Recent Blog Posts
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A bit of mulling over
Following up on Sunday’s post, I can’t help but keep returning mentally to Dr. Darrel Ray’s talk at Skeptics of Oz last month, which you can see and hear (both are important in this case) here. In a nutshell, the thesis of Ray’s talk (and, I assume, of his book Sex & God: How Religion Distorts…
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The miseducation of Katelyn Campbell
Katelyn Campbell Recently in West Virginia, a teenager objected to a particularly obviously problematic form of abstinence-only education. Wait, let me rephrase that– “Lying, slut-shaming diatribe” would be a better name for it. And the teenager in question, Katelyn Campbell, knew that’s what it was. She even used the word “slut-shaming,” which is just excellent. It’s…
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Repost: cultural relativism
Cultural relativism: a moral standard that which maintains that cultural norms are good simply because they are cultural norms, and a person cannot judge the norms of one culture by the standards of another. A standard that is, in my view, complete bullshit. And if you thought a little more about what its logical implications…
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Will the real Islamophobes please stand up?
Richard Dawkins in a still from The Root of All Evil? No, you don’t have to have read the Qur’an to have opinions about Islam.Legitimate opinions.Even scientific opinions.There, I said it. Look, I understand that there’s this common assumption that a religion can be summed up in its text. That all believers in a religion believe that…
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The most concise explanation of how marriage equality threatens the institution of marriage
…comes from James Sweet, in a comment on Dispatches: For some people, marriage is still an institution that is defined by proscribed roles. The man has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the former), and the woman has certain rights and responsibilities (mostly the latter), and these are handed down by God and should not be…
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10 ways the opposition to gay marriage insults all of us
What I didn’t mention in the previous post about the purpose of marriage, because I intended to discuss it in this post, is that marriage currently serves– for many people, at least– the purpose of cementing gender roles. The single biggest fear of gay marriage opponents honestly seems to be that if men are allowed…