equality

Everyone should watch this video. Dan Savage has started a new project, prompted by the suicide of a bullied gay teenager, Billy Lucas, in Indiana. So they're trying to get the word out: It gets better. Don't despair. And they're collecting other people's stories, too. This particular project is specifically about giving gay kids the strength to carry on, but it's not just gays who are made miserable by schools and religion and other agents of the enforcement of artificial norms. I suspect that the readership of Pharyngula, all you geeks and nerds and oddballs, is enriched for people who…
All you have to do is look at their official state party platforms. The platforms are typically wish lists forged at multiple levels: I've been involved a little bit with our local Minnesota DFL, and anyone can show up and propose an addition to the party platform, which means you've usually got a few pie-in-the-sky items suggested…and those all get voted on at the local convention and then at the state convention, and the wackier or excessively improbable items get winnowed away in the voting. If you look at the Minnesota DFL platform, for instance, you find a rather idealistic document that…
The answer to that little logic question is Catholics. We've got a little buzz going on in Minnesota to legalize gay marriage — one of our gubernatorial candidates is for it, for instance, while the other is against it (guess which party he's from) — and already the Catholic Church is gearing up to oppose it. The bishops of Minnesota are "alarmed" by continuing attacks on marriage, Bishop of Winona James Quinn has said. He reported that Catholics of his diocese will receive a DVD and a letter from him to remind Catholics of church teaching and to explain the dangers of the legal recognition…
It looks like I have to add another book to my currently neglected reading list. In an interview, Cordelia Fine, author of a new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), has a few provocative things to say about gender stereotypes and the flimsy neuroscience used to justify them. So women aren't really more receptive than men to other people's emotions? There is a very common social perception that women are better at understanding other people's thoughts and feelings. When you look at one of the most realistic tests of…
The Australians are having an election, and one of the parties is the Family First Party — a Christianist group — and another is the Australian Sex Party, which would have my vote just for the name, if I were Australian. And after watching this debate between the two, I am confirmed in my bias. I'm a bit disillusioned with Julia Gillard, who's a bit too quick to throw away principles to pander for votes (which probably means she'll get elected). Fiona Patten, though, seems quite nice and forthright. And I like their ads. Now if only the US had a party like that…
Hemant recruited a couple of members of the Homosexual Conspiracy to infiltrate an anti-gay seminar near where he lives, and I was shocked when I got to the part where the organizers noticed one of them was taking notes and asked her if she was against their agenda, she said yes! And then she got kicked out of several of the talks. Really, people, this honesty thing is going to make it difficult to effectively spy on the opposition. Anyway, she still got to attend most of the talks, and two reporters were at work (mission redundancy! That will help), so we've still got a full report on the…
Newt Gingrich, the man who told his wife he was leaving her as she lay in a hospital bed sick with cancer, has declared that "overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife" on his website. Unfortunately for him, he left comments open, and is on the receiving end of a lot of contempt for his hypocrisy. My favorite so far is "Which one of your multiple marriages was the most sacred to you?". I'm also rather peeved that Gingrich's website has the url of newt.org. He…
Some Catholic site is giving advice on how to field questions from Leftists about homosexuality. After all, those danged lefties keep bringing up issues of equality and civil rights when gay marriage comes up, and it's awfully hard to talk about restricting gay rights without sounding like a bigot or homophobe, so you've got to have a different set of talking points you can switch to whenever talk about equality and fairness and those other non-Catholic doctrines are brought up. So they've come up with five different tactics Catholic bigots can use to divert attention from their bigotry.…
Since the Catholics are accusing gays of 'bullying' by demanding equal rights (how dare they!), and since Minnesota does have a scumbag for a governor, I guess I'll have to sit back and take it when The Onion mocks our fair state. New Law Would Ban Marriages Between People Who Don't Love Each Other
That implicit consent thread has just broken a thousand comments, so I'm closing it and inviting everyone to move here. Just to keep it interesting, I found (via Jen) a couple of lists. The one on the left is from one of those liberal progressive sites, and clarifies the whole issue of male privilege, which many of the commenters still fail to comprehend. The one on the right is from a batty wingnut site, where each point is greatly expanded into an exercise in blaming women. Here's your opportunity to find some common ground, I hope. There probably aren't many commenters here who find the…
One of the more contemptible anti-gay activists is Reverend Scott Lively, a true liar for Jesus who considers it his sacred mission to rid the world of homosexuals. He was proud to have inspired the Ugandan death penalty for homosexuality law (although in the face of the outrage that generated, he backed off, claiming they should give them the choice of prison or gay conversion "therapy"). His other claim to fame is that he is a holocaust revisionist. He has written a book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that Hitler and his entire inner circle was gay, that the atrocities the Nazis…
Wait, wait, this story makes no sense. A gay netball coach fired from a Christchurch Christian school has gained compensation and an apology. The 28-year-old man was employed as a girls' netball coach at Middleton Grange School in February, but said he was sacked by the board of trustees after members discovered his sexual orientation. A gay man was fired from his job as coach of a girls' team? Wouldn't it have made more sense to fire him if he were heterosexual? Oh, it's a religious school. They specialize in stuff that makes no sense.
