Atheism, fuck yeah!
Welcome atheists, skeptics, freethinkers all,
to this little corner of godlessness.
~Mooglets

Another day, another nominee for our 2012 Bad Faith Award. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has actually spent most of the year talking himself into contention through his opposition to gay marriage and his warnings of anti-Christian persecution in Britain, but it would appear he has decided to up his game following the opening of the Bad Faith nominations process.

Because, surely, that’s the only logical explanation for why he would choose to say the following at an anti-gay marriage fringe event at the Conservative Party conference yesterday, with reference to Nick Clegg’s recent suggestion that opponents of the marriage reform are “bigots”:

“Let us remember the Jews in Nazi Germany. What started against them was when they started to be called names. And that was the first stage towards that totalitarian state. We have to resist them. We treasure democracy. We treasure our Christian inheritance and we want to debate this in a fair way.”

For analysis of quite why this statement is at best deeply ignorant and at worst staggeringly offensive, read this post by Guardian blogger and occasional New Humanist contributor Martin Robbins. And look out for the opportunity to vote for Carey in the Bad Faith poll later this month – the only question surrounding his place on the shortlist concerns whether we should include all the individuals who have made irrational statements in opposition to the equal marriage reforms, or simply put forward the Coalition for Marriage as a collective nomination. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: The Telegraph’s Tom Chivers (himself no fan of the former Archbishop) has looked at Carey’s comments in their fuller context, and suggested that critics have been wrong to attack him on this occasion. Take a look at his post and see what you think.

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NewHumanist

The religious stood together today outside of Chick-Fil-A’s nationwide.

More, in fact, at one time than we’ve ever seen waiting for a chance to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or stand up for social outcasts whom society has marginalized… like the entire homosexual community.

You know, things Jesus actually told his followers to do.

Irony is a bitch.

Today, Christians stood up for what they call “traditional marriage”, even though most forms of traditional marriage in the Christian Bible are illegal in the US (and for good reason). And all this despite the fact that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock and grew up with (arguably) two fathers. Where does any of that fit into the Religious Right’s image of traditional family values?

Isn’t it weird to live in a so-called Christian nation that would have cut funding to programs Jesus’ own family would have greatly benefitted from? But I digress…

The larger question looming over this entire debate is: Where would that first century bastard-son-of-a-carpenter-turned-social-revolutionary even fit in our modern American society when it comes to the whole marriage debacle?

Does anyone out there really think he’d have been seen waiting in line for a (relatively adequate) chicken sandwich while simultaneously opposing equality? Probably not. In fact, that sounds like something that might hinder people from hearing the Christian message of love and acceptance. And he probably wouldn’t have been protesting on the other side of the parking lot, either.

Continue to read this article at An American Atheist

Former Metropolitan Police officer Brian Paddick has hit back at Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s comments on homosexuality.

The London Mayoral candidate has asserted that there is “no intellectual argument” against same-sex marriages.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien,  leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, accused the Government of arrogance ahead of a consultation on the issue this month. 

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, he claimed that plans for gay marriage were a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.”

He added: “The Government has suggested that same-sex marriage wouldn’t be compulsory and churches could choose to opt out. This is staggeringly arrogant.

“No Government has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage.”

But Paddick – who is gay – has hit back.

“Same-sex marriage should simply be a universally accepted human right for everyone,” he said.  

“If we really believe in equality, there is no sound intellectual argument against gay marriage. There may be religious objections, as there are religious objections to equality for women, but that does not mean we should be ruled by them.”

Meanwhile, the UK gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust has also slammed O’Brian’s condemnation.

George Broadhead, the PTT’s secretary and veteran gay activist, said: “Given the Roman Catholic Church’s well-known views and policy on gay sexual relationships and rights, including Civil Partnership, not to mention Cardinal O’Brian’s previous homophobic outbursts, his latest are totally predictable. His contention that gay marriage would shame the UK in the eyes of the world is also bizarre. 

“Has the cardinal not heard that gay marriage has already been legalised in no fewer than ten countries: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands? I am not aware that any of these countries have suffered shame or any sort of pariah status as a result. This just shows how out of touch with reality the Roman Catholic Church has become.”

Pink Paper

Here’s a trivia trick question that will throw future film and TV buffs for a loop: Growing Pains is a) the name of a popular 80s sitcom about an affluent family in Huntington, New York, or b) the documentary that actor/Old Testament fanboy Kirk Cameron’s gay children make about growing up under relentless pressure from their homophobic father to stay in the closet?

