Omg Harry Potter

I’m off to go stand in line with my friends for the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Gleeeeee! Crossing my fingers that it’s an Alan Rickman filled movie, since Snape is kind of important in this one. Just a bit.

No costume this year, just wearing my Republicans for Voldemort shirt. Really should have gotten the Wizard Pride shirt, but I guess it’ll have to wait for Movie 7. That’s where all the Dumbledore/Grindelwald gayness happens anyway.What, what costume did I wear before? Because I have no shame, here you go (click for larger):

Yep, me as Hermione. Woo. That was at the release for the 6th book back when I was 17, the summer before my senior year of high school. I still have my SPEW and Prefect badge somewhere. That was four years ago…yikes. I’m going to go run to the movie theater before I start feeling old.

Kiss-In Protests Mormon Bigotry

A couple days ago Pharyngula covered a story about two men who shared a kiss outside of the Mormon’s headquarters in Utah. Security guards detained the men because the formerly public plaza is now property of the LDS church, and apparently gay kissing is considered to be “offensive, indecent, obscene, lewd or disorderly speech, dress or conduct.”

First of, fuck you, LDS church.

Ahem. Thankfully there are a bunch of awesome gay people in Salt Lake City, and they decided to hold a peaceful kiss-in on the square:

This kind of stuff needs to happen every time gay rights takes a hit somewhere. It’s peaceful and shows that gays are normal, loving couples just like heterosexual couples. I don’t want to live in a world where it’s not cool for a gay couple to kiss in a bar, but then I have to watch a straight couple basically having sex at their table.

And yes, I guess the plaza is private property now. And even though the LDS church promised this sort of stuff wouldn’t happen, that isn’t legally binding and they can theoretically do whatever they want. But you know what, whatever tiny modicum of respect I had for the LDS church completely went out the window when they fucked over California with their ridiculous funding of Prop 8. So screw you, Mormon bigots. I hope gays make out in front of all of your temples every day until you wise up.

*end rant*

(Video via Womanist Musings)

I've been podcasted!

Hm, is podcasted a word?

Anyway, you may remember one of my older posts, Natural Sexuality, which was a satire in the form of a script. Well it turns out the podcast Polyamory Weekly liked it so much that they did a mini reenactment of it. It’s not the entire thing, but I do like the guy’s voice for Lion. Too bad it took me almost two months to accidentally discover that they did it.

If you’re interested, the mp3 is here. It’s the first thing they talk about on the show.

I feel pretty special. I don’t think even PZ’s had voice actors for his post (and now I know someone will give me a link to prove me wrong…shhhhhhh).

I’ve been podcasted!

Hm, is podcasted a word?

Anyway, you may remember one of my older posts, Natural Sexuality, which was a satire in the form of a script. Well it turns out the podcast Polyamory Weekly liked it so much that they did a mini reenactment of it. It’s not the entire thing, but I do like the guy’s voice for Lion. Too bad it took me almost two months to accidentally discover that they did it.

If you’re interested, the mp3 is here. It’s the first thing they talk about on the show.

I feel pretty special. I don’t think even PZ’s had voice actors for his post (and now I know someone will give me a link to prove me wrong…shhhhhhh).

An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away says NHS to students

The UK’s National Health Service has created a pamphlet for all students that you’ll never see in the US:

“Under the heading ‘an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away’, the leaflet says: ‘Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?’

The advice, which also claims regular sex is good for cardiovascular health, has been circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers.”

Ha. I think US classrooms would explode (with rage, not orgasms) if this sort of thing was passed out by NIH. While I agree teaching sex positivity is a good thing, and that orgasms are even better (woo orgasms), their track record doesn’t sound so good:

“It came to light just a week after it emerged that teenagers who took part in a £6million Government initiative to reduce teenage pregnancies were more than twice as likely to fall pregnant as other girls.

The scheme tried to persuade girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex.”

