But we allow them to use the front door

CNN describes American Atheists as calling out religion; that term again.

American Atheists has a long history in using billboards to call out religion and get its message out. During the political conventions in August and September, the group put up billboards attacking Mormonism and Christianity, taking aim at the faith of both presidential candidates.

It’s such a standard idiom by now. I don’t think it can be seen as particularly ideological, let alone loony.

Anyway. The Mormons say it’s all a misunderstanding, of course. [Read more…]

Brady Judd in Gilead

About Polk County and the 14-year-old girl charged with first degree murder of her newborn…and about Amanda Todd, and many other people and incidents, and a way of thinking.

From the Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 13. The scene is a Testifying session during the re-education phase of Gilead.

It’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it’s safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it’s Janine, it’s probably more or less true.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger.

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.

Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us.

She did. She did. She did.

Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?

Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.

Aunt Helena, meet Brady Judd. You two will get along just fine.

 

Return to Polk County

A 14-year-old girl in Lakeland, Florida has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of her newborn infant. You probably know the story: secret pregnancy, birth in the bathroom of mobile home with mother a few feet away, dead infant in shoebox under the bed.

They’re trying her as an adult, which is moronic, since that’s just what she isn’t. But no surprise – this is Lakeland, Florida. It’s Polk County. It’s Sheriff Grady Judd. [Read more…]

This shit is sexist, and feminism is the fight against sexism

Soraya says hell yes she’s a feminist.

Remember the woman who asked Romney about the wage gap?

You know what she got for her efforts?  A good and proper Slutshaming 101 from conservatives who dug up her Facebook page and her Twitter account to reveal that she has in the past used alcohol and maybe suggested her interest in sex. Like Sandra Fluke, she’s a whiny, entitled trollop who should shut up and go home. [Read more…]

Treasure found

This is a nice story. Huge map collection not thrown in the garbage, given to Los Angeles public library instead.

The occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February. Greenberg’s job was to empty the home so it could be demolished and its 18,000-square-foot lot, near the top of Canyon Vista Drive, divided into two parcels. His clients had told him to rent a Dumpster and throw away whatever he found inside.

But Greenberg couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially after he read a recent Los Angeles Times article about the Central Library’s map collection. Instead, he invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove. [Read more…]

Way back

Somebody asked me yesterday about the Library section of the first B&W, so I dug it up on the Wayback Machine and sent him the link. I was quite fond of that section, so I thought I would post a few items from Favourites.

Frederick Crews ed., Unauthorized Freud

Unauthorized Freud is a collection of excerpts from books and articles by eighteen writers, all of whom as the title hints are Freud-skeptics.  The collection is edited and annotated by Frederick Crews, whose own article ‘The Unknown Freud’ in The New York Review of Books in 1993 generated a torrent of controversy. [Read more…]

Meet the bishop

Summer 1983. A Massachusetts woman, Carrel Hilton Sheldon, was eight weeks pregnant and had a life-threatening medical problem. Alternet goes on:

Sheldon’s doctor advised her that the overdose of Heparin might have also harmed her 8-week-old fetus and, given the possible fatal repercussions to her, he recommended that she abort her pregnancy.

Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), outside of Boston. [Read more…]

An invitation to picket a cathedral

From Janet L. Factor

Hello fellow freethinkers! My local group, Springfield Area Freethinkers, is undertaking an action this Sunday that we would like more of the secular community to be aware of. We are going to picket an honest-to-goodness cathedral! Since you are a person in a position to spread the word, I am sending this information to you in hopes that you will blog or otherwise report about this event in advance. Feel free to forward this info if you have contacts who might be interested in writing about this as well.

While our group has existed here for years, this will be our first venture into public protest. It’s important that it be a success. We would like to get as much participation as possible from those who can join us, and as much psychological support as we can from those who cannot. I’m hoping that this will be the little push that gets the secular activism ball rolling here in Illinois’ capital city.

Here’s the bare-bones information (more detail follows):

WHO: Springfield Area Freethinkers are the local hosting group. Also participating are CUFree of Champaign and the Peoria Secular Humanist Society.

WHAT: A picket in support of Church-State separation as an American value. We are calling it “Buttress the Wall of Separation.” [Read more…]