How about breast ironing? When I first read about it, I wondered how it would even do anything — but then you discover that they heat stones until they're hot enough to cause pain, and press these instruments of torture to their chest daily for months. And who carries out this sadistic abuse? Their loving mothers. To make them unattractive to men, who might otherwise get them pregnant. Don't watch the video if the sight of scarred breasts bother you. One in four girls in Cameroon are having this done. It seems to me that sex education and prophylactics would be the less destructive way to…
Here is a list, with photos, of 15 sexy scientists. It has a little excuse for some obvious bias in the choices: (Why no men? Because I unavoidably find women more sexy, of course!) Which is forthright and honest and all that…but then I got a look at #15. I'm very disturbed now. I had no idea that my awesome sexual charisma was overwhelming even heterosexual men nowadays. I'm also bothered by the premise. I think it's an excellent idea to promote the idea that scientists can be sexy, and women who are comfortable with that should be able to proudly present themselves as sexual beings. But…
Demonstrating once again that we northerners are dour old puritans, Argentina has legalized gay marriage. If this means Argentinians are damned, that's just more good news: there will be Carnival in hell.
First homeopathy is decreed bogus and unsupportable by the NHS, and now this: UK doctors are declaring gay conversion therapy damaging and harmful. There is a bit of wishful thinking, but at least this sentiment is optimistic: Hopefully, anyone involved in the so-called treatment of homosexuality will realize that the medical profession considers them dangerous charlatans, and will reconsider their beliefs. I also sincerely hope that any vulnerable gay person who is unhappy about their sexuality takes notice of this motion and realizes that it is the world that needs to change, not them.…
Important clarification: CAH is a real and serious disease. There are no objections to pediatricians treating the physiological disorders in utero. However, lesbianism, traditionally masculine career choices, and disinterest in having children are not diseases…and the problem in this work is that the doctors involved clearly think they are, and are interested in using the drug dexamethasone to modify behavioral choices. That's the scary part. Ladies, are you independent, stubborn, or mildly aggressive in your social interactions? Are you perhaps less interested in having sex with men than…
You knew it was too good to be true. Julia Gillard has just announced that she is against gay marriage. The honeymoon is over, no more plaudits. At least we still have Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir to admire. And because it's Gillard, there's a poll. Are Australians always this internet-poll crazy? Do you agree with the PM? Yes 28% No 72%
It's an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I'd rather not go down that road. So here's the Woman Problem, and it's not a problem with women: it's a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it's true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of…
An infamously anti-gay Lutheran pastor, Tom Brock, has been outed as gay himself. Unfortunately, the outing is ethically compromised by the fact that the writer accomplished it by infiltrating a confidential 12-step program for gay men dealing with "chastity issues". Basically, he had to violate a promise of confidentiality. This is a tough one; if the program were a sincere effort by these men to deal honestly with their sexual orientation, then this revelation violates trust and reduces the effectiveness of the program, and does actual harm to innocent participants. I can't condone that.…