Hemant Mehta tells us that now that a Satanist group has said it wants to put up a monument in the grounds of the Oklahoma state Capitol building, to join the 10 Commandments monument that’s already there – a Hindu group wants to join the fun.
Fabulous. Now that the monument is there, and won’t be coming down, this is the only available way to respond.
Will the Muslim volunteer please hurry up?
Meanwhile Dave Silverman went on Fox News to talk about their nonsense about omigod who will stand up for Christmas. They made him sit between Shmuley Boteach and Bill [argh] Donohue.
The Fox person was outraged because there was a Satanic monument of some kind placed next to omigodnononononothehorror the ten commandments – as if it were universally agreed that the ten commandments were the best thing ever. The ten commandments are horrible. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie – that’s the closest they get to anything like morality, and that’s a pretty pathetic showing. Yes no kidding, we know that, how about a little more? How about something a little affirmative, that might take more effort than just not killing people? (Believe it or not I don’t actually want to kill people.)
And the Fox person was also completely humorless about Festivus.
And despite all that Dave won so ha.
Channel 4 reported not just the protest but also the subject of the protest, and did it rather well, too.
They talked to Maryam there. Meet Maryam!
Chris Moos, a PhD student at the London School of Economics, who is attending the protest, told Channel 4 News: “What we want to achieve is for Universities UK to immediately rescind their guidelines condoning gender segregation, and issue guidelines that clearly lay out that any kind of segregation, whether under racist, cultural, religious, nationalistic or sexist pretences, is wrong and has no place in the public space.” [Read more…]
James Bloodworth has a good post at Left Foot Forward on why we oppose gender segregation at public events.
As long as neither gender is put at a disadvantage by imposed segregated seating – i.e. men and women will be ‘separate but equal’ – Universities UK don’t see any problem with it.
To get an idea of just how absurd this is, imagine for a minute the justified furore there would be if racial segregation were permitted on campus on the basis that black and white people were ‘different but equal’. Imagine if gay people were separated out from their straight friends on the basis that they were ‘difference but equal’, with those refusing to move booted out of the lecture hall for no other reason than their sexuality. [Read more…]
Camillia Khan, head of communications for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, writes in the Huffington Post UK about gender segregation, or, as she prefers to call it, gender ‘segregation.’
The debate on ‘segregation’ has returned, and once again figures from across the spectrum have focused their lenses on Muslim students and Islamic societies. Universities UK recently published a guidance document, outlining the management of external speakers on campuses and have been heckled for coming to the rather simple conclusion, amongst many others, that side-by-side gender based seating is not against the law.
From across what spectrum? What lenses? She’s a clumsy writer. [Read more…]
Bernard Hurley is at the protest against Gender Segregation and Universities UK’s guidelines on same. He says there aren’t many people there though, only about 150.
Dammit.
Note to spammers:
If you’re going to heap flattery on me by way of tricking me into thinking your comments are real, it doesn’t help to address me as “Guy.” If you call me Guy, I’ll think you’re not sincere.
That’s nice. A “Christian” school suspends a teacher because someone stole her phone and now there are naked pictures of her on a revenge porn site.
A female teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy in Ohio has been placed on administrative leave after school officials found a nude photograph of her on a “revenge porn” site.
…
A spokesman from the school said “we have an employee who appears in some photos that have been compromised and made digitally available,” but he did not indicate how the photographs were first discovered, or whether any of her students had seen them.
A parent of one of her students told WCPO that while “the woman is already a victim,” because this is “a Christian school, parents are upset that a teacher is even taking naked pictures and sending them to people — and her students are old enough to get online and Google their teacher’s name and the photos come up.”
“Parents are upset” that blah blah blah so they think it’s ok for the school to suspend a teacher for something that was done to her. How pleasant, how fair, how decent.
If you do go to that protest in Tavistock Square tomorrow, you might see Yasmin Alibhai-Brown there. She plans to go. She minces no words in her piece on the subject in the Independent.
Sexist dress codes and other behaviours are being spread and pushed in British universities by retrograde Islamic societies and individuals, most of them men – though there are always willing maidens who say “yes, yes, yes” to such diktats. UUK upholds this apartheid and offers up nauseating justifications. It’s done in the name of free speech. Yes, really. “Concerns … [for the] beliefs of those opposed to segregation should not result in a religious group being prevented from having a debate in accordance with its belief systems.” Furthermore, staff should not worry unduly about the rights and wrongs of this small matter. [Read more…]
Don’t forget the protest tomorrow, 5 p.m. in Tavistock Square. Well it’s 11 p.m. there now, so few of you who are able to go will see this reminder now…BUT MAYBE YOU WILL TOMORROW, ESPECIALLY IF I SHOUT.
So you who are in or near London, or willing to travel from less-near London, the Protest Against Universities UK, No to Gender Segregation rally-protest-demo is tomorrow. 5 p.m. aka 17:00. Tavistock Square, which is a nice square, up there north of Bedford Square and Russell Square.
Outside Woburn House, 20 Tavistock Square.
One of Kiran Opal’s designs for a banner:
She designed several, which you can print: they are here.
No to gender segregation!