Men, Women Divided Over Sex Bill

There is a bill pending in the Bahamas which would outlaw marital rape, and it is facing a lot of opposition. There is a common theme in the arguments against it: see if you can figure out what it is.

“It is ridiculous for them to try to make that a law, because I don’t think a man can rape his own wife. After two people get married, the Bible says that they become one – one flesh. How is it possible to rape what is yours?” asked Mr. Sutherland.

“Even if a woman says no to her husband it still can’t be considered rape because she is his wife. He already paid his dues at the church and she already said ‘I do,’ so from then on, even if [a man] forces sex on his wife, it isn’t rape,” he said.

“I disagree with the bill because I disagree that a man can rape his wife. The Bible tells me that a man’s body is his wife’s and her body is his. How could he rape her?” asked Ms. Sweeting.

It looks to me as if being brought up with a belief in the literal truth of a misogynistic document like the Bible can inculcate the evil idea that women are possessions, and that marriage is an act of handing over a woman’s bill of sale to a man. I thought a wife was a partner, not a slave.

Bring me the heads of Penn and Teller!

Bill Donohue has a new target: he has taken out an ad in Variety, demanding that Penn and Teller be fired, because they’ve been irreverent and sacrilegious towards the holy Catholic church.

On August 27, Showtime, owned by CBS, will feature a vicious assault on Catholics. In the season
finale of Penn & Teller’s show, they “take on the secretive inner world of The Vatican, the holy city of
Catholicism and home of the Pope.” How do we know it will defame Catholics? Because on the
show’s website, it says so: There is a Showtime Advisory for “Graphic Language, Adult Content.”

If Showtime posted that warning about a show on Islam, Muslims would brace for the worst (and so
might CBS). But Muslims need not worry: it’s not all religions that Showtime likes to trash–just
Catholicism. Indeed, Showtime is currently working on a show, “Revelation,” that promises to be at
least somewhat respectful of Protestantism.

What will the upcoming show be like? On his Twitter page, Penn Jillette brags how he rips a Catholic
encyclical on sexuality: “I’m dressed as Darth with a condom c–k light saber.” He even boasts that
the show is “hardcore,” admitting that “we attack the Vatican.” From trashing The Last Supper to
mocking Catholic prayers, anti-Catholic bigots who feed on this kind of stuff will have a stomach full.

This is not the first time Showtime has featured a vile Penn & Teller show. In 2005, Mother Teresa
was called “Mother F—ing Teresa,” and her order of nuns were branded “f—ing c–ts.” The year after,
Jillette said on his CBS radio show that Mother Teresa “got her [sexual] kicks watching people
suffer and die.”

Just recently, Jillette took after me again in his usual foul way. That doesn’t matter, but what matters
greatly is his pathological obsession with bashing Catholics and their religion. There is no legitimate
place for this kind of frontal assault on any demographic group.

CBS/Showtime needs to send Penn & Teller a message and let them know that they have crossed
the line for the last time. This should be their final season. We know that they’ve been told before to
drop the Catholic bashing, and yet they persist. By doing so, Penn & Teller have effectively stuck their
middle finger right in the eye of CBS.

I can guess how Penn and Teller are reacting to this: with jubilation. They make a living by poking authority with a sharp stick, and there is no better response than a spittle-flecked denouncement from a pompous windbag who reacts to every slight with a flurry of press releases and angry demands.

Speaking of Donohue, he has a new book out: Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America. I think his title is half right — some of us liberals do aim to diminish religion, but it’s rather silly to suggest we’re going to get rid of culture. We just hope to make secular culture dominant.

His book has been “reviewed” by his fellow-traveler and religious suck-up, L. Brent Bozell, and it does give you a taste of the absurdities within.

“Secular Sabotage” is serious business. Donohue insists the United States should be considered unequivocally a Christian country. Eight out of ten Americans consider themselves as such. Indeed – and I didn’t realize this – the United States is the most Christian country, in quantitative terms, in the world. “In fact,” states the author, “the U.S. is more Christian than Israel is Jewish.” And yet if this is so, why can’t we celebrate Christmas? Why can’t our children pray in school? How did we just elect a president who insisted the United States ought not to be considered a Christian nation?

Wait a minute…I’m a goddamned atheist, and I celebrate Christmas. Do we have goon squads that barge into religious people’s homes now and confiscate their Christmas trees and inflatable Santa Claus lawn displays? I don’t think so.

If Mr Bozell’s children need some instruction in religious liberty, they should sit down for a little talk with Uncle PZ. Surprise: they can pray their adorable little hearts out in school if they want. There is no law that says kids can’t have a little silent prayer on their own before the big test. The thing is, though, that the public schools — those government administrators and bureaucrats, don’t you know — aren’t allowed to tell you what to pray, what god to pray to, when to pray, or whether to pray at all. They’re supposed to stay out of your religious life altogether.

And President Obama got elected because he avoided offending people with religious sensibilities and has only said that the US is a secular nation with religious liberty. Again, what that means is that the government is out of the god business (or should be, ideally), and individual Americans get to worship or not worship as they want. It’s really not hard to understand, unless of course, you make a living by stirring up people’s outrage by pretending not to understand.

