Author: Ophelia Benson

I first learned about Valley Park Middle School via Tarek Fatah at Facebook. Tarek Fatah is a great fella. He posted pictures of himself at the Gay Pride march the other day – in his wheelchair, beaming, in front of a decorative crowd of marchers.

So what is a Toronto public school doing providing a prayer service in the cafeteria? Where

girls are placed in the back, behind the boys, separated by benches used as shields.

And menstruating girls are segregated, off in their own little group, like this paragraph.

Sitting all the way at the back, yards from the other girls and more yards from the all-conquering boys. Separated out because they’re so dirty and filthy. Ewwwwww endometrium. Ewwwwwwwwww it might come off on me. Ewwwwwwwwww pollution.

Robyn Urback asks a salient question.

How is it that the TDSB can call for instruction on sexism and gender inequality in its Social Studies classes, yet look the other way when girls are facing active discrimination within its walls?

Allow me to answer that question: it can’t.

Did you read the warm pool of sick at the “Tony Blair Faith Foundation”?

It’s such a boneless mess it’s hard to figure out what it’s supposed to do. There’s not a trace of an attempt at an argument in it, no reasons, just a lot of limp saying. It doesn’t even keep track of its own stance.

At a recent forum exploring educational options for the future of Northern Ireland, several influential public figures – including Baroness May Blood – made it clear that the best way forward is for schools to be religion-free zones.

But that, of course, is the thing it’s going to disagree with – duh – so how funny to say “made it clear that.”

Yet around the world there are many others who see that now, more than ever, is a time to engage our young people with issues of faith, belief and values in an educational environment.

She made it clear that P but others see that not-P. This dude is confused.

And why now more than ever? Why not now less than ever? And note the solid wall of ready-made phrases – “engage our young people” “issues of faith, belief and values” “an educational environment.” Dear god can you imagine having to write like that?

This worldwide inter-faith organisation runs a schools programme called Face to Faith. The programme facilitates inter-faith dialogue through video-conferencing and online collaboration with the aim of providing young people with the knowledge and skills needed for meaningful inter- and intra-faith dialogue across a range of cultures.

Why? Why not just give them the knowledge and skills and leave the faith part out? Why not refrain from teaching them to make “faith” central to everything; why not let them just do dialogue and talk about whatever comes up as opposed to making it about “faith”?

I don’t know. James Nelson never says. He just talks a lot more of the same kind of interchangeable styrofoam hackspeak until he gets to the end of the page. The only concrete thing accomplished was that people learned to use the video-conferencing machine, or at least they were shown how to use it, which they will have forgotten by the time anyone actually gets down to doing anything. But don’t fret: it ended on a cheerful note.

The teachers left, keen to explore ways in which they might engage their pupils in constructive dialogue about faith and beliefs.

I left with the strong impression that a culture of sharing is emerging as an integral aspect of our education system. In both cases I look forward to seeing what the future brings.

That’s the stuff! A few more of those and we’ll really be getting somewhere. I’m almost sure of it.

Rights? Pshaw. The clerics will tell you what rights you can have, thank you. And the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission will help them out. Yes, you read that correctly.

After supporting several gay equality cases, the EHRC now believes the rights of religious people are not being upheld…

To rectify this supposed shortfall in religious protection, the EHRC will now push for a new legal principle of “reasonable accommodations” so that believers can negotiate the boundaries of their contract with employers.

Which means…? That believers can refuse to do their jobs if their religious beliefs tell them to.

There is the case of Lillian Ladele, the Christian registrar who refused to perform civil partnerships and so was disciplined. And that of Gary McFarlane, the Christian relationship counsellor who was sacked for refusing to counsel gay couples. The EHRC has decided to back these people in the name of “reasonable” compromise.

“Compromise” as in allowing people to refuse to do their jobs if doing them involves providing a service to people they think are oooooooky on religious grounds. That’s not compromise. Would the EHRC back Hindu people who refused to provide a service to dalits? Would they back doctors and dentists who refused to provide a service to menstruating women?

Maybe they would.

When one group refuses to fulfil its job description because it disapproves of another group, there is no middle ground, no give and take. Those responsible for judging the behaviour have to back one or the other. This is the roulette of human rights. You can’t put your chips on the black and the red.The EHRC is not even trying to do so – it has switched colours, and what an extraordinary switch that is. To refuse to work with gay people is ipso facto discrimination, however you attempt to justify it. Yet now the commission will champion the discriminators.

He’s not making it up, either – you can read it for yourself.

This isn’t going well. It’s going badly. It could and should have been a minor thing that lasted about ten minutes and then ended. Instead it’s still going, and the way it’s going is badly.

Alerted by a comment by someone at Abbie’s post, I listened to about 20 minutes of something called Citizen Radio yesterday because it had a talk with Rebecca Watson about All That. I gave up before they got to the talk because I was bored beyond endurance by the hosts’ dialogue, but at the very beginning one of them (Kilkenny or Kilstein, I don’t know which) gave a quick summary of All That, which included casually calling Richard Dawkins “a rich white man” or possibly “a rich old white man.” a dumb rich guy.

Ok, I’m off this train, I thought.

And I am. I’ve soaked up more background since I got on the train, so I was already wondering where I would be if I got off at the next stop, and then that stupid vulgar throwaway line sealed the deal. A rich white man, for christ’s sake. Watson is white too; so what? Is she sort of honorary not-white because…well just because? And as for rich – he got rich by writing brilliant science education books that sold millions and then writing an atheist best seller! Would we rather he hadn’t?

And, unfortunately, that line came from Rebecca’s post about the whole thing.

And then…Chris Mooney said he is interviewing her for the next Point of Inquiry.

She’s a fast rising star in the skeptic movement, and one who–as many already know–has recently been at the center of a huge controversy involving how some in the skeptic/atheist movement treat the concerns of women.You can read about it here, and Phil Plait has the full back story: Suffice it to say that it involves not only what one skeptic man (now infamously) said to Watson in an elevator at 4 in the morning, but how Richard Dawkins then dove in and minimized the incident.

We’ll be discussing this and the lessons to be taken from it–as well as Watson’s important work to spread skepticism and, especially, to make the skeptic movement a more welcoming place for women.

Yes no doubt we will, and thus we find ourselves right back where we were two years ago when Unscientific America came out and several people said it spent far too much time (that is, any) on blog quarrels. This is that all over again, and it’s even the same damn blog.

It looks to me as if a lot of people are forgetting exactly what Dawkins did – he made a handful of short comments on a blog. Is this seriously so newsworthy that it merits whole podcasts and interviews? What next, Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, The Daily Show? We’re talking about three comments on a fucking blog.

It’s trivial. Ok? Trivial. I say that in cold blood, as one who writes a blog herself. Nothing I write at my place is worth Serious Media Attention, and neither is anything anyone else says there. The same goes for PZ’s blog, except for the fact that he has so many readers that his does kind of count in some way. But not this way (and I think he’d agree with me).

I still think what Dawkins said was too brusque and also mostly wrong – but I also think it was insignificant in the great scheme of things.

And it’s not going well.