When I flagged up the #TwitterTheocracy campaign yesterday I forgot to link to the petition, and I forgot to sign it myself. Sign the petition!

It’s authored by Ex Muslims of North America.

Twitter has agreed to use its ‘Country Withheld Tool’ to block “blasphemous” tweets in Pakistan. Blasphemy laws are used in Pakistan and elsewhere to suppress dissent and persecute minorities who face state and vigilante violence at the mere accusation of blasphemy. Twitter is  being complicit in suppressing free speech, and in aiding Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

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We urge Twitter and all other international companies and organizations to uphold human rights-based standards of conduct, particularly when it comes to freedom of expression.

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Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

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Tell Twitter that human rights trump theocratic oppression, and that you will not tolerate censorship of dissenters who are trying to speak up against theocratic and oppressive regimes.

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Sign this petition and join us on June 10 by tweeting using hashtag #TwitterTheocracy. Use the freedom of speech you still have to defend the same human right for everyone. For more info, visit the campaign against #TwitterTheocracy page.

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Remember to spread the word among your own social networks!

More signatures!

Behold the ignorant and fanatical Congressional Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, grilling the Rev Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on whether or not he believes what Jesus said right here on this one page.

“Do you believe in sharing the good news that will keep people from going to Hell, consistent with Christian beliefs?” the Texas Republican wondered.

Lynn, however, disagreed with the congressman’s “construction of what Hell is like or why one gets there.”

“So, you do not believe somebody would go to Hell if they do not believe Jesus is the way, the truth, the life?” Gohmert pressed.

The pastor argued that people would not got to Hell for believing a “set of ideas.”

“No, not a set of ideas. Either you believe as a Christian that Jesus is the way, the truth, or life or you don’t,” Gohmert shot back. “And there’s nothing wrong in our country with that — there’s no crime, there’s no shame.”

“Congressman, what I believe is not necessarily what I think ought to justify the creation of public policy for everybody,” Lynn explained. “For the 2,000 different religions that exist in this country, the 25 million non-believers. I’ve never been offended, I’ve never been ashamed to share my belief. When I spoke recently at an American Atheists conference, it was clear from the very beginning, the first sentence that I was a Christian minister.”

“So, the Christian belief as you see it is whatever you choose to think about Christ, whether or not you believe those words he said that nobody basically ‘goes to heaven except through me,’” Gohmert concluded, ignoring the point about separation of church and state.

[Read more…]

Another member of Atheist Ireland also went to the protest and took photos and posted them and gave me permission to post them.

Atheist Ireland estimates there were about 1000 people at the protest.

Atheist Ireland

That’s Jane Donnelly and Michael Nugent right there in the foreground. [Read more…]

Michael Nugent is at the Justice for the Tuam babies protest at the Daíl. He posted this photo on Facebook:

Yet another front in the war on women-who-don’t-like-rape-threats. Here’s one summary:

Jacobin Magazine published a piece by Amber A’Lee Frost on Saturday denouncing the “troubling new trend in younger leftist circles” of ascribing all sexism to “bros”. The article hung all of its critical extrapolation on what amounted to two tweets, one by Aaron Bady, and a second by Al Jazeera English writer Sarah Kenzior. Kendzior objected to the use of her tweet, a reply to a friend in which she characterized someone sending her rape threats as a “brocialist,” particularly since it was used by Frost as a finger-wagging example of how one ought not to use the word “bro.” In fact, Frost later* writes “Give me a card-carrying brocialist over one of these oily “allies” any day,” which it’s hard to interpret any way other than explicit support for the person sending Kendzior rape threats, so what’s that about?

And where does Jacobin stand editorially on rape threats? The piece’s editor, Micah Uetricht, apologized to Kendzior, explaining that he “didn’t read piece nor link closely enough—thought it was saying something else.” Megan Erickson, on the other hand, whose Twitter bio says she is “Editor, @jacobinmag,” said that Kendzior’s complaint was “dishonest, childish bullshit,” and that she “didn’t edit it, but I agree completely with the sentiment and don’t apologize.” Erickson later clarified, however, that she is “not a journalist. I’m a teacher. And thank the fuck Christ for that, if this is what you call journalism.” So I guess that makes Jacobin Magazine some kind of school for scandal? Kendzior eventually wrote a blog post about the fracas, calling out Salon editor Elias Isquith, who apparently deleted the tweet she was referring to, having merely chosen an inopportune moment to deploy that old-time Twitter-brand tone-deaf humor. “The left has a rape problem,” Kenzior says.

[Read more…]

Have a Jesus and Mo.

Stupid, no, but unreasonably credulous, yes.

It’s human to be unreasonably credulous, of course, but it’s also human to be able to learn to correct for that. It’s human to learn to correct for that but still fail to correct for it on all occasions – in other words it’s human to correct for unreasonable credulity on things one is not too invested in but fail to correct for it when one has a motive not to.

