The AP reports on the SCOTUS discussion of Greece v Galloway yesterday.

The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with the appropriate role for religion in government in a case involving mainly Christian prayers at the start of a New York town’s council meetings.

The justices began their day with the marshal’s customary plea that “God save the United States and this honorable court.” They then plunged into a lively give-and-take that highlighted the sensitive nature of offering religious invocations in public proceedings that don’t appeal to everyone and governments’ efforts to police the practice.

Sigh. Why is there such a thing as the marshal’s customary plea that “God save the United States and this honorable court”? Why can’t the government … Read the rest

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Pamela Gay published a wrenching, heartbreaking, infuriating post early today about her struggles as a woman in science and skepticism.

With ever increasing difficulty I’ve been dealing with issues of gender related to my career. Right now, I am struggling with hearing that an event I categorized as “A drunk ass  tried to grab my boobs,” is now being discussed by witnesses as, “He tried to sexually assault her in a bar while intoxicated.” I had created a euphemism for myself, and having that euphemism striped away is making me realize that I have been hiding from myself the true degree to which I have been harmed.

I have previously tried to confront and to give voice to the harm

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The Guardian on the FGM report itself.

Thousands of girls in danger of genital mutilation are being failed by the health and justice systems, a coalition of health professionals has warned in a report that recommends aggressive steps to eradicate the practice in the UK.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) should be treated the same as any other kind of child abuse and evidence of it must be reported to the police, according to the report.

Janet Fyle, a policy adviser of the Royal College of Midwives and one of the report’s authors, said that just as it was inconceivable that a health worker would not report evidence of child abuse to the police, it should be equally important to report

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From the Washington Post’s reliably irritating “On Faith” blog, Jeffrey Stanley writes about being the faculty adviser for a student-led paranormal investigation club while being a skeptic, but not happy about being a skeptic.

Friends and fans assume I am a true believer but the truth is that I am not. I am a healthy skeptic. And that’s depressing for me because it means that on some level I feel certain there’s nothing out there. I try contacting the spirit world before live audiences to keep an element of hope simmering on the back burner of my mind.

Nothing? Why does he call it nothing? There’s a lot. The fact that he doesn’t think he can find magical stuff doesn’t … Read the rest

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Feeling festive.

… Read the rest

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They have the same confusion in Greece, New York, the Greece of Greece v Galloway, as Sarah Posner reports in Aljazeera America.

In Greece, supporters of the town’s position insist the religious freedom of Christians is at stake.

Pastor Vince DiPaola of Greece’s Lakeshore Church, who has delivered invocations at the council meetings, said the “majority of people certainly believe in God in our community. The majority of people would believe in Jesus Christ. And so it represents our community, and it would be pathetic if our community could not even express itself in that way.”

No it wouldn’t. They can express it in their churches…and at home, and out in the street, and any number of places. They … Read the rest

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There’s a rather tendentious piece by Murtaza Hussain in Aljazeera, comparing the treatment of Malala Yousafzai to that given to Nabila Rehman, an eight-year-old girl whose family was the victim of a drone strike.

This past week Nabila, her schoolteacher father, and her 12-year-old brother travelled to Washington DC to tell their story and to seek answers about the events of that day. However, despite overcoming incredible obstacles in order to travel from their remote village to the United States, Nabila and her family were roundly ignored. At the Congressional hearing where they gave testimony, only five out of 430 representatives showed up. In the words of Nabila’s father to those few who did attend: ”My daughter does

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Revised and edited by Anonymous, so not identical to the comment on It was so disruptive.

How timely.

My 5-year-old daughter has referred to herself as a boy from the time she could talk. A mere taste of this: her imaginative play started at age 2 and has gone on for the next 3 years. Over all this time, never once, not with prompting or cajoling, has she so much as considered stepping into a female character. She’s adopts an average of 3-5 characters per day, which means she is about 4,000 for 4,000 in adopting boy instead of girl characters. Always a Chipmunk, never a Chippette.

After my wife and I realized the behavior was consistent and not … Read the rest

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Richard Dawkins has a piece in the Guardian wondering why people don’t believe in public-spirited concern like the kind he showed when he tweeted about his little jar of honey. Yes really.

He describes trying to explain to a bank how to improve its customer service website, and then a piece he wrote for Prospect in 2009 about a woman who was upset about not being allowed to take her child’s eczema ointment on a plane (which does sound like a real issue). Then he comes to the present day.

Once again my motive was public-spirited, and now there was no question of self-interest because the fated ointment wasn’t mine. The woman’s experience had been a particular peg on which

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You know, nostalgia for the 80s, before people started frowning on homophobia and transphobia and we all lived happily together. (That’s not how I remember it actually. I remember frowning on homophobia in the early 70s. I remember knowing people who agreed with me about that. Lots of people.) (Granted, transphobia not so much. That was more buried.)

carlie has a good comment on the subject at PZ’s place.*

My mind is still stuck on Barbara’s “Oh, how I long for the days when no one would call us on shit when we talked about people” comment, because that sentiment comes up so often in this stuff. And what it comes down to is that they just don’t realize

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So things must have been too calm and boring, so D.J. Grothe decided to throw a little bomb on Facebook and Twitter.

No hyperbole: I just saw the worst-passing transsexual I’ve ever seen in the lounge here. It was so disruptive that I am forced to believe it was an intentional way to protest against rigid gender binaries. Or so I’d like to think.

There were some shocked comments, and then a bunch of “PC gone mad/it’s all the fault of rage bloggers” people rushed in to circle the wagons in such a tight circle that not even an atom could get through.

Update: Part of the wagon-circling: Sara Mayhew posted her view of the matter on that Facebook thread:… Read the rest

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Amanda Knief of American Atheists was on CNN yesterday along with a Dallas Baptist pastor to discuss Greece v Galloway. Amanda said better things than the pastor said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZSwYuZ57g

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