A post by Jadehawk pointed me to an article from 2011 in the Irish Times, posted by Paddy Doyle.

TWO OF the religious congregations which ran Magdalene laundries in the State set up and continue to run the Dublin-based Ruhama agency, which is funded by the State and works “with women affected by prostitution and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation”.

According to its website, the agency receives funding from the Department of Health and the Department of Justice.

Ruhama, which means “renewed life” in Hebrew, is described as “a joint initiative of the Good Shepherd Sisters and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, both of which had a long history of involvement with marginalised women, including those

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

One cheerful little item on a horrible day. Larry Moran did a post at Sandwalk about Golden Palace egg rolls.

I’ve taken many friends to the restaurant and recommended it to visitors.
Recently the talk.origins moderator, Dave Greig, sampled the food and pronounced
it tolerable. More recently, I brought lots of food to the hotel at Eschaton
2012 and treated PZ Myers, Veronica Abbas, Chris DiCarlo, and Ophelia Benson.
They all liked the egg rolls. Everyone likes Golden Palace egg rolls.

He did, he did! And we did, and I did. They were goooood.

Thanks, Larry!… Read the rest

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

The headstrong survivors of the Magdalene laundries are threatening to go on a hunger strike if the Irish government doesn’t set up a redress board.

Steven O’Riordain, a representative of the Magdalene Survivors Together, has warned  some women will go on hunger strike if the government does not meet their demands.

“There is a possibility that this will happen. Some of the women have said if they do not get proper redress from a state which was responsible for being abandoned in these institutions. Many of them say they are at that age now where they have nothing to lose if the government fails to set up a scheme that will give some compensation for what happened to them,” he

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

John Walsh on the Irish government and the Magdalene laundries.

These were places where “loose girls” or “fallen women” could be packed off to, girls impregnated by their fathers or uncles or the local priest, girls who were considered too flightly or flirtatious or headstrong to be biddable members of society. They could be put to work all day, washing sheets for the military, fed on bread and dripping, forbidden to speak and offered no way out, or any explanation about why they were imprisoned. Half of them were teenagers, doomed to spend their best years in a workhouse, being humiliated by nuns, told they’d offended God and that their parents didn’t want them.

Prisons. Slavery. For girls who … Read the rest

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

A Catholic bishop says Obama is a negation of Lincoln because Lincoln was all “freedom” and Obama hates freedom.

He has chosen to use the bully pulpit not to call upon us all to be nobler and to embrace each child, regardless of origins and circumstances; rather, he has been a proponent of an expediency that is shameful and criminal in the eyes of Almighty God.

The bishop knows that about the eyes of almighty god how? No how. He doesn’t. He just says he does. He may think he does, or he may pretend he does, but either way, he’s wrong.

In my view, those who voted for President Obama bear the responsibility for a step deeper in the

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

Mother Jones‏@MotherJones

Boy Scouts say they need more time to reconsider ban on gay scouts. Wait, isn’t their motto “be prepared”? http://bit.ly/WubiMp… Read the rest

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

A woman in Somalia said she was raped by some security forces, so she has been given a year in jail “for making a false accusation and insulting a government body.”

Judge Ahmed Aden Farah said the woman would not go to jail immediately as she is caring for a young child.

How very generous.

The woman had reported the alleged rape at a police station in Hodan, a district in Mogadishu where many displaced people live.

“We sentence her for offending state institutions by claiming she was raped,” the AFP news agency quotes the judge as saying.

“She will spend one year in prison after finishing the breastfeeding of her baby.”

State institutions in Somalia sure are easily offended, … Read the rest

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

As you may have seen via this comment on A fabulous Manly Meal, Harriet Hall has a long post on Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much. The key point is -

Average Differences Don’t Tell Us Anything About Individuals

The point that often gets overlooked in these discussions is that gender differences are averages for the group. They are irrelevant to a discussion of what jobs any individual woman is qualified for or interested in. And it doesn’t mean we can predict what proportion of men or women will gravitate to any given area of human endeavor.

Precisely. I keep saying exactly that.

But even more interesting than the post, perhaps, is a comment by David … Read the rest

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

A Catholic men’s organization invited Dan Barker to debate a Catholic theologian on the topic “Do The Gospels Give Us The Real Jesus?” and he was publicizing it along with them. But then he spotted something he hadn’t noticed before.

On January 29, as I was updating FFRF’s Events page, I went to the AOTM website for details. (http://www.aotmclub.com) I spotted this note at the bottom of the page announcing my event:

“$12 at the door (The total cost for the night) You will get great appetizers and beverages, hear one of the best inspirational stories you have ever heard about manhood and faith. Do all this while you listen and enjoy a fabulous “Manly Meal”. Men

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

Susan wrote this as a comment on The romance novelist and the guy with a truck from last month.

This post is especially  relevant to me.  I am a feminist, and here is the great irony in my own life … I have been writing romance novels for 20 years. And I have resisted  the stereotypes almost every step of the way. When I began,  when “strong” female characters were becoming as common as “damsel” characters, I began with women who dressed in jeans and boots and such.  I think I must have had “heroines” who wore skirts and heels, but of course I was basically writing some avatar of myself in both male and female characters, and I stopped … Read the rest

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

So there’s this blob on a wall where some water damage happened, and damned if that blob isn’t the spitting image of The Virgin Mary™ – or rather of the outline of one of those creepy statuette things that are supposed to represent The Virgin Mary™.

It’s cool, too, because on the wall to her right hangs her son on his execution-by-torture device. Idn that pretty? They’re together again, or at least little statue-type deals that are supposed to represent them are together.

(Have you ever noticed that it’s oddly hard not to see dolls and stuffed animals and the like as just a little bit sentient? Because I have. I guess that’s just because the recognition of what is … Read the rest

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