Frank Bruni talks about how hard it’s been to make religion as accountable as other human institutions.

James Porter was convicted of sexually abusing 28 children in the 1960s, when he was in the Catholic priesthood. He was believed to have abused about 100 boys and girls in all, most of them in Massachusetts.

Major newspapers and television networks covered the Porter story, noting a growing number of cases of abuse by priests. Porter’s sentencing in December 1993 was preceded by two books that traced the staggering dimensions of such behavior. The first was “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” by Jason Berry. The second was “A Gospel of Shame,” with which I’m even more familiar. I’m one of

Shock-horror, Bette Midler is unimpressed by Caitlyn Jenner.

Bette Midler ‏@BetteMidler Nov 19
People, #CaitlynJenner says she is STILL voting GOP in 2016. Regardless of gender identity, I guess she identifies most as “uninformed.”

Pink News has more.

This week, Jenner revealed she still plans to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate – despite most of the contenders being staunch opponents of trans and LGB rights.

Speaking to the LA Times after the Democratic Presidential debate, she said: “They didn’t convince me.”

The frontrunners for the Republican nomination are currently billionaire Donald Trump and Dr Ben Carson – a former Fox News pundit who thinks gay weddings are a Marxist plot and never wants to pee next to

Don’t miss #ExMuslimBecause on Twitter.

A sample…

Professor Food ‏@hossain_food Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I was tired of trying to fit inside a box that was never made for me.

Aliyah Saleem ‏@Ali_Jones89 Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I don’t believe that there is any evidence for God’s existence. Can’t be a Muslim if you don’t believe in a creator…

Milad Jama ‏@MiladJama Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I can’t believe in a God who roasts humanity bc they don’t believe he whispered to a guy by proxy 1400 years ago

#ExMuslimBecause As a Black African I cannot support a prophet who actively took slaves of any color.

Yazeed ‏@DudeInDistress Nov 19
#ExMuslimBecause I can’t follow a “prophet” who raped a Jewish girl the

Yet again – one keeps checking to make sure it’s not The Onion. It’s not, though, it’s a respectable Ottawa newspaper. [Updating to add: actually a right-wing rag, which sounds like that Sun across the pond.]

Student leaders have pulled the mat out from 60 University of Ottawa students, ending a free on-campus yoga class over fears the teachings could be seen as a form of “cultural appropriation.”

Sorry, white people, you no longer get to stretch. White people have always been stiff and it’s colonialist to try to change that.

Staff at the Centre for Students with Disabilities believe that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students … there are cultural issues

And more news from Kashif Chaudhry:

So after burning down a factory owned by an Ahmadi last night, an extremist Sunni mob ransacked an Ahmadi Mosque in Kala Gojran (Jehlum), cleansed it by burning its property in the streets and then offered Asar prayer inside. Now it’s a Sunni Mosque.

Kashif tells me the employees of the factory did escape, through a back door at the last minute, so that’s a relief. But Pakistan is clearly hell on earth for them, just as it is for atheists and apostates and every other kind of religious non-conformist.

 … Read the rest

Kashif Chaudhry is a doctor and blogger in Massachusetts, originally from Pakistan. He’s also an Ahmadi, and he posts a good deal about their persecution in Pakistan.

I just learned via a public Facebook post of his that Muslims applying for a passport or national ID card in Pakistan have to sign this:

I was staggered and incredulous, so I did a Google search for “I consider Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Quadiani to be an imposter nabi” – and got passport applications. It’s right there. At the bottom of the second (and last) page, it says exactly what’s in that image.

(i) I am Muslim and believe in the absolute and unqualified finality of the prophethood of Muhammad (peace

The New York Times on the slaughter in Bamako:

The gunmen barreled past the hotel’s light security early in the morning, confusing guards with fake diplomatic license plates, and then burst into its glass-door lobby with their guns blazing.

“They started firing everywhere,” said a receptionist at the hotel who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “They were shouting, ‘Allahu akbar.’ They cut someone’s throat, a white man.”

“I hid in my office,” he said. “I saw four of them, armed to the teeth.”

At least 19 hostages killed as well as two or three of the allahu-akbarists.

The gunmen took “about 100 hostages” at the beginning of the attack, said Gen. Didier Dacko of

A new horror in Pakistan:

An angry mob set ablaze a factory owned by members of the Ahmadiyya community in Jhelum on Friday.

According to sources, the mob attacked the factory after accusing one person who worked there of committing blasphemy.

There were people trapped inside.

Many workers fled the factory complex, which contains a residential area, with their families, sources said. But some workers were reportedly still inside the factory when it was set on fire.

The mob, meanwhile, continued to block GT Road in protest. Police were unable to disperse the protesters despite using tear gas and Rangers had to be called in for support.

Because of a claim that someone committed “blasphemy” – for that … Read the rest

Hmm.