At one point during this disheartening interview, Piers Morgan bluntly asks Cameron to explain what he believes about gay marriage, and Cameron answers by saying that marriage is “almost as old as dirt,” that it was created in the Garden (that would be the Edenic garden and not that little solarium in the background of the kitchen set on Growing Pains), and that for reasons of its venerable old age, he would never attempt to redefine it.

As it turns out, the Piers Morgan interview dovetails nicely with a little polemic — charmingly titled “We Cannot Afford to Indulge this Madness” — that appeared in the Telegraph yesterday, in which Britain’s most senior Jacobite Catholic, Cardinal Keith O’Hara, rails against his government’s move to consider permitting gay marriage in England and Wales, suggesting that it would be completely crazy, if not outright impossible, to redefine “marriage,” a word that has meant only one thing since antediluvian times. He writes,

But can we simply redefine terms at a whim? Can a word whose meaning has been clearly understood in every society throughout history suddenly be changed to mean something else?

That’s right — because words, once they’re written down, only mean one thing forever and ever. With so many examples to choose from of, say, Greek and Latin words that have most definitely mutated over the thousands of years they’ve had to experiment with different languages, one seems especially instructive in this instance: dogma, a Greek word that used to merely mean an opinion, or, literally, “that which one thinks is true,” and not, as it seems to mean to today’s religious nutjobs, a rigid code permitting the oppression and harassment of those with whom one disagrees. It might also bear mentioning that, while Cameron seems to think that homosexuality is “ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization,” the civilization that he’s a part of was conceived by a bunch of dudes who liked dudes, probably right after a symposium and right before a blowjob contest.

Jezebel

Kirk Cameron, an actor, a bigot, a homophobe. I’ve been aware of this guy for a number of years now, because of his bigoted views, the speeches and talks and writings that he gives. 

Unable to give a straight answer to a straight question. Pontificating and evangelizing on British TV even. He’s also dead wrong.

Just as most theists talking about marriage, he appears to be under the impression that marriage has always been only a religious thing. When in fact religion (or more specifically in this case - Christianity) only got it’s claws into it a few hundred years ago. Marriage before then was a simple legal contract between families. For the most part, it is still a simple legal contract. For the most part, even when Christianity got in on it, it was still only a simple legal contract between families, it just started having a religious blessing attached.

But then, he’s a Young Earth Creationist. He thinks the world is only 6000 years old and that we are descended directly from Adam and Eve. Never mind genetics. He doesn’t get it.

There’s a video on this article, click link to view, or wait for the queue to spit it out. 

~Mooglets

A GOP lawmaker in Wisconsin is trying to pass a bill that would classify “non marital parenthood” as a cause of child abuse. Since gays cannot legally mary in Wisconsin, the bill automatically includes single and coupled gays and lesbians, plus any single person regardless of orientation.

The bill “requir[es] the Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board  to emphasize nonmarital parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.” Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman, who has a long history of radical positions, wants to spend tax dollars “educating” the public — with no scientific proof (because there is none) — that gays, lesbians, single mothers, and single fathers should not be allowed to be parents because their children will grow up in an abusive home.

In fact, Senator Grothman is claiming that the very lack of two married opposite sex parents in a household constitutes child abuse. Apparently, Senator Grothman believes that marriage is for procreation, and therefore only married people should be allowed to raise children.

In essence, the bill could, if it became law, be used to outlaw all gay couples raising children, and all single-parent households.

It truly boggles the mind, how stupid these radical conservatives are.

What is supposed to happen to all those children who, tragically, lose a parent to, say, cancer? A car accident? Divorce? Does the State come in the day of the parent’s funeral and rip the young boy or girl from their surviving parent’s loving arms and place them in an orphanage?

Yes, we all know these small government conservatives who want government just small enough to fit under our bedroom doors, in women’s uteruses, and now, determining who can and who cannot raise their own child.

By the way, the good Senator Grothman in the past has opposed sex education in schools claiming teachers would promote an “agenda” to make student become gay.

Although Grothman has said, ”Everybody knows you’re not supposed to smoke!” he voted against a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but supported a bill allowing smoking in hotel rooms. And Grothman called a proposed Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, “an insult to all the other taxpayers around the state,” and opposed any possibility of a Kwanzaa holiday, stating Americans should “treat Kwanzaa with the contempt it deserves before it becomes a permanent part of our culture.”

