressions over another. A kind of universal “tolerance” that says literally anything is okay negates that, and as a result, it’s barely even coherent or distinct as a position. At most, it has all the force of “I think this might be a good idea, but, you know… whatever.” If you think that tolerance of you or your beliefs is at all important, then realize that tolerance needs to be more compelling than that. Tolerance doesn’t mean agreeing with “the Left” – it means, at a minimum, agreeing that tolerance should actually stand for something. And if you expect to be admired for your tolerance, then espousing a position that amounts to “I’m so tolerant, I’ll never let anyone know I disapprove of prejudice against minorities!” isn’t the best way to make that happen.
When people feel the need to state explicitly how “tolerant” they are, it’s usually a sign that something is amiss. Such is the case with Bristol Palin’s recent blog post, where she declares that she would have no problem with a gay dance partner, but laments that others are unwilling to extend the same tolerance to certain Christian beliefs:
In their simplistic minds, the fact that I’m a Christian, that I believe in God’s plan for marriage, means that I must hate gays and must hate to even be in their presence. Well, they were right about one thing: there was hate in that media room, but the hate was theirs, not mine. …
Look, my responsibility is pretty darn clear: to treat people as I would like to be treated, to be gracious, and – yes – to uphold and advance my Christian principles in all that I do. Would I want a gay dancer to refuse to dance with me because of my beliefs? Why would I refuse to dance with a gay man because of his?
To the Left, “tolerance” means agreeing with them on, well, everything. To me, tolerance means learning to live and work with each other when we don’t agree – and won’t ever agree.
At first glance, this seems like a pretty straightforward example of tolerance: I accept you, can’t you accept me? The problem is that, in this case, the ideal of tolerance is being used to call for inaction in the face of intolerance. Palin implicitly parallels two instances of tolerance – the first is simply tolerating the existence and presence of gay people; the second is tolerating the belief that the defining feature of gay people, as embodied in their relationships, is immoral and should be legally treated as unequal.
These are clearly quite different things. Under a meaningful understanding of what tolerance is, there are indeed some beliefs that are simply unacceptable – indeed, they are intolerable. Think about it: Is there any belief that you would consider so unreasonable and inhumane that passively tolerating it, and remaining silent in the face of it, would be more unacceptable to you than speaking out and letting it be known that you’re not okay with that? For instance, do you see no difference between women voting and those who would act to prevent them from voting, or gay people holding a parade and those who would seek to suppress them by violence, or women wearing the clothes of their choice and those who demand they be cloaked in veils, or gay people merely existing and others who want to execute them? At what point do you recognize that such things are not just two sides of one coin, not just an innocuous difference of opinion, and plainly not the same?
If you can acknowledge that it is possible for certain beliefs to be so troubling that you cannot accept them, then you can understand that this is only a matter of where we draw that line. And many of us draw the line at the belief that gay people’s love is immoral and should be legally unrecognized. If our commitment to tolerance has any teeth to it, then advocating tolerance of gay people necessarily precludes being okay with such anti-gay beliefs. After all, if someone claimed to tolerate your own beliefs, how much would that really mean to you if they never spoke out in protest when others called for such homophobic Christian speech to be criminalized? Such an obligation to object should at least be familiar on a conceptual level to Christians, who have often claimed that “loving” someone demands that we tell them the unvarnished “truth” about the supposed sinfulness of their sexuality.
Calling for tolerance, at the most basic level and regardless of the specifics of what we believe ought to be tolerated, means advocating one approach to beliefs and expressions over another. A kind of universal “tolerance” that says literally anything is okay negates that, and as a result, it’s barely even coherent or distinct as a position. At most, it has all the force of “I think this might be a good idea, but, you know… whatever.” If you think that tolerance of you or your beliefs is at all important, then realize that tolerance needs to be more compelling than that. Tolerance doesn’t mean agreeing with “the Left” – it means, at a minimum, agreeing that tolerance should actually stand for something. And if you expect to be admired for your tolerance, then espousing a position that amounts to “I’m so tolerant, I’ll never let anyone know I disapprove of prejudice against minorities!” isn’t the best way to make that happen.
CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.
This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.
She first tells the caller: “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?
And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.
Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”
That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion, if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.
CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.
This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.
She first tells the caller: “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?
And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.
Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”
That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion, if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.
…which Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber clearly lacks:
Sure, massive public displays of prejudice are always disappointing. But let’s look at the bigger picture. Set gay rights back 20 years? Really, what did Chickenpalooza ’12 actually accomplish?
– Showed us how many people don’t prioritize LGBT equality at all, fail to comprehend what “freedom of speech” means, and will probably never understand or accept people like us.
Yeah, that’s pretty harsh. But how about everything the chicken controversy didn’t do? For instance, it didn’t…
– Revoke same-sex marriage in Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico City, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut.
– Revoke civil unions in Ireland, Lichtenstein, Hungary, Austria, Colombia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom*, Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, France, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.
– Re-criminalize homosexuality in Mozambique, Fiji, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Nepal, Tokelau, Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Marshall Islands, San Marino, Iraq, China, Mongolia, Romania, Costa Rica, Armenia, the United States, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Southern Cyprus, Tajikistan, Ecuador, Tasmania, Macedonia, Macau, Albania, Moldova, Bermuda, Germany, Serbia, Belarus, Gibraltar, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Russia.
– Re-ban gay people from the military in the United States, Serbia, Argentina, the Philippines, Uruguay, Russia, Britain, Romania, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
– Revoke the Matthew Shepard Act.
– Make Barack Obama un-endorse same-sex marriage.
As far as I’m concerned, they can go ahead and wallow in their greasy “victory” if it makes them happy. Let them think they’re actually doing something with any real impact, and meanwhile, we’ll keep progressing toward full equality for everyone.
* Thanks to David Hart for the correction.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of the Mars Science Laboratory and Curiosity rover parachuting to the surface:
This is so cool.