It starts with a written announcement or explanation or declaration.

Menstruation is something natural that is constantly associated with being a “woman”, therefore it is completely normal for all women to want to experience this sensation and I hope you can all appreciate that.

One – why the scare quotes on “woman”? Why any scare quotes? Why the claim that menstruation is “constantly associated with being a ‘woman'” as opposed to something that happens to girls and women or something that girls and women do? Menstruation isn’t something that’s foolishly attributed to women, it’s a tiresome and unpleasant aspect of being a woman.

And two – are you serious? It’s completely normal for all women to want to … Read the rest

A Saudi court has sentenced a Palestinian poet to death for apostasy.

The religious police first detained Fayadh in August 2013 after receiving a complaint that he was cursing against Allah and the prophet Muhammad, insulting Saudi Arabia and distributing a book of his poems that promoted atheism. Fayadh said the complaint arose from a personal dispute with another artist during a discussion about contemporary art in a cafe in Abha.

He was released on bail after one day but the police arrested him again on 1 January 2014, confiscating his ID and detaining him at a police station until he was transferred to the local prison 27 days later. According to Fayadh’s friends, when the police failed to

The New York Times has more on the racist incident at Harvard Law School yesterday.

In a statement, the school’s dean, Martha Minow, said that the portraits, which appeared on walls inside the building, had been “defaced” and that the Harvard University Police Department was investigating the incident as a hate crime.

…

An investigation is “active and ongoing,” the Harvard police said of the episode that had raised the specter of a hate crime at an institution that educated Barack Obama, as well as six current Supreme Court justices. That includes Justice Elena Kagan, who was dean of the law school, and who also has her portrait on the wall.

…

Seeking an immediate discussion about the issues, about

Today it’s Bamako’s turn.

Malian special forces have entered the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, to end a siege by gunmen. The hotel says 138 people remain inside.

The gunmen stormed the US-owned hotel, which is popular with foreign businesses and airline crews, shooting and shouting “God is great!” in Arabic.

Malian officials said 30 hostages have been freed. State TV earlier put the figure at 80.

Three people have been shot dead and two soldiers wounded, officials say.

…

Air France says 12 of its crew have been successfully freed in the rescue operation; Turkish Airlines says five of its crew are out, but two remain in the hotel.

Twenty Indian nationals are in part of

Germaine Greer gave that lecture at Cardiff. Nobody melted or imploded or spontaneously combusted or turned into a pillar of salt.

Uniformed police officers stood guard outside the lecture theatre and security officials guarded the doors inside, but in the end only about a dozen people turned up to protest peacefully. Greer told the audience that campaigners had been “trying to frighten me off”, but added: “Here I am.”

She did not mention the issue during her lecture, entitled Women & Power: the Lessons of the 20th Century, but during questions was asked about the controversy. Greer said: “They [trans people] are not my issue. It should be perfectly clear why not. I think 51% of the world’s population

Harvard Crimson reports a very bad thing:

Law School students and faculty members who walked into Wasserstein Hall on Thursday morning found that pieces of black tape had been placed over the faces of portraits of black professors that hang on walls inside the building. The tape has since been removed.

The incident prompted outrage from Law School affiliates, including second-year Law School student Michele D. Hall, who posted photographs of the vandalized portraits in a post on the website Blavity. “This morning at Harvard Law School we woke up to a hate crime,” she wrote.

Law Professor Ronald S Sullivan tweeted about it:

Ronald S. Sullivan ‏@ProfRonSullivan 7h
This is my portrait at the Harvard Law School.

The National Archives have photos from Manzanar.

Click to embiggen.

To see more go to the archive and search for Manzanar then select “images.”… Read the rest

Another church horror, this one in a suburb of Melbourne.

From the 1970s to the late 1990s, a string of priests abused children in the Australian outer eastern Melbourne suburb of Doveton.

Father Thomas O’Keeffe was a violent offender who tortured some of his altar boys in his time in charge of the Holy Family Parish in the 1970s, Ms Last said.

The article doesn’t use the word “Catholic” until more than halfway through, and then only twice. These are Catholic priests, protected by the Vatican.

Father Peter Searson liked to walk around the Holy Family Primary School playground carrying a revolver and dressed in army fatigues.

…

Broken Rites also believes the independent commissioner for the archdiocese’s

The Manzanar Committee puts out a statement written by Gann Matsuda.

(Manzanar is the name of one of the horrible “camps” in which Japanese-Americans were interned – aka imprisoned – after Pearl Harbor.)

On November 18, the Manzanar Committee repudiated statements by David Bowers, Mayor, Roanoke, Virginia, in which he used the unjust incarceration of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry as justification for his demand that Syrian refugees be denied asylum in the Roanoke area.

In an official statement, Bowers said, “I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real