Author: Ophelia Benson

Moving on, from the sadistic to the ridiculous – Birmingham Council won’t let its staff read atheist websites. (So can Birmingham Council staffers read B&W? I wonder. I know B&W is banned in Iran [yes, I am proud of that, and so would you be, so quit staring] so perhaps its Bluecoat Software can detect heterodoxy just as well as Iran can. I’d love to know.)

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity…The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism”.

Gee, thanks. Criminal activities, Satanism, voodoo rituals – and atheism. And then people wonder why atheists get a little crabby now and then.

(Thanks to Roger Lancefield for pointing this out.)

Next up we have an Archbishop in the Philippines saying why contraception is such a bad terrible wicked thing.

Archbishop Lagdameo argued the bill would not solve the problems of population growth but would only undermine the dignity of marriage and endanger women. He said that artificial contraceptives cause physical and psychological harm to women.

Whereas having children that they don’t want to have causes no physical and psychological harm to women at all, good heavens no. Women are invariably better off if they are forced to produce as many children as they can churn out, no matter how poor they are, no matter how much they might prefer to have one child or two children that they could hope to feed well and educate well rather than five or ten or fifteen that they couldn’t, no matter how desperately they want to do well by a small number of children rather than hopelessly badly by an unmanageable number – no no, that is all an illusion, god knows better and Archbishop Lagdameo knows better and the pope knows better; they all know that really – despite appearances – all those emaciated malaria-ridden illiterate children and their exhausted despairing frustrated parents with their demolished hopes are a far better outcome than a smaller number of healthier educated children. Of course. Because – um – god will provide. As we have seen. There are no starving malaria-ridden illiterate children really – god swoops in at the last minute and makes everything come out all right for them. Archbishop Lagdameo hands out popsicles and college scholarships and everyone has a good laugh and the dog has puppies and roll credits.

Archbishop of Manila Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, addressing the crowd after the Mass, said couples should instead practice sexual self-control.

Why? Why, you miserable shits? Why, when there are ways to have and enjoy sex and prevent conception, should they spurn the harmless technology and practice sexual self-control instead? What is the point?

There is no point. It’s just control-freakery, it’s just pushing people around and making them be miserable for the sake of it. Either do without sex despite being married, or have four times as many children as you can care for properly, or burn in hell for eternity. Why? Because.

Why does this kind of thing get me so riled? Because it’s so hateful. It’s so careful not to be about what is actually good and beneficial for people, it is so careful not to take that into account, or to take it into account only to do the opposite. Because these god-huggers have power, believers listen to them, and the bastards use it to make people worse off. And they do it with a glow of self-righteousness, too. They should be squirming with shame.

More bullshit from the Catholic News Agency.

Colorado for Equal Rights, an organization backing a measure on the Colorado ballot that would define a person in the state’s Constitution as “any human being from the moment of fertilization,” has released a list of over 70 physicians and pharmacists from around the United States who agree that a person includes any human from the moment of conception.

‘Any human being from the moment of fertilization’…That’s an interesting idea: a microscopic fertilized egg is a human being and a person, even though of course…it isn’t. Let’s define everything that way. A daffodil bulb is a daffodil. A swallow’s egg is a swallow. A caterpillar is a butterfly. A truckload of boards is a house. A bowl of batter is a chocolate cake. Milk is yogurt. Grapes are wine. Yee-ha. Let’s just ignore process, and time, and development, and change, and decide that everything is already what it could become if all the conditions are right for it to become that thing (which will mean some things will be more than one thing, which will be confusing, but no matter), and forget all these bogus distinctions between what is the case now and what will be the case in many days or months or years if a particular process occurs. Let’s just define things any old how we want to. Why not? This is a democracy, god damn it.

It’s a democracy, but it’s a democracy with professionals in it, and more than 70 (that’s a lot) medical professionals ‘agree’ that a person includes any human from the moment of conception. Which is helpful, because it’s a medical and pharmaceutical question. Isn’t it? But then if it is, why could they manage only 70? They could probably get more than 70 physicians and pharmacists to agree that antibiotics are worse than useless for viruses, so if they could get only 70 for this…Hmmwell maybe that doesn’t actually mean much of anything.

