Here’s a thing.

Dear Friends,

Martha Reyes walked in the employee entrance of the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency to the sound of her male colleagues laughing.

She believed they were laughing at her.

It was “Housekeeping Appreciation Week” at the Hyatt and to celebrate, a digitally altered photo collage of Hyatt Housekeepers’ faces — including Martha’s and her sister Lorena’s — superimposed on bikini-clad cartoon-bodies was posted on a bulletin board at work.

She felt humiliated and embarrassed. But she knew her sister Lorena — also a housekeeper at Hyatt — would be even more so. Martha tore the posters of her and her sister down. Then, with management present, a coworker told Martha she needed to return the photos. [Read more…]

Lots of people are calling for Sean Brady to resign. Lots of people are horrified at how clueless he still is, how indifferent the Vatican still is, how morally obtuse they all are.

Brady said something in his statement on Wednesday that needs close attention.

With many others who worked regularly with children in 1975, I regret that our understanding of the full impact of abuse on the lives of children as well as the pathology and on-going risk posed by a determined paedophile was so inadequate.

Their understanding was so inadequate in 1975.

Well if their understanding was inadequate then and is better now, that means their understanding has improved over time. [Read more…]

They’re tidying things up in Kuwait. They’d gotten a bit slack, and that won’t do.

The Kuwaiti parliament yesterday passed a draft bill toughening the penalty against blasphemy to death, the state news agency reported. The parliament approved the draft by a majority of 40 lawmakers, with six opposing, according to the agency. Blasphemy was previously an offence punishable by jail in the Gulf country. Under the amended bill, any Muslim found guilty of insulting God, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or his wives, will be punished by death, said the agency. For non-Muslims, the offence will be punished by a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

Not even his wives. That seems harsh. So you can’t even say “that guy threw an egg and ran away, like Mohammed’s second wife”? Jeez, Kuwait. We don’t want slackness, but you have to leave room for jokes.

 

Ok it’s surely not permissible to blog about a Twitter storm – it’s too meta, or too navel-gazing, or too small – but once in awhile you just have to. (All the examples that are coming to mind have to do with misogyny, come to think of it. Jessica Ahlquist. Penn Jillette. #mencallmethings. And now Tom Harris MP.)

Once in awhile you just have to, so I am. People are telling him that tweet was sexist, and he’s digging in. He’s a clueless, nasty jerk. He should just take it back, but instead he’s saying it was a joke about the protester.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck – dude, if you “insult” a man by saying “like a girl” and then #loser – it’s women that you’re insulting.

sunny hundal‏@sunny_hundal Pathetic sexism RT @tomharrismp: What a hero! Fearless protester chucks an egg at EdM and runs away. Like a girl. Throws like a girl too.

Iain Martin‏@iainmartin1 @sunny_hundal I think that @tomharrismp may have been making something called a ‘joke’, Sunny.

Claire Phipps‏@Claire_Phipps @iainmartin1@sunny_hundal because really @tomharrismp thinks girls are just great at throwing and not running away from things? #hmm

Iain Martin‏@iainmartin1 @Claire_Phipps@sunny_hundal Grimly inevitable, @TomHarrisMP will end up in stocks with MPs led by @stellacreasy pelting him with eggs.

nicky clark‏@mrsnickyclark @stellacreasy@leicesterliz@TomHarrisMP Why are Labour women making light of this? That I’m sure will be a comfort to your constituents?

RachelRoncone‏@Rachela53@mrsnickyclark@stellacreasy@leicesterliz@tomharrismp Because it was a JOKE! Or we not allowed to laugh at women nowadays?

Tom Harris‏@TomHarrisMP @Rachela53@mrsnickyclark@stellacreasy@leicesterliz I was laughing at the egg-wielding eejit, actually.

Oh good god…

There’s another horrible thing about “Pastor Sean” and his terrible raging sermon. It’s obvious enough but I want to spell it out.

It’s that he’s telling parents to hate what their children are. He’s not telling them to discipline a certain kind of bad behavior, he’s telling them to bully their children if the children are becoming a certain kind of person.

There are some kinds of broad category one would want to try to discourage children from being – mean, or domineering, or self-centered. But other than that, it’s a nasty business rejecting what a child is. Surely a good parent doesn’t do that. Surely a good parent welcomes whatever kind of person emerges as a child grows up.

Oh well, I suppose it’s otiose to belabor the point. Obviously the man has a painfully narrow impoverished idea of human possibilities and a panicky need to impose conformity everywhere. Obviously he wants girls to look like Barbie dolls and boys to look like extras in a Discover channel show about guns or motorcycles or gold mining or lumberjacking or crab fishing or dirty jobs. But still. It’s depressing that he really does want to squash all the ones who don’t fit.

