Typical of the moral blindness of the Catholic church on the condom issue – the archbishop of Sydney talks a lot of emollient drivel about sexual morality as the putative reason for saying condoms make the AIDS epidemic worse – without ever mentioning the blindingly obvious (to anyone but a moral idiot) that condoms are needed because AIDS transmission involves two people, one of whom can be as sexually faithful as any pope or archbishop could desire and still be infected by the other party. Usually this cashes out to women infected by men. The archbishop talks and talks and talks and talks and never mentions this. It is wicked to fail to mention it.

To blame Catholics and Pope

It’s a funny thing how the ‘athests should shut up’ crowd is constantly passing back and forth this old crumbling shredding battered item labeled ‘atheists use intemperate language’ and then when you look at them turn out to be so unpleasant themselves. They’re a vituperative bunch to be giving advice to other people about not being so foghorn-like.

Look at Mark Vernon for instance. He’s always boasting of his own superlative and superior uncertainty, his better than anything else agnosticism, and yet when it comes to characterizing people he disagrees with, why, he throws uncertainty to the winds and just gets right down to name-calling.

Julian Baggini was asking militant atheists to turn down the volume in the Guardian yesterday.

G mentioned, and quoted a bit of, On Liberty yesterday. I’d been thinking of quoting it myself, and G sent me to the right bit to quote, so here is some more. From the last paragraph of Chapter 2.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this

I was going to post a comment to say that things didn’t actually get all that much better but I was relieved to see that someone already had.

This isn’t necessarily a substantive change. The Afghani Constitution is written in a way that simultaneously enshrines conflicting values, leaving wiggle room to really do anything you want regarding women- or remain paralyzed in confusion. And a Western audience is particularly susceptible to not “getting” this because of the power of some of the lipservice to rights, and the common ignorance of how Islamic law actually works…“Equal” does not mean (has not meant) “identical” in an Islamic context regarding gender, especially in the realm of family and personal law. “Equal” can mean