A “duty to proselytize”

There’s a police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma – an officer officer, a captain – who thinks he has a “duty to proselytize” – even in uniform, even on duty – anyone who doesn’t have the same religious beliefs as his. Huh. I would think he has a duty not to, because separation of church and state. If there’s any branch of government you don’t want proselytizing you, it’s the police or the military.

Fortunately, a federal appellate court saw it the same way. The ACLU explains:

In 2011, the Islamic Society of Tulsa organized a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day to show its gratitude for protection provided after threats to its mosque. As part of its longstanding community-policing initiative, the Tulsa Police Department requested some of its officers to attend, as they had for hundreds of other outreach events hosted by various religious organizations over the years.

One officer – Captain Paul Fields – refused, however, claiming his attendance would pose a “moral dilemma.” Even when in uniform, Fields argued, he had a “duty to proselytize” anyone who doesn’t share his Christian beliefs. Despite his supervisors’ assurances that no one at the event would be required to participate in any religious observations or express or adopt any beliefs, and despite their offers that he send a subordinate in his place, Fields wouldn’t follow orders.

In a unanimous decision yesterday, a federal appellate court rightly found Captain Fields’s claims to have no merit, agreeing with the Tulsa Police Department and theACLU. Though certainly entitled to his own deeply held beliefs, as a police officer, Captain Fields is bound to serve all members of the community, regardless of their faith.

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“All of you girls who rejected me”

The Boston Herald reports on Elliot Rodger and his multiple murders in Santa Barbara.

“On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house at UCSB, and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there,” 
Rodger said in his final video. “I will be a god compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I hate all of you. Humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species.”

The Santa Barbara City College student complained of being a virgin who had never been kissed and was constantly rejected by women who prefer “obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman.”

“You think I’m unworthy of you. That’s a crime I can never get over,” he said. “If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you. You denied me a happy life and in turn I will deny all of you life. It’s only fair.”

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Grandstanding?

To my surprise – I’m always surprised, no matter how repeatedly I see these things; I seem to be incurably naïve – I’m seeing people on Twitter complaining about “radical feminists” making connections between Elliot Rodger’s noisy explicit hatred of women and his murder of some women. It turns out it’s “selfish” and “grandstanding” to make this connection, even though Elliot Rodgers made it himself.

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A culture that constantly devalues women

There’s also a good article in The Bell Jar on Elliott Rodger and his hatred of women and misogyny in general.

He was an active member of the “PUAhate, an online forum (which has been down since the shootings) dedicated to “revealing the scams, deception and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to mislead men and profit from them.” And just to clarify, they’re not revealing these scams because of how vile and misogynistic they are, but rather because these men have tried these techniques and still failed to trick women into sleeping with them. These are men who both feel entitled to have sex with women and also blame all women everywhere for not fucking them. See, they want to have sex with a woman because that’s what they deservejust for being dudes, but they also hate women for withholding what they view as rightfully theirs. And I mean, boy do they ever hate women. The PUAhate forum has, according to an article on The Hairpin, threads with titles like “Are ugly women completely useless to society?” and “Have any hot women ever committed suicide?”

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The men who actually deserve them

Simon collected posts by Elliot Rodger on the Bodybuilding.com forum in a Storify. Rodgers is the guy who shot a bunch of people in Santa Barbara because nobody liked him and because women are shit. Be warned.

Women don’t deserve rights. They are evil, sadistic beasts who whore themselves out to degenerate men and ignore the men who actually deserve them.

I’m tired of seeing losers with hot chicks Seriously, today at my college I saw this short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic, and he had a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat. What on earth is up with that?!?!? I would climb mount Everest 10 times just to have a girl like that with me. I drive a BMW coupe and I’ve struggled all my life to get a girlfriend. What’s wrong with this world? Does anyone else get disturbed and offended when you see sights like this? Someone make sense of this ridiculousness.

Well, it makes a good point. It’s been my life struggle to get a beautiful, white girl; while that guy seemed to get one to hang out with him easily, despite having a worse car and being less white than me. I deserve her more. She should be in my passenger seat.

No hot blonde in his car, so out come the guns.

For there were seven Issues, not six and not eight

So you go to the Global Secular Council’s Issues section, which it has seven of which.

Constitutional Law
Discrimination
Education
Health and Safety
International
Military
Tax Policy

Already that looks odd, because how can constitutional law be global? And are they pronouncing on tax policy for the whole world? And the global military? And if they’re global, isn’t is all supposed to be international, so why is there an International section?

So we’ll look at them.

Constitutional Law

Uh oh. Bad start. The image, for one –


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Women in Secularism in the Times

The New York Times religion reporter Mark Oppenheimer did a big piece yesterday on ex-Muslims at Women in Secularism 3. 

Anyone leaving a close-knit belief-based community risks parental disappointment, rejection by friends and relatives, and charges of self-loathing. The process can be especially difficult and isolating for women who have grown up Muslim, who are sometimes accused of trying to assimilate into a Western culture that despises them.

“It was incredibly painful,” Heina Dadabhoy, 26, said during a discussion called “Women Leaving Religion,” which also featured three former Christians and one formerly observant Jew, the novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. “My entire life, my identity, was being a good Muslim woman.”

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