Priests are supposed to be better than the rest of us, right? They’re supposed to have a special pipeline to god – that’s why they’re priests. It’s not just a job like any other; it’s not something you learn, like plumbing or pharmacy; it’s a magical goddy thing you’re inducted into. Priests are Set Apart; they are Intermediaries between us and the goddy fella.

Bishops are that but more so, and archbishops are that and more so again.

So why would an archbishop not know it’s wrong for adults to rape children? Knowing that is just average, surely; since archbishops are supposed to be way way way above average in the knowing right from wrong department (because of the special link to god), they would surely know it before they had even sent away for their name tapes for priest-school.

But the archbishop of St Louis says he doesn’t know if he knew. [Read more…]

An Irish expat in Boston feels ashamed to be Irish at the moment.

It’s hard to like or be proud of your own country, a country where bad things have happened: church-concealed child sexual abuse, women’s labor camps, a.k.a. Magdalene Laundries, and, now, 796 unconsecrated and unmarked baby graves. No, not ‘happened.’ These atrocities were perpetrated, ignored and criminally concealed. The victims? Women, children and the poor. The atonement? Little to none.

Even if the national will or means were there, even if it could be orchestrated, how would Ireland carry out a reconciliation process? What does it take for a country to have or to acquire the morality, the humility and the will to atone for collective cruelties to its most vulnerable citizens?

I don’t know. But I do think that a formal separation of church and state would be a very good start. So would an end to the hypocritical set of laws that still mandates that 21st-century Irish women must travel overseas for legal, safe abortions.

[Read more…]

Join the campaign against #TwitterTheocracy today June 10th 2014. Ex-Muslims of North America explains:

Twitter has agreed to use its ‘Country Withheld Tool’ to block “blasphemous tweets” in Pakistan, thus becoming complicit in suppressing free speech, and in aiding Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Over the past month, Twitter accounts have been suspended and tweets have been blocked in Pakistan; a Twitter user has recently been jailed in Turkey for a “blasphemous” tweet. In Pakistan and other theocracy-based states, blasphemy laws are key tools used by those in power to actively persecute minorities. We urge Twitter and all other international companies and organizations to uphold human rights-based standards of conduct, particularly when it comes to freedom of expression.

We at Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) are committed to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 19, pertaining to freedom of expression. Alongside AA, AAI, AHA, Black Non-Believers, Camp Quest, CFI, RDFRS, SCA, SHJ, SSA and other secular allies, we are organizing a day of protest on June 10th to highlight the role Twitter is playing in aiding and promoting anti-freedom, anti-human-rights, theocratic policies.

On June 10th, tweet hashtag #TwitterTheocracy and speak up about how Twitter has chosen to side with theocratic regimes instead of those who are trying to resist those regimes.

There was a time when Twitter was rightly lauded for the role it played during the Arab Spring, facilitating communication between those resisting oppressive governments. In fact, Egypt’s dictators tried to disable Twitter, and then internet access completely, before being overwhelmed by the protests that began at Tahrir Square. Governments in Tunisia and Iran tried similar tactics to suppress protests against those oppressive regimes.

Lately, Twitter seems to have moved away from its ethical, pro-human-rights stance, and caved to the demands of oppressive governments. By using its ‘Country Withheld Tool’ to enable government authorities to censor content, Twitter is aiding the enforcement of laws that violate both the UN declaration as well as the secular values of the separation of church/mosque and state.

We at EXMNA, and our secular allies, understand the complicated position in which Twitter and other international companies and organizations find themselves when operating in countries with oppressive regimes. However, Twitter users, secularists, and those who care about human rights expect Twitter to be better than oppressive, theocratic regimes. Twitter was forged on the principles of open communication. Now, it has compromised the principles of freedom of expression in selected regions of the world. We must stand against this selective hypocrisy.

We urge you to use your freedom of expression, and tweet using the hashtag #TwitterTheocracy on June 10th, 2014. Along with tweeting the hashtag, we ask that you sign our petition, to call out Twitter’s complicity in censoring dissenters and aiding the theocratic agenda in Pakistan and elsewhere. If you care about freedom of expression and human rights, please speak up, join this campaign, and share this page with your friends and social networks.

This campaign is by

Ex-Muslims of North America – www.exmna.org
Atheists Alliance International – www.atheistalliance.org
American Atheists – www.atheists.org
American Humanists Association – www.americanhumanist.org
Black Non-Believers – blacknonbelievers.wordpress.com
British Humanist Association – humanism.org.uk
Camp Quest – www.campquest.org
Center for Inquiry – www.centerforinquiry.net
International Humanist and Ethical Union – www.iheu.org
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science – www.richarddawkins.net
Secular Students Alliance – http://www.secularstudents.org
Society for Humanistic Judaism – www.shj.org
Secular Coalition for America – www.secular.org

[Read more…]