Grothman has also “advocated the hiring of more business-friendly individuals to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources,” according to Wikipedia.

The New Civil Rights Movement

Though not strictly a religious article, what’s the betting this guy is a conservative Christian and get’s his entire viewpoint on marriage equality from his particular reading of the Bible?

Either way, this is just plain disgusting and factually wrong. It’s already been long proven that the gender of the caregivers, the amount of them, the age of them etc has no bearing. What counts is stability, proper care and a loving environment. 

~Mooglets

A Catholic cleric who hit out at the “madness” of the Government’s gay marriage plans has been condemned for “scaremongering”.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, accused the coalition of trying to “redefine reality” and claimed the proposals were a “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.”

But his comments were roundly criticised amid fears the outburst would fuel prejudice.

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, Cardinal O’Brien wrote: “Since all the legal rights of marriage are already available to homosexual couples, it is clear that this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists.

“Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father. Other dangers exist. If marriage can be redefined so that it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two women, why stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to constitute a marriage, if they pledge their fidelity to one another?”

Plans to introduce civil gay marriages have divided the Conservative party and put David Cameron on a collision course with a number of religious leaders. Cardinal O’Brien’s attack was the most outspoken attack to date.

But the Prime Minister is a “passionate” advocate of the change, telling his party two years ago he supported gay marriage “because I am a Conservative”.

Margot James, the first openly lesbian Conservative MP, criticised the “apocalyptic language” used by the Cardinal and accused him of “scaremongering”

“I think it is a completely unacceptable way for a prelate to talk,” she told BBC 1’s Andrew Marr Show. “I think that the Government is not trying to force Catholic churches to perform gay marriages at all. It is a purely civil matter.”

Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman said she hopes the comments would not end up “fuelling or legitimising prejudice”. “We have had prejudice, discrimination and homophobia for hundreds of years, that doesn’t make it right,” she told the show. “I don’t want anybody to feel that this is a licence for whipping up prejudice.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that marriage should remain between opposite-sex couples - because anything else would be forcing unwanted change on the UK.

The comments came in a speech at a World Council of Churches gathering in Geneva, yesterday.

There, he told delegates that while anti-discrimination legislation was beneficial and necessary for protecting the vulnerable, it should not be used to cultivate cultural change. 

Specifically, he said that human rights laws “falls short of a legal charter to promote change in institutions.”

Adding: “If it is said that a failure to legalise assisted suicide – or same-sex marriage – perpetuates stigma or marginalisation for some people, the reply must be, I believe, that issues like stigma and marginalisation have to be addressed at the level of culture rather than law.”

He added human rights language could be “confused and artificial”, even becoming “an alien culture, pressing the imperatives of universal equality over all local custom and affinity.”

Critics say the comments – which follow Lord Carey’s assertion that gay marriage is wrong – were devised to slow British Prime Minister David Cameron from forging ahead with his promise to implement gay marriage.

However, Williams did argue that nations which actively persecute homosexuality are wrong and have “no justification”.

“Laws that criminalise certain kinds of sexual behaviour need the most careful scrutiny: legislation in this area is very definitely to do with the protection of the vulnerable from those with power to exploit and harm. Go beyond this, and the territory is a lot more slippery. 

“Many societies would now recognize that legal interference with some sorts of consensual sexual conduct can be both unworkable and open to appalling abuse. This concern for protection from violence and intimidation can be held without prejudging any moral question; religion and culture have their own arguments on these matters.”

PinkPaper

1. There is more than one gender, so this ‘opposite-sex couples’ thing is bullshit

2. It’s not ‘gay marriage’, it’s ‘marriage’

3. Marriage shouldn’t be a fucking religious thing anyway, it should be purely legal and if the people getting married want to add religious shite to it, they can do it on their own time

4. If there is indeed ‘no justification’ for persecuting non-heterosexuals, why the fuck are you sitting there talking about continuing to block their human right to marry whomever they so choose?

5. Allowing people who currently cannot get married, to marry, will affect no-one but the people who want to get married. The Government is not striding into Churches, Mosques and Temples and forcing the religious representatives of such at gun point to marry people. It is simply bringing the human rights of the population to an equal standard across the board. The only damn reason people are fighting this is because they are scared of the shake-up to their world-views. Well, ever so sorry that your world-views are out of line with the rest of the damn world. 

6. Fuck you, sir. Fuck you.

~Mooglets