Author: Ophelia Benson

Ok it’s surely not permissible to blog about a Twitter storm – it’s too meta, or too navel-gazing, or too small – but once in awhile you just have to. (All the examples that are coming to mind have to do with misogyny, come to think of it. Jessica Ahlquist. Penn Jillette. #mencallmethings. And now Tom Harris MP.)

Once in awhile you just have to, so I am. People are telling him that tweet was sexist, and he’s digging in. He’s a clueless, nasty jerk. He should just take it back, but instead he’s saying it was a joke about the protester.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck – dude, if you “insult” a man by saying “like a girl” and then #loser – it’s women that you’re insulting.

sunny hundal‏@sunny_hundal Pathetic sexism RT @tomharrismp: What a hero! Fearless protester chucks an egg at EdM and runs away. Like a girl. Throws like a girl too.

Iain Martin‏@iainmartin1 @sunny_hundal I think that @tomharrismp may have been making something called a ‘joke’, Sunny.

Claire Phipps‏@Claire_Phipps @iainmartin1@sunny_hundal because really @tomharrismp thinks girls are just great at throwing and not running away from things? #hmm

Iain Martin‏@iainmartin1 @Claire_Phipps@sunny_hundal Grimly inevitable, @TomHarrisMP will end up in stocks with MPs led by @stellacreasy pelting him with eggs.

nicky clark‏@mrsnickyclark @stellacreasy@leicesterliz@TomHarrisMP Why are Labour women making light of this? That I’m sure will be a comfort to your constituents?

RachelRoncone‏@Rachela53@mrsnickyclark@stellacreasy@leicesterliz@tomharrismp Because it was a JOKE! Or we not allowed to laugh at women nowadays?

Tom Harris‏@TomHarrisMP @Rachela53@mrsnickyclark@stellacreasy@leicesterliz I was laughing at the egg-wielding eejit, actually.

Oh good god…

There’s another horrible thing about “Pastor Sean” and his terrible raging sermon. It’s obvious enough but I want to spell it out.

It’s that he’s telling parents to hate what their children are. He’s not telling them to discipline a certain kind of bad behavior, he’s telling them to bully their children if the children are becoming a certain kind of person.

There are some kinds of broad category one would want to try to discourage children from being – mean, or domineering, or self-centered. But other than that, it’s a nasty business rejecting what a child is. Surely a good parent doesn’t do that. Surely a good parent welcomes whatever kind of person emerges as a child grows up.

Oh well, I suppose it’s otiose to belabor the point. Obviously the man has a painfully narrow impoverished idea of human possibilities and a panicky need to impose conformity everywhere. Obviously he wants girls to look like Barbie dolls and boys to look like extras in a Discover channel show about guns or motorcycles or gold mining or lumberjacking or crab fishing or dirty jobs. But still. It’s depressing that he really does want to squash all the ones who don’t fit.

Lots of erm discussion of the new executive director of the Secular Coalition for America (replacing Sean Faircloth who left to go to work for the RDF). She’s a Republican, and not just a Republican, but an insider, an operative.

From 2001-2002, Rogers served as an Economic Advisor for President George W. Bush at the White House, at the National Economic Council, where she focused on health and social security policy. She also worked on International Trade matters for President George H. W. Bush at the Department of Commerce from 1989 until 1991.

Rogers served as General Counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1994. She worked for Senator Lott while he was Majority Leader in 1999 and she handled health policy for Senator Sessions in 2003 and 2004.

Um.

Hemant did an interview with her.

Why should we trust you now to work for us after a career spent working for people who seem to be actively against us?

I think it’s a misconception that the majority of Republicans are lined up against the secular movement. As someone who has been an insider within the Republican Party, I’m certain it’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an [overt] influence of religion on our laws. Having said that, no one agrees with everyone they work with on every single issue. In these roles I never worked on anything having to do with issues of religion — I worked primarily on economic issues.

It’s not the consensus of the majority of Republicans to have an overt influence of religion on our laws? Well I can’t believe that, said Alice.

I do think that for the vast majority of conservatives and Republicans, they are true believers of secularism — the majority of Republicans believe in the separation of church and state.

Yeah I don’t believe that, either. If that were true they would have done something about it by now.

One of the issues the atheist community has struggled with, especially lately, has been getting more women involved in our movement.  Do you think your role with the SCA can help change that?

Of course, I think me being female will help recruit women and I am going to make it a priority to get more women involved. I will be speaking at the Women in Secularism conference on the 19^th of this month.

Oh – I didn’t know that. Interesting.

