An article in the Houston Chronicle blog, Female atheists fight for equality in freethought movement, goes out of its way to find some people who disagree with that sentiment. I don’t know whether the author was being cunningly ironic or not (he is a religion writer), but he really picked the worst possible critics, which I find amusing.

“A lot of women are coming out as atheists and freethinkers,” said Hensley, “whether they want to become an active member of the community is another question.” Not only do women face backlash from religious groups opposed to their atheism and feminism, but there are sources of adversity within the secular community as well. Sites such as Slymepit.com and A Voice for Men are countering Women in Secularism’s claim that atheism and feminism fit together hand-in-glove.

As Justin Vacula of Skeptics Ink said, “I fail to see how refusing to believe in God leads to the ‘logical conclusion’ of abandoning long held beliefs about women and men.”

Yes, because reason never leads to the abandonment of traditions and beliefs. Somebody hand that man another shell for his shotgun so he can blow off his other foot.

And to find critics, the author had to go to two hate sites. I think the point is clear.

The article I linked to has since been revised, specifically to include a more accurate Vacula quote.

“I fail to see how refusing to believe in God leads to the ‘logical conclusion’ of abandoning the belief that women exist to serve men.”

I’m speechless.

…don’t forget the Imagine No Religion conference in Kamloops, British Columbia — the East and West coasts are covered! If you miss both of those, there’s also Empowering Women Through Secularism 2013 in Dublin, Ireland, 29-30 June. And if you can’t make that, there’s CONvergence on 4-7 July. Busy, busy, busy.

If you’re interested in CONvergence, and specifically the skeptic track, SkepChickCon, get to work fast: registration prices go up tomorrow.

Yesterday, I showed you that email promising 77 secular reasons to oppose gay marriage. Now the same guy has written back.

My hope in suggesting this pamphlet to you was to get you to see that there is opposition,for sociological reasons, to the legislation signed by Gov. Dayton yesterday. I can accept that you have summarily dismissed these arguments against same sex marriage. However, I would like you to exposit reasons why I should support same sex marriage. I hope this will not be too much of an imposition of your time. Thank You.

No, the opposition is not “sociological” — it’s religious and dogmatic, and you’ve merely thrown out some very poor rationalizations that pretend to be sociological. And if you can’t see all by yourself the reasons why we should treat all of our fellow human beings equally, I pity you your morally impoverished Christian background.

But just for fun, I think I’ll sit back and let the commenters here generate some explanations. Maybe some will sink in.

Remember the good old days, when you could always trust a creationist to claim their theory was not religious, and then they’d turn around and neatly undermine their own claims for you? Think Bill Buckingham at the Dover trial, who completely won the case for the good guys by saying a lot of stupid stuff.

Wait, good old days? I think I meant now.

The Louisville Area Christian Educator Support (LACES) organization had a conference, where Bryce Hibbard, principal of Southern High School (a public school!) was one of the speakers. He first tries to claim that teaching creationism in the school was perfectly legitimate.

Hibbard and other speakers told the teachers present that it was perfectly acceptable under Kentucky law to teach biblical creationism in addition to evolution in science classes, and he suggested future meetings with biology teachers to craft curriculum.

“I taught biology for 20 years in this state and didn’t know that if evolution is part of the curriculum, that I could have been teaching creation,” Hibbard said. “I thought I was sneaky if I had the kids … present it. So it was presented in my classroom by the kids, but I could have been doing it and didn’t know that.”

So not only does he think it’s OK to teach creationism in science class, but confesses that he’s spent 20 years intentionally subverting the law.

But look what else this same guy said at the same conference:

Addressing a common theme of the night — the kids who aren’t taken to church, and therefore “have no hope” — Hibbard told the crowd they should be missionaries to students, planting the seed of Christ.

“We’re in the greatest mission field,” Hibbard said. “At one point I was told, ‘You should be a youth minister,’ and someone said, ‘No, you’re in the greatest mission field there is, stay in the public school.’”

Huh. Teachers and administrators in a public school who regard their students as targets for evangelical conversion. That sounds illegal, unconstitutional, and a violation of the public trust to me. Can we have him arrested, or fired at least? Anyone out there a victim of the shitty education provided by Southern High School want to bring a case against this goober?

There’s more.

When asked if such biblical lessons in science class — taking time away from learning actual science — would stunt the academic growth of students, Hibbard replied that it would not, as creationism is “just another theory.”

“Certainly, that’s what (creationism) is,” Hibbard said. “A theory is a scientific understanding of what we know today. So evolution is a theory. Creation is a theory. Intelligent design is a theory. The theory of relativity is a theory. Yeah.”

This incompetent was teaching biology? For shame.

The Rationalist Association has started The Apostasy Project — they’re trying to provide resources for people who want to leave their religion. As recent events in Bangladesh have shown, apostasy is regarded by some as a terrible crime.

If you can, help them out with a donation. Apostasy is something to praise and encourage!

Amanda Marcotte shares a success story in the struggle against casual sexism, and also plugs this great conference coming up this weekend.

