The Times-Picayune reports:

Legislation that will further limit access to abortion in Louisiana and would likely close three of the state’s five abortion clinics overwhelmingly passed the state Senate with a vote of 34-3 Wednesday.

Due to the addition of technical amendments, the bill will head back the state House of Representatives for another vote before going to the governor’s desk. The lower chamber voted overwhelmingly to pass the legislation — which is more or less the same now — the last time they saw it. So the bill is expected to face little to no opposition as it crosses the finish line in the Legislature.

Back to forced pregnancy and unsafe abortions! Back to women having no way out … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Russian Orthodox Church is annoyed that a guy in a dress won the Eurovision song contest. This strikes Russians as hilarious, because The Russian Orthodox Church features guys in dresses.

The drag queen’s performance and its enthusiastic reception was a sign of the world’s moral decline and part the aggressive assertion of Western cultural norms, according to Vladimir Legoyda.

The chairman of the church’s information department told Interfax news agency: ““The process of the legalisation of that to which the Bible refers to as nothing less than an abomination is already long not news in the contemporary world.”

Yup. It’s a hot mess. People going in for abomination everywhere you look, and nobody but priests in dresses to … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Sinister.

Imagine that a little-known but increasingly powerful group of ideologues had hatched a plan to transform the United States into a Christian theocracy harkening back to the Dark Ages of Europe, a time when society was governed by the laws and officials of the Catholic Church.

Suppose further that this plan had a scary simple strategy: Recruit bright, young law students; put them through an intensive indoctrination program; place them in plum internships across the country; and watch as they swim upstream until they reach the top of the legal system, where they can create, enforce, and interpret laws according to a legal philosophy infused with fundamentalist Christian theology.

Got it?

Now learn that it’s already here. Sofia Resnick … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Another one from Anj.

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

MCB Spokesman says he doesn’t believe in segregation between men & women but Allah (SWT) & the Prophet said they must be e.g. in gatherings

MCB Spokesman says that wife’s don’t need to obey their husbands but Allah (SWT) says that they must [Qur'an 4:34] i.e husbands have Qawama!

So I was curious about Qawama, so I looked it up. I found an article at Women Living Under Muslim Laws by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im.

 The most important principle of Shari’a influencing the status and rights of women is the notion of qawama. Qawama has its origin in verse 4:34 of the Koran which states that:

“Men have qawama (guardianship and authority) over women

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A terrific event in London on August 6 – so all you people who are gathering for the World Humanist Congress in Oxford August 8th could go to this:

“How to Make Enemies and Alienate People – the Philosophy of Offensive and Inappropriate Language”

It’s hosted by our friend Bernard Hurley.

The growth of social media has given an unprecedented opportunity for those who wish to gratuitously offend to actually do so but it has also given an opportunity for those who wish to take offence at mere criticism to express such offence. It’s clear that someone who uses offensive language is doing more than just conveying information, but what exactly are they doing? The job of the philosopher is

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More Choudary, because he’s just that good.

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

Some images from the “Rally against Hindu Oppression of Muslims in India” http://www.demotix.com/news/4699759/anjem-choudray-protests-hindu-oppression-muslims#media-4699699 … Khilafah is the answer to India’s problems!

See what he did there? He presents a photo from a Rally against Hindu Oppression of Muslims in India and in the photo we see a poster that shouts ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD! So the idea is that Hindu oppression of Muslims will end because it will be replaced by Muslim oppression of Hindus and everyone else.

What could possibly go wrong?… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

How about a little exegesis on a short sermon by Anjem Choudary:

Anjem Choudary @anjemchoudary

VOTING for anyone to legislate laws is an Act of SHIRK. Remember that Allah will forgive all sins except that partners be set up besides him

Spoken like a true boss-man, Mafia don, tyrant, dictator, king. The one thing that’s not forgivable is the failure to be submissive enough to The One Top Guy. Everything else – torture, murder, enslaving schoolgirls, gang-rape – is forgivable, but not bowing down to Just That One Dude is not forgivable. Why is that?

It’s the principle of the thing.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Eg-zactly.