The pastor who gave the sermon telling people (that is, fathers) to punch their sons if they see them “dropping the limp wrist” and to shout at their daughters if they are “too butch” – Sean Harris – is complaining on Twitter that his apology is being spurned. So I looked for and found his “apology.” He has a blog – we are colleagues! – and he blogged his apology. Or clarification. It’s probably not really an apology since the words “sorry” and “apologize” and “apology” don’t appear. The closest thing is “apologetics” in the left margin, and that ain’t close enough. Maybe that’s why his “apology” is being spurned: it’s not one.*

By now you may know that my words, from Sunday morning’s sermon, about effeminate behavior in children are being completely taken out of context by those in the LGBT community. (Nearly every article is misquoting me.)

Clearly, I would like to have been more careful with exactly what I said, but sometimes I say things without enough clarity. I trust you understood my intent in the context of my total preaching ministry. If you did not, I would be more than happy to meet with you privately to provide clarity.

Clarity about

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.

Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you’re going to be a male.

His voice was savage in that part (and other parts). It’s clear. To change the meaning, he would have to withdraw it, not clarify it.

For the record, I want to ensure everyone that I do NOT believe physical force is capable of fixing effeminate behavior or homosexual behavior. Parents should not punch babies or children. (Ultimately only the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to deliver one from sexual immorality and behavior including effeminacy; )

I would never advocate for such discipline or actions on behalf of a father or mother. I misspoke. Hopefully, you understood that I was speaking in a forceful manner to emphasize the degree to which gender distinctions matter to God; and therefore, must matter to each of us and especially parents.

He spoke in a savagely angry manner, his voice dripping with disgust and rage, to emphasize his own unreasonable prejudices, which he conceitedly assumes are identical with those of “God.”

Those in the opposition are suggesting all sorts of hateful things and using ungodly and profane words. Those who speak of the love of God are using the most hateful terms I have ever read. We must never resort to such language.

I want to stress just how much I love your children and my desire is only to see them glorify God in the lives they live in obedience to God’s will for each of them as revealed in the Word of God.

Oh no you don’t. You don’t get to pretend to “love” anyone’s children when you spit hatred at any of them who don’t fit your ignorant bigoted profile of what is Normal and Allowable.

As I emphasized in this sermon, as well as the week before, we must not be hateful toward those whose behavior is an abomination to God. But we also cannot compromise on what we believe the Bible teaches on all sexual perversions and immorality.

The opposition is revealing their complete lack of toleration toward those do not approve of the LGBT lifestyle or agenda. However, we must be tolerantly intolerant. Jesus our Savior provides the perfect example of grace and truth.

The usual passive aggressive bullshit. We are loving and kind, they are mean and intolerant, so when we talk mean intolerant smack, it isn’t that, because we are good and they are not, and we wish they were all burning in hell right this second.

*Update and correction: He did do a retraction, and there is some apologizing in it. It’s pretty worthless, because he still calls people he dislikes sinners and still insists that “God” hates all that stuff, including “effeminacy” (how tf does he know?), but it’s there.

Alex Aan could get up to 11 years in prison for “blasphemy.”

His case has stoked a debate in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, whose 240 million citizens are technically guaranteed freedom of religion but protected by law only if they believe in one of six credos: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism. Those who question any of those face five years in prison for “insulting a major religion”, plus an additional six years if they use the internet to spread such “blasphemy” to others.

I don’t see how that’s freedom of religion at all, technically or otherwise. I think the word should be “ostensibly.” If you can get 5 years in the slammer for questioning a religion and 11 for doing it on the intertubes, that’s not freedom.

Activists say Aan’s is the first case in which an atheist is being tried in relation to the first pillar of Indonesia’s state philosophy – pancasila, which requires belief in one god.

Mandatory monotheism for short.

What a bizarre (and stupid) “philosophy.” What an intrusive requirement.

“What Alex has ‘done’ is exercise freedom of expression,” says Taufik Fajrin, one of the five lawyers defending him pro bono. “We’ll try our best to get him freed but just hope he’ll get a minimum sentence. Promoting human rights here is hard because you face fanatics and hardline culturalists. Even we, as his lawyers, are worried that hardliners will come to our office or homes and throw stones at us. It’s a challenge.”

Indonesia is the place that people always point to as the example of “moderate” Islam. It’s clearly not moderate anything.

Activists argue that the country is increasingly influenced politically and financially by conservative Wahhabi clerics from the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, who help to incite intolerance in Indonesia. But the country’s discriminatory laws – ranging from vaguely worded decrees against proselytising to requirements to state one’s religion on one’s national identity card – as well as the increasing number of Muslim hardliners who have taken the law into their own hands, are also to blame, Harsono says.

“Victims keep getting longer prison terms and perpetrators less, while the human rights we set in place 10 years ago are  becoming unravelled,” he says. “We’re seeing a motion to ban mini-skirts in government buildings whereas [before] it was OK. Beauty queen contests were OK’d in the 1970s but have  been banned in some provinces, while Valentine’s Day celebrations were given the green light 30 years ago but this year were banned in Aceh.

“The situation is getting crazy,” Harsono continues. “We used to discuss these issues. Now there is no discussion. The discourse today is ‘This is un-Islamic and immoral’.”

