Free amateur porn for Rush Limbaugh

Recently, Rush Limbaugh confirmed his vile nature by calling a woman who testified for contraceptive insurance coverage a slut, and later amplified his idiocy with this comment:

“So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.”

I hope still photos will do, because one woman has agreed to those terms and has posted her contraceptive-dependent sex pictures online.

Vote pro-gay slavery in this poll!

One thing never changes: the ability of Catholic leaders to say incredibly tone-deaf stupid things. The latest comes from Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who compared gay marriage to slavery. Yes, because entering into a mutual partnership based on love and respect is exactly like being shackled at gunpoint in a noxious overcrowded boat and being forced into a perilous and often lethal journey far away from your home, your family, and your friends, and then spending the rest of your life in backbreaking menial labor under the threat of the whip. I don’t think Mr Keith has any kind of reasonable understanding of “marriage” in the first place.

He also claimed that homosexuality is against “natural law”. Natural law seems to be very poorly enforced in this case, then, and besides, you want to know what really defies natural law? Celibacy.

Anyway, it’s in the Telegraph, the compost heap of stupid stories, and it’s also got a poll — a poll cunningly designed to split our votes, those wretched rascals. I think we should aspire to get both of the last two answers to dominate.

Do you think gay marriage should be legalised?

No – It would be too offensive for many religious people 12.94%

No – And I think that even civil partnerships go too far 16.72%

Yes – Gay people should have the same rights as everyone else 45.48%

Yes – Religious considerations have no place in a modern society 24.85%

Swaggery swag swag

I know you’re poor. You’re planning to go to the Reason Rally by hopping a freight and camping under a freeway overpass; you can’t afford no pricey t-shirt. But how will we know that you are One of Us? Get a button, they’re cheap. Now available in the Pharyngula store is a selection of handy catchphrases in button form: Cupcake, The People’s Republic of Pharyngula, Raptor Jesus, and Your Concern is Noted.

Wait…you can’t afford a t-shirt, where are you going to stick these buttons? Now I’m picturing a mob of half-naked bloody-chested ferocious godless heathens descending on the media screaming, “Your concern is noted!” It will make good TV.

A poll on AA’s new billboards

The world is changing. For one thing, American Atheists are doing a better and better job of making billboards — less cluttered, cleaner, with a simpler message appropriate to a billboard, yet still wonderfully provocative (This is also, by the way, a great example of how pointed internal criticism can lead to improvements). These are also good examples of targeting the message, to the Jewish and Islamic communities.

Another way the world is changing is that more and more people are pointing these silly online polls out to me, and they’re already skewed in a favorable direction by the time I arrive. Really, it’s weird: 5 years ago, we’d find some mainstream poll and it would initially be insanely anti-atheist, and nowadays they’re usually more closely split. Like this one:

Do you think these billboards are appropriate?

Yes. American Atheists have every right to express their views and do outreach. 55%

No. It’s unnecessary provocation to put the billboards up in religious communities. 43%
Not sure. 2%

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make it more insanely biased in favor of the reasonable answer, of course.

Sikivu causes discomfort…

…with her criticism of this last weekend’s CFI conference.

Good.

What I’d like to see at some future conference (planners, take notice) is that at least one of the days is turned over to people of color issues — and I mean completely turned over. The white organizers just leave a big hole in their schedule, contact people like Sikivu Hutchinson and Anthony Pinn, and let them organize, arrange, choose speakers and format, and bring in the evening’s entertainment, using the organizations resources. Instead of the mostly white organization inviting a black speaker or two, hand the reins over to some black organizers and let them build what they want to hear and what we all should hear.

Or if some organization is feeling really brave, turn over the whole conference to this topic. We talk the talk all the time, but real progress will be made when atheists sit down and listen. American Atheists, CFI, American Humanists, any of the big atheist organizations: will you make that commitment?

I think the way to appreciate and recognize our black and brown intellectual leaders is to have them lead.