Via Muslim and Exmuslim Women for Secularism… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

That nonsense about Obama not wanting to call Boko Haram terrorists? It’s just another stupid right-wing talking point.

Aside from attacking Michelle Obama for publicly showing concern and lying about President Obama, one of the major spokes in the conservative effort to politicize the kidnapping of 284 schoolgirls in Nigeria has been to criticize the Obama administration for not designating Boko Haram (the group responsible for the abductions) a terrorist organization.

Why, then, is there all this video of President Obama calling Boko Haram a terrorist organization, long before the State Department changed its designation?

The mainstream media has also picked up the narrative. In fact, way back in July of 2013, CNN asked “Why hasn’t the

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And Jon Stewart retorted.

Stewart tore into Boko Haram and said that #BringBackOurGirls actually proves Twitter can be more useful than you might think at pressuring people to do something. And so in reaction to Limbaugh rolling his eyes at the hashtag activism, Stewart came up with a new hashtag for people to use: #F*ckYouRush. Stewart even contrasted the people speaking out on the girls’ behalf with “that f*cking guy” Limbaugh to show what the two sides are in this argument.

I don’t know. Some people just really should get better hobbies.

 … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Via

 … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Law Society is not going to withdraw its practice note on what it takes to be the correct interpretation of “Sharia succession rules.” The Lawyers’ Secular Society has a response.

The LSS had written a detailed open letter to the Law Society on 24 April 2014 with very specific questions (here). Two weeks later, on 8 May 2014, the Law Society eventually responded to that letter (here) but it failed to answer almost all of the LSS’s questions, with no explanation for this refusal.

The LSS also took part in a large public protest outside the Law Society’s offices in Chancery Lane, London on 28 April 2014, alongside human rights campaigners and women’s rights campaigners,

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Religious privilege? What do you mean? I don’t see any religious privilege.

Oh, you mean this?

A Harvard club’s plans to stage a satanic “black Mass” were abruptly cancelled Monday after drawing fire from the Archdiocese of Boston and condemnation from the president of the Ivy League school.

Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the New York-based Satanic Temple, told the Boston Globe late Monday that the event was called off because no venue was available.

“Everyone involved, outside of the Satanic Temple, got really scared,” Greaves told the newspaper. “And I don’t necessarily blame them, because I understand that they were getting a lot of vitriolic hate mail, and I don’t think they expected it.”

Greaves was not immediately

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ezra Resnick writes a Letter to a successful white male.

Congratulations! You’re a successful white male. Or, as you might prefer to put it, you’re a successful person who just happens to be a white male — why would anyone think your gender and race have anything to do with your success? That’s textbook sexism and racism. You worked hard to get where you are. You never asked for special treatment, nor do you recall ever receiving any.

There was discrimination in the past, sure, but that’s all over now. It ended one afternoon in…let’s see…1977 was it? That sounds right.

Now there is perfect total universal equality of opportunity, and all you have to do to know that … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Amanda Marcotte has bad news for the fans of the pope: he’s not as cuddly as some have been claiming.

I get the enthusiasm for “cool” Pope Francis, I really do. The idea that there could be a pope who is not clinging to a harshly medieval point of view but ready to move into the modern world is so appealing that of course we’re going to grasp onto any evidence, no matter how tenuous, that suggests that Pope Francis might be the one.

Meh. One – it’s just not possible, so attempting to grasp at evidence is pointless. The Catholic church is the Catholic church, not something else; it’s not possible to rise to the top positions by … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

From a comment by latsot on Gervais “will continue to use offensive words like cunt, atheism & Derek”

@m0fa

I’m British too and like many other Brits I’m sick to death of your droning argument that we don’t consider “cunt” to be a gendered insult. I can speculate about a possible reason you think – or at least say – this: the insult “cunt” seems almost interchangeable with other insults, some also gendered (such as “dick”), and others not.

Unfortunately, there’s only one tiny flaw with that argument: it is bullshit. It’s bullshit partly because “cunt” is always known to be a worse insult than any of those others. It might be argued that this distinction is arbitrary; that … Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hey look – live streaming from the International Space Station.

Pale blue dot close up; your house from very far away.… Read the rest

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)