“We are honored to have received these endorsements from such respected physicians,” stated Kristi Burton, head of Colorado for Equal Rights. “Science clearly proves that life begins at the time of fertilization. We are secure in the fact that we have science and reason on our side, and we are pleased to have the medical community supporting our efforts.”

Life? What’s life got to do with it? You didn’t say life, you said person. What are we talking about here?

Really; what are we talking about here? Life is the wrong criterion; life is completely beside the point on this issue. Life is everywhere; lots and lots of things are alive; we don’t preserve everything that’s alive. Dandelions; mildew; bacteria; viruses; fleas; chickens; beans. The dispute isn’t about whether or not the fertilized egg is alive. Start over.

The Cairo Declaration differs sharply from the Universal Declaration overall in its emphatic rejection of universalism, in rejecting the UD’s ‘without exception’ in favour of firm, decided exceptions. In the detail, the CD differs from the UD in its avoidance of clarity, precision and openness and hence accountability and reliability. The Cairo Declaration injects exceptions into its concept of human rights, without spelling out exactly what they entail; this introduces a whole new element of doubt, uncertainty and fear into what is supposed to be a human rights document. Worse, it presents itself as a human rights document (of sorts) when in fact it puts anyone who subscribes to it in the position of (perhaps unknowingly) endorsing laws, restrictions and punishments that are human rights violations rather than human rights.

The raison d’être of the Cairo Declaration is the idea that the Universal Declaration is not in fact universal – that it is ‘Western’ and Judeo-Christian, that it does not work for non-Western cultures, that it ‘could not be implemented by Muslims,’ in the words of the Iranian representative to the UN. So by comparing the two and finding how they differ it is possible to figure out what – in the view of the people who drew up the Cairo Declaration and those who signed on to it, at least – can be ‘implemented by Muslims.’

We find out, generally, via Articles 24 and 25, that all rights are subject to Sharia, and via the Cairo Declaration as a whole, we find out that the authors are willing to make human rights subordinate to Sharia without ever spelling out what that could mean, what it presumably means, what in many countries governed by Sharia it in fact does mean. The Cairo Declaration doesn’t mention stoning to death for adultery, or the death penalty for apostasy, or forced marriage, or child marriage, or guardian laws, or laws forbidding women to travel, work, or go to school without male permission. The Cairo Declaration rejects the Universal Declaration, and stands out for its own version of human rights, yet it does it in a secretive way.

In fact it is difficult not to conclude that the authors of the Cairo Declaration did not start with first principles and attempt to create the best human rights document they could, but rather that they started with existing regimes and legal codes in existing majority-Muslim countries, and then wrote the Cairo Declaration so that it would match the existing laws – adding 24 and 25 at the end in case they’d left anything out. This is bad enough, and the fact that this is done without transparency makes it even worse. The Cairo Declaration takes a declaration of rights that is, deliberately, as clear and open and explicit as possible, and renders it vague instead of precise, obscure instead of clear, tacit instead of explicit. It injects an element – a large element – of uncertainty, blurring, non-precision, danger, threat; in article after article, it merely invokes Sharia without saying what that means. With the Universal Declaration we know where we are and with the Cairo Declaration we don’t – the rights are limited, and in ways that are not specified or spelled out. The Universal Declaration is both general and specific; the Cairo Declaration is particular where the Universal Declaration is general and vague where the UD is precise.

The result is that the Cairo Declaration does away with the transparency, clarity, and specificity and hence the accountability and also the confidence. With the Universal Declaration it is easy to understand what is meant. With the Cairo Declaration, repeatedly, there is a trap door: an impossibility of knowing what is meant. We go from open, clear, spelled out intentions, which are clearly meant to maximize the well-being of all people, without exceptions, to secretive, cryptic, frightening stipulations whose benevolence is by no means clear.