Hmmm…when we have abstinence programs the girls come out the same as the ones not in the program, not worse. Are brits just particularly rebellious or something? Were they cheap and handing out expired condoms? Who knows.

Obviously plenty of Brits are upset about this, but I’m just kind of apathetically amused. Except for the picture they use in the article:

Come on, how long are we going to stereotype Slytherins as the naughty British pupils?* I bet those Gryffindors have just as much as passionate unprotected sex, if not more.**

*Jen has Harry Potter on the brain because she’s going to the MIDNIGHT SHOWING TOMORROW WOOOO!!
**Ravenclaw would totally be the smartest about sex. Go Ravenclaw!

The Creation Museum trip just got better

My friend Mark pointed out to me that we’ll have some wonderful programming during our visit to the Creation Museum with PZ. Emphasis mine.

“The Ultimate Proof of Creation” with Dr. Jason Lisle

When: Fri, August 7, 12pm – 1pm
The Ultimate Proof of Creation There is a defense for creation that is powerful, conclusive, and has no true rebuttal. As such, it is an irrefutable argument—an “ultimate proof” of the Christian worldview. This presentation will equip you to engage an unbeliever, even a staunch atheist, using proven techniques. Read more about the accompanying book here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Ultimate-Proof-of-Creation-The,6134,186.aspx

Dr. Jason Lisle did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. He grew up in a Christian home, and because his family believed in the authority and accuracy of the Bible, he had little difficulty in dealing with the evolutionary bombardment he received in school. To learn more about Dr. Lisle please visit: http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=40

This event is free with paid museum admission or Museum membership. Seating is first come first served.

Good luck, Dr. Lisle. You’ll have a room full of staunch atheists on which to test your hypothesis. This also sounds delightfully hilarious, but I’m not willing to pay four dollars for it:

“It’s Designed to Do What it Does Do Workshop” with Buddy Davis

When: Fri, August 7, 1:30pm – 2:30pm


Join Buddy Davis to explore God’s unique design of many different animals. He will show how God should be given the glory instead of time, matter, and chance. In this one hour workshop, you will have fun with several activities including sculpting a Tyrannosaurus Rex head from clay. You will also have the opportunity to sing-along with Buddy, including the ever popular “It’s Designed to Do What it Does Do.” Come learn how God has designed different creatures in unique ways to do what they should do.

Gifted by God in many ways, Buddy Davis is a sculptor, speaker, and singer/songwriter for Answers in Genesis. An adventurer and paleo-artist he leads very popular children’s workshops and plays many acoustic instruments. To learn more about Buddy please visit: http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=5 Ticket cost is just $4 with museum admission; a discounted rate is available for Museum members. This workshop is sponsored by Cedarville University.

Note to self: Cedarville “University” promotes crackpot religious artists who seem to think sculpting dinosaurs is proof for creation.

Unfortunately we won’t be there long enough to see “Ape-Men: The Grand Illusion” and “The Hearing Ear and the Seeing Eye,” the latter having such probing questions as “Why don’t your ears see, and why can’t you hear with your fingers?” I guess now I’ll never know! Oh wait, I know what the answer is. God. Right.

Three more weeks until the trip. I can’t wait!

August will be amazing

It’s official! I’ll be attending the Secular Student Alliance conference in Columbus, OH from August 7th to the 9th and I’ll be joining PZ in his visit to the Creation Museum on that Friday. Wooo! I’m pretty sure this will be the most amazing trip to the Creation Museum ever, so I’m super excited. Totally going to get a photo of me riding a dinosaur and then sobbing in front of the evolution exhibits.

You don’t need to be a member or a student to go to the SSA conference or the Creation Museum trip. Midwestern people, you totally need to come. I mean, I’ll be there. …Well, okay, more importantly PZ and Hemant and Dan Barker will be there. I just like to think I’m that important.

If you can’t come, you should at least think about donating to the SSA. It’ll help counteract the money we’re giving Ken Ham.

