Author: Ophelia Benson

No doubt it will just be filed and forgotten, but it’s good to see, all the same…

Two German lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity…

They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”.

They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”.

Well yes, he does, but…there’s a Special Dispensation for popes. No one else, just popes. So sorry.

They claim the Catholic Church “acquires its members through a compulsory act, namely, through the baptism of infants that do not yet have a will of their own”. This act was “irrevocable” and is buttressed by threats of excommunication and the fires of hell.

It was “a grave impairment of the personal freedom of development and of a person’s emotional and mental integrity”. The Pope was “responsible for its preservation and enforcement and, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his Church, he was jointly responsible” with Pope John Paul II.

That’s the ur-crime, of course. They’ll never make it stick, but it is the biggy. That expropriation of people’s minds at birth and continuation of it via threats is a truly horrible arrangement, which the world allows only because it’s so accustomed to it. Maybe this indictment will make people a little less accustomed to it. Maybe this Verfremdungseffekt will jostle the world out of its complacency. That would be something.

The PBS documentary show Frontline did a special on the Egyptian revolution last night, the first part on the events overall, the second part on the Muslim Brotherhood.

The second part was reported by Charles Sennott. He was on Fresh Air last week, talking about the same subject. I thought the Frontline piece was abysmal. Interesting, to be sure, and informative in its way, but abysmal. He never so much as mentioned women. Not a word. He didn’t mention the implications of a political movement that is a “brotherhood”; he didn’t mention women’s rights; he didn’t mention women in Egypt; he didn’t mention hijab; he didn’t even mention women, period.

Hello? Hello hello hello hello? Is anybody listening? I’m not talking about some tiny group of people after all, I’m talking about half of humanity. Sennott went on for half an hour about the MB, much of it in a fairly approving vein, without ever even mentioning how Islamists view women’s rights.

It was much the same on Fresh Air: lots of cuddly talk about how hip the MB yoof are and how cool it all is and how different the yoof are from the “sclerotic” oldies. But there at least Terry Gross did manage to ask him about women’s rights, so he was forced to admit that yes, the MB does believe in segregation of the sexes and yes it does ultimately want sharia. Gross didn’t press him on that, unfortunately, but she did at least mention it. Frontline, on the other hand – not a god damn word.

That’s pathetic.

Russell says why metametametameta discussions about Why Gnu Atheists Are So Horrible are likely to be irritating to gnu atheists.

If people who don’t believe they have been especially uncivil are chided not to be “a dick”, or if lies are told about people like them behaving in public in outrageously uncivil ways, and if stories are told that suggest they are uncivil in the manner of the children in Jean’s story, it produces certain emotions. To be blunt, it creates anger and ill-will.

Well yes it does rather. It does that all the more when all these things, and other things too, happen over and over and over again, saying the same thing, pointing at the same people, tutting the same tut. The people who don’t believe they have been especially uncivil start to wonder why the people who keep scolding them for incivility are so obsessed with them. They start to wonder why the scolders are so obsessed, and they start to wonder why they are so obsessed with them.

I wondered that about the post that Russell is answering, for example. I wondered, not for the first time, why Jean Kazez pays such close attention to me.

I wrote the post on January 25, 2011, and I was actually thinking about what I’d been reading at atheist blogs in the weeks and months before that.  There had been lots of talk about “adults” who are critical of “gnus”.

The “adults” are…whom [sic]?  At Butterflies and Wheels, Phil Plait came under withering criticism on Dec. 6, partly because he wasn’t sufficiently critical of Chris Mooney and (see the comments) also  because of his “Don’t be a Dick” speech.  I take it Plait is against contempt, but not against candor.  There was also upsetness (October 17) about Julian Baggini’s speech at Westminister Abbey, in which he encouraged atheists not to be anti-theists.  As the author of an excellent book about atheism he’s hardly a should not be said kind of a guy.   There was also upsetness about Andrew Lovley (Jan. 6), who wrote a post encouraging atheists to be conciliatory instead of antagonistic.  He’s for lots of interfaith talk, not atheists shutting up.

Three posts, all of them mine. Nobody else mentioned. That’s a lot of attention. It makes me feel Special, and I do love to feel Special, but when I look closely I have to acknowledge that the attention is not altogether admiring. It’s more like getting a lot of attention from an undercover cop.

Russell explains why this kind of thing tends to be…provocative.

…there’s a danger in going meta. Once you move away from debating the truth or falsity of ideas to discussing other people’s behaviour, what should or should not be said, and so on, you almost inevitably add to whatever degree of incivility was around in the first place. That’s not to say that going meta is never appropriate. But people who decide to go meta should be aware of the likely outcome – an escalation of ill-feeling, and even feelings of injustice and moralistic anger – and take this into account. If you do decide to go meta, you’d be advised to show a lot of explicit humility and trepidation. If you then use the annoyed responses of others as evidence of their inherent uncivil tendencies, you’d better be aware that this will be seen by them as further unfairness or injustice … and will provoke even more annoyance.

I could be wrong, but I think provoking even more annoyance is usually the point.