A defense lawyer in the Delhi gang rape case made some remarks that could get him disbarred.

Mr Singh caused shock saying he would have “burned my daughter alive” if she was
having “premarital sex and went out late at night with her boyfriend”.

He told the BBC on Monday his personal views had been taken out of context.

“I was asked about my views on a personal matter and I answered that in my personal capacity of being the patriarch of my house,” he told the BBC.

Ah yes, and this is why some of us are not all that fond of patriarchy.

 … Read the rest

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Jesus and Grumpy Cat.

… Read the rest

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An Irish university student goes on the pill. She tells her mother; her mother is fine with it. Then she goes home to the west of Ireland, and has to renew her prescription. Her local GP is not so fine with it. He asks her a lot of impertinent questions and gives her a lot of unwanted advice.

This horrible catholic guilt regarding our own sexuality still festers in the more rural parts of Ireland.  It makes me furious that the general psyche of our nation would accept that a doctor reserves the right not to administer this drug. I had done three courses of the pill, I was well aware of the risks and consequences and I am

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Rupa Jha talks about sexual abuse at home as opposed to out in the streets or on the buses.

She lived in a huge family in a two bedroom flat.

Distant relatives and cousins kept coming and going through the family home.
Being the youngest girl in the family, I was “loved” by them.

These love sessions would happen only when I was alone with one of them.

I hated it but, like many others in the same situation, I was too petrified to talk about it.

Getting rubbed, touched, kissed or being locked in bathrooms was the “love”.

Even though the house was always full, I felt completely lonely and violated.

One day when she was about ten she … Read the rest

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This again. In Sudan, a woman is threatened with flogging for refusing to wear hijab.

Can we please never again hear from anyone saying that wearing hijab is a choice?

Amira Osman Hamed faces a possible whipping if convicted at a trial which could come on September 19. Under Sudanese law, her hair – and that of all women – is supposed to be covered with a “hijab”, but Hamed refuses.

Ruby Hamad comments on the trend.

As mainstream Islam grows increasingly conservative, there is no doubt that the situation for many Muslim women, both in Sudan and elsewhere is deteriorating. Indonesia, for example, a once “moderate” country which has also been cracking down on women’s dress in recently years,

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A month ago Steven Pinker had a long article in The New Republic in praise of ”scientism.” One part I particularly like:

In  which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe;

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Did you know that one of the members of ABBA is a pillar of the secularist-humanist community in Sweden? I did. Sven Grundberg tells about it for a Wall Street Journal blog.

STOCKHOLM – Björn Ulvaeus, one of the two Bs in ABBA, sat down with Speakeasy on a sunny summer day in central Stockholm at a hipster coffee shop. The joint is located just around the corner from the capital’s buzzing club scene that has hatched several global music wonders in recent years, including Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.

Sweden has long played an outsized role in the global music industry, providing a host of songwriters, producers, technological innovations and successful performers.

A solid musical education

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Jesus and Mo discuss the burqa as a symbol of freedom.

That’s the end of that discussion.… Read the rest

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A good thing. Manitoba has passed a piece of anti-bullying legislation.

Bill 18, the Manitoba government’s controversial anti-bullying legislation, has been passed.

The public schools amendment act (safe and inclusive schools) passed third reading 36-16 late Friday afternoon.

NDP MLAs stood up and applauded after the vote results were announced, with some hugging Education Minister Nancy Allan.

A clause in the legislation has concerned some religious educators and community members because it would require schools to accommodate students who want to start specific anti-bullying clubs, including gay-straight alliances (GSAs).

And we can’t have that, because teh gay is evil, in fact it’s so evil that bullying is a good thing when it’s gay kids who are being bullied.

Some

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Thanks to grumpyoldfart’s comment on Likely to enhance his progressive reputation I checked out Frankie the pope’s encyclical Lumen fidei aka the light of faith. One does wonder why they bother. They can’t color outside the lines, ever, so why not just re-issue the old encyclicals?

But let’s take a look at it anyway, since it’s there.

Faith is light; Jesus brought light; yadda yadda.

But then modernity. People said it’s just a fake light. Faith was associated with darkness.

Faith was thus understood either as a leap in the dark, to be taken in the absence of light, driven by blind emotion, or as a subjective light, capable perhaps of warming the heart and bringing personal consolation, but not

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I was curious about how long I’ve been reading and publishing and trying to help promote Maryam, so I went into the archives to find out. The answer is since August 2004. Nearly a decade.

I published an International TV Interview with Fariborz Pooya and Bahram Soroush August 15 2004.

Have a sample:

Maryam Namazie: You hear this also from the progressive angle as well. People who like what we say – for example, that we are standing up against political Islam – immediately assume that we are ‘moderate Muslims’. In the interview that you Bahram Soroush gave on the incompatibility of Islam and human rights for example, you clearly said that you were an atheist. But it just

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Brian Earp had a very interesting post a year ago on motivated reasoning and “moral coherence” and how people resolve moral conflicts.

I was thinking “moral coherence” sounded very like dissonance theory, and then Brian went ahead and said as much, so that’s good. I know where I am.

He started with Todd Akin’s interesting take on pregnancy and rape, and how he could have believed that.

what could be going on with Todd Akin’s moral reasoning for him to casually downplay the relevance of rape and incest to the abortion debate while maintaining, as he does, that there should be no exceptions to anti-abortionism even in those cases? Psychologist Brittany Liu uses the notion of “moral coherence” to provide

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The pope is getting pats on the back and kisses on the bum for patronizing atheists and telling us we’ll be “forgiven” by his imaginary friend as long as we grovel and mewl and puke first.

Not going to happen, Frank. Not interested. It’s your fantasy, not mine, and I don’t give a damn what your pretend boss is imagined to think of me.

In comments likely to enhance his progressive reputation, Pope Francis has written a long, open letter to the founder of La Repubblicanewspaper, Eugenio Scalfari, stating that non-believers would be forgiven by God if they followed their consciences.

That’s progressive? Gee, lower your expectations much? What’s progressive about that? It assumes atheism requires to be “forgiven” … Read the rest

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A woman writes to her daughter’s high school programming teacher.

First, a little background. I’ve worked in tech journalism since my daughter was still in diapers, and my daughter had access to computers her entire life. At the ripe old age of 11, my daughter helped review her first tech book, Hackerteen. She’s been a beta tester (and bug finder) for Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackalope release), and also used Linux Mint. Instead of asking for a car for her 16th birthday, my daughter asked for a MacBook Pro. (I know, I know … kids today.)

My daughter traveled with me to DrupalCon in Denver for “spring break”, attended the expo at OSCON 2012, and even attended and watched me

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So the question is, has this guy in China been reading Boccaccio, or did Marco Polo bring this story to Italy?

A MAN who claimed he could use his penis to rid a woman of ghosts that had taken up residence in her vagina, was arrested in China after performing the “sexorcism” for which he charged $3,000.

Huang Jianjun was arrested in the Guangdong Province after he convinced A Xin that he could remove evil spirits from her vagina by having sexual intercourse. A day later, Xin reported the incident to the police, and Jianjun was promptly arrested.

It’s Alibech and Rustico – or Alibech and Rustico were originally A Xin and Huang Jianjun.

He began by eloquently showing

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