I bring this up because I’m one of the speakers at Women in Secularism, which starts on Friday in D.C. (There’s still time to register, if you want to come!)  The very existence of this conference is threatening to a lot of people who either believe that women should remain a small minority in secular activism, that they should embrace the role of disempowered harassment objects, or that feminist ideas—i.e. the belief that women are equal human beings—have no place in secular spaces, despite the long history of secularism and feminism being intertwined. I’ve been made to understand that many of these folks have been upping their already obsessive levels of harassment and making threats of showing up simply to harass people for holding the offensive belief that women have something to contribute as people and not just as sex objects. So I wanted to remind people not to let those bastards get you down. They don’t speak for the majority. They exploit the anonymity of the internet to make themselves seem greater in number than they are, mainly by posting non-stop and having no life outside of being angry that feminists are engaged in secular activism. But as this story shows, the fuck-you-women-are-objects-n0t-people attitude is not inevitable, and conversations can actually be had and good faith does exist. So, a bit of optimism!

Oh, yeah, the other side is ramping up the freakout as the conference date comes ever closer. I expect the #wiscfi hashtag on twitter is going to become completely unusable and uninformative as the kooks become angrier and more obsessive about women talking about women’s issues (and generally human issues!) under the banner of secularism.

It’s going to be interesting as the rational side calmly and dispassionately watches the haters melt down.

It’s this weekend! And look, more women are attending!

I am so looking forward to Women in Secularism: not only is it a sign of progress that atheism can broaden its reach, but it’s a meeting where I don’t have to give a talk, and so nothing is hanging over my head and I can just kick back and enjoy the entire event.

This really is a constant problem. I don’t think most theists are stupid, just as I don’t think being an atheist makes you smart, but theists are led to say the most astonishingly stupid things by their abysmally stupid mythology. Ken Ham is probably a smart guy — he’s at least got cunning and business acumen — but when he announces that the world can’t be millions of years old because that would make the Bible wrong, you just have to gawp speechlessly and wonder how someone who can say something that idiotic manages to tie his own shoelaces.

Jesus & Mo demonstrate the problem.

I’ve decided that everyone has brains like swiss cheese, full of holes, but some people have giant, Jesus- (or Mo-) shaped holes in their brains that create huge dysfunctional zones. If you can avoid tripping into their religious cavities, they’re fine…but if you do, hellooooo stupid.

I was on another show with this odd New Covenant group — these are people very deeply steeped in Christianity, and it shows in their modes of thinking. Not all of them call themselves atheists, but they’re definitely freethinkers, and so I chattered with them for two hours. The topic for this one was on the crucifixion, and I argued that it was more than just false, this myth of sacrifice by proxy is abhorrent poison.

The other thing that makes them different from scientists and atheists is they’re just too nice — I’m really put on edge by compliments.

This is kind of hilarious. Like often happens on Youtube, I got to this video via the related links. I didn't expect Stern to be so vocal about this.

The great news: Governor Dayton signed the same-sex marriage bill into law this afternoon. You may now cheer wildly.

The silly it-is-to-laugh news: the religious right is indignant. I got this email this afternoon:

I have been reading your blog entries regarding The Minnesota Legislature’s legalizing of gay marriage. In these entries, you seem to put the blame for the hold up on the passing of this legislation on Christians and organized religion, who oppose gay marriage as a tenet of their faith. That is fine on your part and does not bother me one iota. What I would like to do is to send you 77 NON-RELIGIOUS Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage. If you are open minded enough and don’t mind sending me your “snail mail” address, I will send you a copy of this pamphlet for your information. Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely Yours,

David W. Zeile

I told him to go ahead, but I took a wild guess at what these ‘reasons’ would be — I predict lots of repetition of the same few arguments with a few words twisted around, and much circling around the purpose of marriage being procreation and children needing a mommy and a daddy and how it’s so unfair for the law to force people to tolerate wicked gays. I figured I’d have fun ripping into it.

But I don’t have to! I searched on the title of the pamphlet and found that the Rational Wiki has already done the job, and done it well. Also, the content is exactly what I predicted.

Entirely on logical and rational reasons, the anti-gay bigots lose.

Al Bedrosian is the Republican (of course) candidate for the Roanoke County supervisor, and he certainly makes his position clear in a 2007 op-ed to the local paper.

As a Christian, I think it’s time to rid ourselves of this notion of freedom of religion in America.

Now that I have your attention, let me take a moment to make my case. Freedom of religion has become the biggest hoax placed upon the Christian people and on our Christian nation.

When reading the writings of our Founding Founders, there was never any reference to freedom of religion referring to a choice between Islam, Hindu, Satanism, Wicca and whatever other religions or cults you would like to dream up. It was very clear that freedom to worship meant the freedom to worship the God of the Bible in the way you wanted, and not to have a government church denomination dictate how you would worship.

Christianity, by its own definition, does not allow freedom of religion. A Christian is defined as a follower of Jesus Christ.

He is forthright, I’ll give him that — he comes right out and says exactly what a lot of American fundagelicals think: they are intolerant radicals. They’re also guilty of magical thinking.

Beware, Christians, we are being fed lies that a Christian nation needs to be open to other religions. America is a great nation — not because of its freedom, great economic system, or even its military power. It is a great nation because the God of the Bible has blessed us in our freedom, our wealth and our military power.

Once we remove ourselves from worshiping the one true God, all the wonderful qualities of America will vanish.

If Al Bedrosian is an example of the wonderful qualities of America, please do vanish.