So the third fourth most populous country on the planet totters toward being a hell-hole of fanaticism like Saudi Arabia.

Aan, who has the support of the US-based Atheist Alliance International and Council of ex-Muslims of Britain, says he knew from an early age that he was an atheist, but recognised that he would have to hide it from others. “From 11, I thought ‘If God exists, why is there suffering? Why is there war, poverty, hell?’ Because, to me, God would not create this hell. My family would ask me my thoughts but I knew my answers would cause problems, so I kept quiet.”

He looks out the window to where a group of inmates are celebrating their Sunday by performing karoake to drum’n’bass in the dusty prison yard, most of them smoking, all of them barefoot. “I only want to see a better world and help create a better world,” he says. “If I cannot … then I would prefer to die.”

We need an atheist superhero who can swoop in and rescue people like Alex Aan and Hamza Kashgari.

The Economist raps Dan Savage over the knuckles.

Mr Savage was making one valid point and one sloppy one. The former: people who justify anti-gay bigotry by brandishing a Bible but ignore other, less convenient biblical prohibitions (the list might also include mixed fabrics and divorce) are hypocrites. The latter: people quick to condemn ought not to be so quick to take offence. The problem with the latter point is that however true it is in the abstract, it was not necessarily true in the particular. No evidence exists that the students who walked out ever condemned or bullied anyone. However poorly Mr Savage may have been treated in high school, it was not by the students in the audience, and they deserved more from a famous and accomplished journalist than derision.

But the point wasn’t that the students themselves are quick to condemn, it was that many Christians are and they justify it with the Bible. The walkout started as soon as he said that, before he even said “bullshit,” so the students were making a show of disapproval for Savage’s claim. That’s the point. Not that they themselves bully, but that they’re demonstrating support for those who do. They’re walking out in solidarity with the principle of bible-based bullying.

And they didn’t really deserve more than the very mild derision of Savage’s remark. They did stage a showy and often giggly walkout by way of dissent from what he was saying, and they did deserve a little derision in return.

The Economist almost concedes as much right after the knuckle-rap.

 (He could, of course, have opted to make a broader point: that nobody should be so quick to take offence; that journalists will hear a lot of things over the course of a career that they find offensive and even hurtful, and walking out anytime that happens will result in a short career and a narrow mind; that, however ugly his language Mr Savage was at least advancing arguments, and that surely at least one of those offended souls hoping to make a life out of words could have found a few to hurl back at him rather than just flouncing out in a huff.)

“Bullshit” really isn’t all that ugly, and ”pansy ass” isn’t really all that insulting in response to people flouncing out in a huff.

A pastor gives some advice to parents on how to police their children’s genders. With boys you’re supposed to give them a good punch. With girls you’re supposed to call them sweetheart and then shout as loud as you can. That’s gender-modeling right there: punching for boys, sweetheart + shouting for girls.

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that’s what boys do”

pause

you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female [heavy disgusted emphasis] and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.

Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you’re going to be a male.

And when your daughter starts acting too butch you rein her in. And you say, “Oh, no, oh no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play’em, play’em to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and [with ever-increasing emphasis] walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?” Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.

The violence is disgusting and the policing is disgusting – but I have to admit I take the girl-policing personally. The policing of boys is horrible but at least they’re policed to be strong and tough and useful. Girls are policed to be “beautiful” and “attractive” and to dress themselves up. They’re policed to be feeble and dainty (walk like a girl, talk like a girl) so that men can bully other men by calling them girls, meaning feeble and dainty.

I didn’t know May Day had been rejigged to be Loyalty Day. It happened in the Ford administration, I’m told. Maybe something to do with being the totally unelected president.

Anyway, it has, so belated happy Loyalty Day. Did you have a Loyalty cake? Or a Loyalty turkey? Or Loyalty fireworks? What does one do for Loyalty Day, anyway? We know what we do for May Day: we hit the streets; but Loyalty Day, not so much.

Obama wishes us a happy Loyalty Day.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2012, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

Oh, I see, that’s what you do for Loyalty Day. You display the flag or you pledge allegiance. You could probably do both, although he makes it one or the other.

Yeah. Prayer Day and Loyalty Day. No thanks.

A little more on Rothamsted Research and its wheat trial.

It’s a research facility founded in the 19th century. It’s a charity and a company. Its funding is laid out on its corporate information page.

Rothamsted Research is a grouping of private organisations and is one of seven institutes sponsored by the  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Rothamsted Research is a charity and a company  limited by guarantee and occupies land and buildings owned by the Lawes Agricultural Trust. The Rothamsted Research Association is an independent body that facilitates interaction and dialogue between researchers, especially those at Rothamsted, and practitioners in the agri-environment sector.

Sources of income as percentages for 2010/11 (total £29m) are shown in the figure below:

I hope that helps.