Why I am an atheist – Clare

I was brought up in a Church of England family. No, that doesn’t quite do it justice. I was swathed in the church, surrounded by dyed in the wool Anglicans, from the moment I was born. I went to a service at least once a week, every week (even when on holiday). On top of that, I went to sunday school, church youth group and pot luck suppers. I have sung in plays, musicals, carol concerts and outdoor events. I’ve even appeared on Songs of Praise!

It was against this backdrop that I slowly began to perceive other possibilities.

I don’t think I’d ever truly believed. I wanted to believe. I even had, what felt at the time, spiritual experiences. But I think I knew even then that these were nothing more than sensory manipulation – beautiful music, twinkling candles, incense, harmonious voices and shared emotional experiences.

I was educated at a grammar school and was introduced to mind openers such as world history, physics, chemistry and critical thinking. In my late teens, I subscribed to New Scientist and developed an interest in physics. Later, I read A Brief History of Time and, although I struggled with the maths (I’m more of a humanities person), the concept of deep time and the vastness of space fascinated me.

Around this time, I began to see the injustices in the world outside the church yard wall. My social and political awareness was developing at a time of Band Aid, Nelson Mandela, Apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, AIDS and a growing awareness of LGBT issues. I also began to perceive discrimination against my own gender whilst listening to the debates over the ordination of women priests.

In my early twenties, I started to pick up bits and pieces about evolution. Having only a rudimentary grasp of biology, I again looked to popular science books and eventually discovered Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale.

These different threads were weaving a pattern in which there was less and less room for a god.

I stopped going to church with my family when I was 18 but it was perhaps another decade or so before I would call myself an atheist. In the intervening years, I read about different religions, humanism, secularism, rationalism, scepticism and feminism. I am “out” to my friends and some work colleagues but not to my parents, although I’m sure they suspect. The reasons, as always with such situations, are complicated.

At present my reaction to religion is similar to that of ex-smokers towards cigarettes. They can be far more vehemently opposed to smoking than a non-smoker would ever be. In the same way, I have a visceral reaction to religions and religious behaviour, especially when I get a knee jerk response from that inner child who grew up in a church.

I am now trying to remove those angry knots and burrs from my tapestry so that it only reflects the beauty and wonder of my one precious lifetime on our amazing planet.

Clare
United Kingdom

Episode CCCVII: Flamboyant emergence

I’ve been neglecting you, readers! This has been a killer meeting in Orlando, with the schmoozing starting at 8am and then non-stop talks and then everything dribbling away into exhaustion somewhere north of 11pm. And the wireless sucks. Ophelia has been posting brief dispatches, but I’ve been buried so far.

I give my talk today, and then fly off with a long long travel day…and my flights got juggled about so I’m not even sure when I’m leaving yet. So I figure I better leave you with something good, so here it is: a moment of awesome transcendent beauty.

Squee, sir; I must say with great reverence, squee.

(Episode CCCVI: Why Sean Bean gotta die?.)

Why I am an atheist – A Texan

I am an atheist because the God I loved and served faithfully just got too damn small. Too formulaic. Too predictable.

I was born again in high school and was a committed believer all the way through high school and college. I loved Jesus and was sure God was the answer to everything. I believed in grace and mercy and love. My God was huge. And perfect. And more loving, compassionate and mysteriously wonderful than anything I could describe.

Then I went into full time ministry. I could tell so many stories now about the corporate waste, the hypocritical leadership, the stupid acronyms and formulas that were used to shrink God down to a sellable product. My God shrank right before my eyes. It took disillusionment with ministry to make me stop and rethink my beliefs. The nagging feeling that there was something tremendously wrong with evangelical christianity that I had successfully repressed for years became too strong. The mental gymnastics I had been performing to explain away God’s sexism, anger, vengefulness and petty demands became too much for me. For the very first time, I looked at my beliefs from a skeptical viewpoint.

I wanted my God to withstand the test. I held on to bits and pieces of my faith for awhile. But, intellectual integrity demanded that I accept what is true over what I wanted to be true. I no longer believe in any of it. And, to my surprise, as my God got tiny and unbelievable and I was forced out of my insular world, an indescribably huge and beautiful world opened up around me. The truth has set me free.

A Texan
United States