When I sat next to Wafa Sultan at the dinner weekend before last, she asked me if there were any penalties for being an atheist in the US, and I told her there were two states that ban atheists from running for office. She was amazed and incredulous, and I assured her it was true; Tennessee and I think Arkansas, I added.

But I was wrong. It’s not two, it’s seven.

[Update for clarification: these are all articles of state constitutions, and (I'm told) (by Matt Dillahunty) they could never be enforced. I kind of assumed that anyway, but it's better to spell it out.]

Matthew Bulger of American Humanists lists them.

Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1: No

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

Is sexual harassment a thing? Is it just a fantasy of whack-job feminists (who of course are all way too ugly to be sexually harassed)? What about the military, for example? Lots of discipline there; probably there’s no sexual harassment in among all that discipline, right?

Well, one third of women in the military reported being sexually harassed in 2008. That seems like a thing. Maybe they were all whack-job feminists, but given the bad press feminism gets, I kind of doubt it.

The ACLU considers it a thing.

While it is estimated that over 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, a rate far higher than among civilians, the government has failed systematically to investigate

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Annals of horror. “Recovering” children from autism by dosing them with MMS, “Miracle Mineral Solution” aka bleach.

Basically, MMS is 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water. In essence, MMS is equivalent to industrial strength bleach. Proponents recommend diluting MMS in either water or a food acid, such as lemon juice, which results in the formation of chlorine dioxide.

MMS is what got Rhys Morgan started on his anti-quackery career, when he encountered people online recommending it for Crohn’s disease.

David Gorski has learned that now people are recommending it for autism.

Autism One, whose organizers claim that their conference is “all about the science,” featured a talk by a woman whose preferred form of therapy, besides hyperbaric oxygen,

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Is a no harassment policy like the Taliban?

Let’s start a little farther back. Is feminism like Nazism?

No, feminism is not like Nazism.

Nazism tried to kill all the Jews in Europe. Feminism does not try to kill all the Jews in Europe.

Nazism killed gays, gypsies, people with disabilities, and political enemies.

Feminism doesn’t kill gays, gypsies, people with disabilities, or political enemies.

Nazism rounded up its enemies and put them in camps.

Feminism does not round up its enemies and put them in camps.

Feminism is not like Nazism. Rush Limbaugh is wrong.

Is a no harassment policy like the Taliban?

No, a no harassment policy is not like the Taliban.

The Taliban forcibly keeps girls out … Read the rest

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I just took my temporary housemate, a black Lab named Cooper, to the beach for a good vigorous outing with the chuckit and tennis ball. We came back. I sat down at the desk, and he asked to go outside. I let him outside. He went around to the garden and then came back and sat outside the sliding screen door staring at me and making a low growly noise in his throat, as he does when he wants me to grasp that he wants something.

I got up to open the sliding screen door so that he could come in. He didn’t come in, but stood still staring up at me, with his roadkill toy* at his feet. I … Read the rest

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I’m reading Martha Nussbaum’s new book The New Religious Intolerance, and finding it as exasperating as I expected.

For one thing, there’s what (or who) is not in the index. She puts much of the focus on Islam and what she uncritically calls “Islamophobia,” but who is missing from the index? Maryam. Irshad Manji. Kenan Malik. Taslima. Tarek Fatah. Deeyah.

She argues that “European nations tend to conceive of nationhood and national belonging in ethno-religious and cultural-linguistic terms” [p 94] and that that makes it hard for immigrants to be seen as belonging.

As we’ve seen, there is another option, realized in a wide range of nations around the world: to define national belonging in terms of political ideals,

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

Hey how about this – Melody tweeted a link to a story about two women honored in Norway

 for their outspokenness across cultural lines. Both have immigrant backgrounds, from Algeria and Syria…

Oh! thought I, I might know one of them, and hastily skimmed down the page, and sure enough!

Sara Azmeh Rasmussen, who immigrated to Norway from Syria in 1995, has been carrying on her efforts to promote tolerance, improve the rights of persons regardless of sexual identity and criticize Islam over what she views as its lack of tolerance and repression of women and homosexuals. Rasmussen has been a frequent participant in demonstrations and commentator in the media, not least in newspaper Aftenposten.

I know her. When … Read the rest

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Indigo Jo takes a look at that myth via the report on sexual harassment in London.

The second [striking thing in a discussion on BBC London] was the suggestion (which I recall Simister saying the police had given to her after her assault) that women should “just ignore it”, which prompted me to write an email to the show (which Feltz read out), because the police have said the same thing to people suffering from the anti-social behaviour of local yobs and to people with disabilities who are being harassed by yobs or haters. It’s a fallacy particularly beloved of teachers as well, who will say the same to a child who complains of being teased in the playground

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

Surprise shock revelation: there is sexual harassment in London.

The harrassment ranges from wolf-whistling and lewd comments to physical groping and sexual assault.

Campaigners say that reported cases represent “the tip of the iceberg” and that authorities can no longer afford to ignore the issue.

Research released today by the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition shows 41 per cent of women under the age of 34 have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment in the street.

Blacklist! Witch hunt!! Innocent until proven guilty!!! Feminazis!!!!

Plus, you’re ugly!!!!!

The true extent of sexual harassment across Britain is difficult to judge. Campaigners say there is an acute shortage of academic studies looking into women’s experiences. But anecdotal evidence

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

More bad news – two warring rebel groups in northern Mali have decided to resolve their differences by…turning northern Mali into an Islamist state. Yeah, that’s the way to do it!

Two rebel groups that seized northern Mali two months ago have agreed to merge and turn their territory into an Islamist state, both sides say.

The Tuareg MNLA, a secular rebel group, and the Islamist group Ansar Dine signed the deal in the town of Gao, spokespeople said.

Ansar Dine, which has ties to al-Qaeda, has already begun to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in towns such as Timbuktu.

Creep creep creep, Islamism expands its stranglehold week by week.

 … Read the rest

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