Atheism & Dating

This is my response to Hemant’s call for atheists’ perspectives on dating religious people. It’s long and personal and rambling, so don’t feel required to read it if you don’t want to. I guess this is just a bit cathartic for me.

I’m still only 21, so I don’t exactly have a long list of guys that I’ve dated…but my list is long enough that it’s shaped my opinions on dating religious people. And what’s that opinion? Well, for me, I think it’s a bad idea. Now I clarify that this is for me only. I’m sure there are plenty of atheists out there who can get on completely happily with a religious significant other, but I don’t think I’m one of them.

I guess to fully understand my viewpoint you need to know a bit about my dating history and how in coincides with my thoughts on religion. My first boyfriend I dated for a year mostly when I was 16. At the time I pretty much considered myself agnostic, after recovering from a brief preoccupation with deism. He was (and still is) pretty apathetic about religion; while he’s not religious at all, he’s not going to go around being an atheist activist. That was fine at the time for me, because I still didn’t find my non belief a big deal. Now however, I think I’d prefer to be with someone who takes an active stance about atheism like I do – or at least supports what I do.

My next boyfriend when I was 17 was Wiccan, but not in a serious way at all. He never really talked about it, and now he’s an atheist too. Like I said, I wasn’t super serious about my non belief, so this wasn’t an issue for me. It was more important to me that he agreed about the silliness and corruption in mainstream organized religions like Christianity.

But by the time I was 18, I was getting a little desperate when it came to guys. I was depressed and having a lot of self esteem issues (what 18 year old girl isn’t?) and felt like I needed a guy in order to be happy, but at the same time thought that most guys were out of my league. I needed I nerdy guy like me, someone sort of shy that I could approach. That’s when I started dating another guy. He was another honors student in a bunch of my classes who I always thought was a funny guy. There was one major downside though, and I think this shows how desperate I was: he was a conservative Republican Lutheran.

At the time the Republican part bothered me more. Bush had just gotten reelected, so I was especially fuming about politics. But at the same time, that was one of the reasons I liked our relationship. We would debate politics and then make out, and that was pretty fun to me – especially after my last boyfriend, who drove me nuts for being “too nice” and never disagreeing with me (sorry, I was one of those girls!). I didn’t even think of religion being an issue. None of my friends were religious, whether by chance or the fact that we accidentally banded together. I didn’t really know anything about Christians or Christianity, so I thought dating a conservative Lutheran wouldn’t be a problem.

Yeah, I was wrong.

It wasn’t a problem for me, but it was a problem for him. I was pretty sure I was an atheist at this time, but I was still telling him I was agnostic to kind of soften the blow. I’d even start parroting my old deistic stuff to make him feel like I believed in something, even though I didn’t really believe in that any more. Whenever he took a religious stance on something I would usually back down as to not start an argument, or at worst give him an incredulous look.

But the longer we dated, the more arguments and problems started occurring. I wasn’t blameless here. I wanted to mess around – he was cute and making out just got me all worked up – but he wouldn’t ever go past heavy kissing. I probably annoyed the crap out of him with my wandering hands and persistence, and I kind of feel bad about not giving him his space. But at the same time that led us to arguments about morals and laws. It upset me that he occasionally drank alcohol while I had never even tasted it (yeah, I was a prude about drinking back then). To me it was more important to follow the laws of man that actually have repercussions than the laws about sex made by something I didn’t think existed. It scared me a bit when he said the laws of God were more important than the laws of man, and that since the Bible didn’t forbid him to drink, it was okay. But I dropped the issue because again, I wanted to keep the peace.

As we dated longer it became more awkward. I was invited to his brother’s wedding, and the religious parts of the ceremony upset me. They bashed it into the audience’s head that marriage was between a man and a woman, and that the woman must be submissive to the man. At the party they had Finnish ceremonies like the woman putting on an apron and jumping over a broom to signify her devotion to him as a homemaker. I remember turning to him and saying I wouldn’t be caught dead doing that, and he just scowled.