The rest of the review suggests that the big focus of the book is on the Gay Conspiracy. It doesn’t mention if any small-town college professors who brutalize crackers are talked about — maybe Donohue has realized that that whole escapade made him look absurd. If somebody gets their hands on it, let me know — he hasn’t bothered to send me a review copy.

Don’t pay full price for it, though. Wait for it to show up in the remainder bins. It won’t take long.

Arthrodires got penises!

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This is the skull of an arthrodire, an armored placoderm from the Devonian.

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Somehow, 20 foot long predatory fish with a mouth lined with razor-edged bony shears has never made me think of sexy time…until I ran across this comparison image.

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Oh, schwiiing. It really doesn’t take much to get a mammal to associate just about anything with sex. And then, what do you know, the latest Nature has a short article on an interesting fossil: it’s the pelvic region of an arthrodire, Incisoscutum ritchiei, and look what it’s got: an ossified clasper, comparable to the erectile organ of modern sharks. This is a bony rod that would have been the core of an intromittent organ in the living animal, so what we have here is a small relic of the sex life of a big fish from a few hundred million years ago.

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a, Pelvic girdle in dorsal view; b, pelvic girdle restored.

Think about this, you over-sexed apes: what will be left of your manhood 300 million years from now?

Ahlberg P, Trinajstic K, Johanson Z, Long J (2009) Pelvic claspers confirm chondrichthyan-like internal fertilization in arthrodires. Nature 460:888-889.

Another student group…in a challenging place

I hear about freethought student groups popping up on college campuses everywhere — and that includes southern campuses, where the stereotypes are the fiercest. I haven’t been hearing much out of the strange state of Utah, though, until now: students planning their school year in Logan, Utah really ought to look up the Utah State University Secular Humanists, Athiests, and Free Thinkers. They’re working a tough room. If you want to see a part of our country where religion really is all-pervasive, visit Utah (of course, you can also visit Utah for the desert and the geology and avoid almost all the Mormonism, too).

They’re hospitable down under

Whoa. All a fella has to do is mention that they’re going to Australia, and their mailbox fills up overnight with invitations to go drinking all over the Antipodes. Thanks, everyone, it looks like I’m going to have to work out some way to visit most of the corners of that continent when I get there. I’ll put up more details later, when my travel plans are a little sharper.

Meanwhile, one group I’ll have to meet with is the University of Melbourne Secular Society. They’ve got a nice video introducing themselves — they should get lots of members, I hope.

What I’ll be doing in March…

Since several people were curious, the reason I’ll be in Australia next year is that I’ve been invited to speak at The 2010 Atheist Global Convention in Melbourne, on 12-14 March 2010. All that way for 3 days? I’ll probably arrange to spend some extra time on my own dime checking out the drop bears and venomous kittens and raucous Australians out there — suggestions are welcome. Invitations to sack out on a couch somewhere, also welcome. Generous offers of good Australian beer, especially welcome.

The organizers also want to get an estimate of attendance, so they’re asking likely attendees to register their interest in an entirely non-binding query. You know Richard Dawkins is going to be there, as well as the fascinatingly controversial Peter Singer, and several of the exotic natives of that distant land, such as Catherine Deveny, who I’ve admired since reading this column. It should be an enlightening couple of days — join us!

It’s a little late for an apology to Alan Turing

But the sentiment is worthy. There is a petition you can sign asking the British government to express some public remorse for what was done to Alan Turing. I’m sure you all know who he was, but just in case…

Alan Turing was the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain. He laid the foundations of computing, helped break the Nazi Enigma code and told us how to tell whether a machine could think.

He was also gay. He was prosecuted for being gay, chemically castrated as a ‘cure’, and took his own life, aged 41.

The British Government should apologize to Alan Turing for his treatment and recognize that his work created much of the world we live in and saved us from Nazi Germany. And an apology would recognize the tragic consequences of prejudice that ended this man’s life and career.

There’s also an article on the petition, with an online poll.

Should there be an apology for computer pioneer Alan Turing over his conviction for homosexuality?

Yes
74%
No
26%

I look forward to the new generation of Texas bible scholars

This year, Texas will require its students to take a Bible course. In the supposedly secular public schools.

This could be a bad thing if all the schools bring in their local Southern Baptist minister to teach fundagelicalism…but it would be a great thing if the teachers brought a properly skeptical attitude towards it. Well, except for all the teacher lynchings that we’d be seeing around October.

A correction from the Texas Freedom Network:

Just a quick note about your post on Bible classes in Texas public schools. Unfortunately, the article you linked to in your post got it wrong – public schools in Texas are NOT required to offer Bible courses. In fact, we were successful in 2007 in changing that bill in committee so that high schools could choose whether or not they want to offer elective courses about the Bible’s influence in history and literature.

The Texas attorney general has ruled that the law, as written, does require that something about the Bible’s influence in history and literature must be in the curriculum somewhere, but it doesn’t have to be a separate course. Of course, many social studies and literature classes have long included samples of sacred writings from Christianity and the other major religions and explain their influence on various cultures. So we don’t think the law will change much unless school districts decide to offer separate Bible courses.