 

Lots of erm discussion of the new executive director of the Secular Coalition for America (replacing Sean Faircloth who left to go to work for the RDF). She’s a Republican, and not just a Republican, but an insider, an operative.

From 2001-2002, Rogers served as an Economic Advisor for President George W. Bush at the White House, at the National Economic Council, where she focused on health and social security policy. She also worked on International Trade matters for President George H. W. Bush at the Department of Commerce from 1989 until 1991.

Rogers served as General Counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1994. She worked for Senator Lott while he was Majority Leader in 1999 and she handled health policy for Senator Sessions in 2003 and 2004.

Um.

Hemant did an interview with her.

Why should we trust you now to work for us after a career spent working for people who seem to be actively against us?

I think it’s a misconception that the majority of Republicans are lined up against the secular movement. As someone who has been an insider within the Republican Party, I’m certain it’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an [overt] influence of religion on our laws. Having said that, no one agrees with everyone they work with on every single issue. In these roles I never worked on anything having to do with issues of religion — I worked primarily on economic issues.

It’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an overt influence of religion on our laws? Well I can’t believe that, said Alice.

I do think that for the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans, they are true believers of secularism — the majority of Republicans believe in the separation of church and state.

Yeah I don’t believe that, either. If that were true they would have done something about it by now.

One of the issues the atheist community has struggled with, especially lately, has been getting more women involved in our movement.  Do you think your role with the SCA can help change that?

Of course, I think me being female will help recruit women and I am going to make it a priority to get more women involved. I will be speaking at the Women in Secularism conference on the 19^th of this month.

Oh – I didn’t know that. Interesting.

The pastor who gave the sermon telling people (that is, fathers) to punch their sons if they see them “dropping the limp wrist” and to shout at their daughters if they are “too butch” – Sean Harris – is complaining on Twitter that his apology is being spurned. So I looked for and found his “apology.” He has a blog – we are colleagues! – and he blogged his apology. Or clarification. It’s probably not really an apology since the words “sorry” and “apologize” and “apology” don’t appear. The closest thing is “apologetics” in the left margin, and that ain’t close enough. Maybe that’s why his “apology” is being spurned: it’s not one.*

By now you may know that my words, from Sunday morning’s sermon, about effeminate behavior in children are being completely taken out of context by those in the LGBT community. (Nearly every article is misquoting me.) [Read more…]

Alex Aan could get up to 11 years in prison for “blasphemy.”

His case has stoked a debate in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, whose 240 million citizens are technically guaranteed freedom of religion but protected by law only if they believe in one of six credos: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism. Those who question any of those face five years in prison for “insulting a major religion”, plus an additional six years if they use the internet to spread such “blasphemy” to others.

I don’t see how that’s freedom of religion at all, technically or otherwise. I think the word should be “ostensibly.” If you can get 5 years in the slammer for questioning a religion and 11 for doing it on the intertubes, that’s not freedom. [Read more…]

The Economist raps Dan Savage over the knuckles.

Mr Savage was making one valid point and one sloppy one. The former: people who justify anti-gay bigotry by brandishing a Bible but ignore other, less convenient biblical prohibitions (the list might also include mixed fabrics and divorce) are hypocrites. The latter: people quick to condemn ought not to be so quick to take offence. The problem with the latter point is that however true it is in the abstract, it was not necessarily true in the particular. No evidence exists that the students who walked out ever condemned or bullied anyone. However poorly Mr Savage may have been treated in high school, it was not by the students in the audience, and they deserved more from a famous and accomplished journalist than derision.

But the point wasn’t that the students themselves are quick to condemn, it was that many Christians are and they justify it with the Bible. The walkout started as soon as he said that, before he even said “bullshit,” so the students were making a show of disapproval for Savage’s claim. That’s the point. Not that they themselves bully, but that they’re demonstrating support for those who do. They’re walking out in solidarity with the principle of bible-based bullying.

And they didn’t really deserve more than the very mild derision of Savage’s remark. They did stage a showy and often giggly walkout by way of dissent from what he was saying, and they did deserve a little derision in return.

The Economist almost concedes as much right after the knuckle-rap.

 (He could, of course, have opted to make a broader point: that nobody should be so quick to take offence; that journalists will hear a lot of things over the course of a career that they find offensive and even hurtful, and walking out anytime that happens will result in a short career and a narrow mind; that, however ugly his language Mr Savage was at least advancing arguments, and that surely at least one of those offended souls hoping to make a life out of words could have found a few to hurl back at him rather than just flouncing out in a huff.)

“Bullshit” really isn’t all that ugly, and “pansy ass” isn’t really all that insulting in response to people flouncing out in a huff.