Despite all this I was still in love with the guy, though I was too nervous to say the L word yet. He was nice and funny and whenever we did stuff together it was great. It was fine for high school, but I knew it could never work on a serious level because of our differences. Still, we ended up attending the same university. It wasn’t planned, but we both got big scholarships there. When we were hanging out a couple days before school was going to start, he asked me if I would be willing to go to church with him. He told me it would mean a lot to if I tried it at least once and would help him since he didn’t know anyone here in his church yet. I then made the mistake of telling him yes, I’d go, because I loved him.

The next day he broke up with me. Why? “I want you to go to church because you believe it, not to make me happy.” He said he couldn’t see our relationship working because I needed to be the same faith as him. It didn’t make sense to me. Couldn’t I have become religious by trying church, wasn’t that his point? I’m pretty sure he was just planning on breaking up with me anyway and this gave him a convenient excuse, but it still made me feel like shit. I felt like being an atheist made me damaged goods, that no guy would want to settle for me. It didn’t matter that I had been good to him, that I helped him out when he needed it, that his family liked me – because I didn’t believe in God. And the scariest part is that I now realize far too many feel that way – that being a good person doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in God.

When a month later I met a guy who was an atheist, I almost immediately fell for him. I was so happy to find someone I could be myself around. I could have my little rants about religion, I could read the God Delusion without hiding it away, I could point out the silliness of superstitions without worrying about hurting someone’s feelings. Having such a big part of my life in common with another person not only made me happy, but also showed me how important it was to know other atheists are out there – which helped me to start the Society of Non-Theists here at Purdue.

A couple months later, when I was reading the God Delusion in the laundry room, a wide eyed girl with a necklace of the Virgin Mary around her neck approached me and asked what I was reading. When I explained, she asked very honestly, “But how will you find a man to marry?”

At first I was taken aback by the very fact that marriage should be the most important thing on my mind at age 18. But then I just replied, “There are a lot more atheists in America than you think. More than Jews and Muslims and Hindus combined. So since they can find husbands, I think I’ll be okay.”

And while she looked terrified at the thought of so many atheists, it made me very happy.

So can an atheist date a theist? Sure, depending on the atheist and theist. But could I? I don’t think so. I constantly felt like I had to hide my beliefs in order to avoid offending theirs, something I don’t really do with strangers, but would do with someone I love. I can’t have a healthy relationship where I’m muting a part of me I find so important. At the same time, the guilt and shame I felt about not being religious really hurt. Even if he wasn’t explicitly voicing his disdain, I could tell he wished I had the same beliefs as him. Even though he cared for me, there was that nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him I was going to hell. And all these feelings and thoughts were when I was much less of an activist. Now I think even a very liberal Christian or deist would bug me, since I would see their beliefs as irrational.

But would I automatically count a religious person out? No. I don’t want to pass up “The One” (which I don’t believe in) because of some prerequisite I have. But when I’m actively searching for a boyfriend, it’ll be among atheists and agnostics. It’s not necessary, but I know I’ll be happier.

…

Wow, that was way too long. I apologize. And you know, since I’m currently single, lonely, and can’t really find that cute smart atheist guy to date, maybe I shouldn’t be dispensing dating advice.

Some entertainment for you

This is pretty much the most amazing site ever: I Did It For Science. These journalists get random sex topics (trying anal, crossdressing, make your own dildo kit – curious yet?) and they actually have to do them and report on them in a “scientific” matter. All of them are absolutely hilarious and a great time waster. The site’s pretty old, so you may have seen it already. They haven’t had new articles since 2006, which was about when I first found it…but they’re supposed to start posting new articles soon! Huzzah! Go check it out, as I’m still probably jetlagged and you’ll need some other entertainment.

The only thing I don’t like about it? I didn’t think of it first. I’m pretty sure having an excuse to do all that crazy sex stuff and then write up a hilarious report would be my dream job. …And as a blogger, I probably shouldn’t tell you guys that. Don’t get your hopes up.