The German bishops have told German Catholics that if they don’t give the church money they don’t get the sacraments.

Last month, German bishops warned that if members of the Catholic Church don’t pay the country’s church tax, they’ll be denied the sacraments — including baptisms, weddings and funerals.

In increasingly secular Europe, Germany is one of the few countries where the state collects a special levy from tax-registered believers and hands it over to three organized faiths.

Registered Catholics, Protestants and Jews pay a surcharge of up to 9 percent on their income. The Catholic Church alone received some $6.5 billion in 2011.

$6.5 billion! That’s not a bad chunk of change, especially for putting on fancy dress to pretend there’s a magic sky dude who will make everything come out right. How nice of the state to do the church’s collecting for it.

In issuing the stringent new decree, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the president of the German bishops’ conference, said that not paying taxes for the church is a grave offense, and that sacraments will be banned for those who distance themselves from the church.

“In Germany, the church is a community of faith which coexists alongside the legal system,” Zollitsch said. “The two cannot be separated.”

And if you try, no sacraments for you! Don’t like it, take it up with god.

The bishops issued their decree as church defections are growing. In 2010, when the clerical sex abuse scandal exploded in Germany, nearly 200,000 Catholics left the church. In a normal year, it’s 100,000.

Church statistics show that only 13 percent of Germany’s Catholics attend Mass weekly. And, Weisner says, the majority of those who are observant criticize the church leadership.

So the German bishops have come up with the perfect way to fix that! Threaten and bully!

What could possibly go wrong?

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

A picture Dil Nawaz shared on Facebook.

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

Well that’s funny. All that martyrdom stuff about stepping down was apparently just performance art. I hear that Justin Vacula hasn’t stepped down as chapter co-chair of the Pennsylvania SCA after all. Certainly he’s still listed as such.

Update October 13: now he’s not listed.

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

Never a dull moment, eh? Al Stefanelli has left FTB, and on his way out he did a podcast with his friend Reap Paden.

I listened to as much as I could stand, which wasn’t much. I transcribed a few high points.

Reap Paden: I guess I pissed some people off with my last. I guess the main thing – I called Stephanie Zvan a bitch. She was being a bitch.

They both agree it’s a good word. “I use it all the time,” says Al. ”So does my wife. I can understand that it’s controversial, but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

They say swearing is great, they like swearing. Hooray for swearing. “If it’s a word that offends you don’t use it,” one of them adds. They compare “bitch” to “fuck” and Al talks about offending people by saying fuck, and being obliging enough not to use it if he knows someone dislikes it, then they say it’s a great word and they like it.

(Commentary: yes, I like it too, and I use it quite a lot in blogging [and certainly in conversation]. I notice it doesn’t work all that well on a podcast (or radio) though, at least not the way Al and RP say it. I could explain why, but I don’t feel like it right now.

But anyway the whole discussion misses the point. “Swearing” isn’t the issue. The issue is epithets. It’s a different thing. “Bitch” doesn’t go in the box with “fucking,” it goes with “nigger” and “faggot” and “kike.” And of course “cunt.”)

RP explains why it’s fine to call Stephanie a fucking bitch repeatedly. He said “She’s a bitch and here’s why”; he didn’t just say “she’s a bitch”; he explained why she’s a bitch, so that’s totally ok.

But those stupid people got all in a lather. “Everybody’s running around with their arms over their heads screaming.” All angry and upset.

Because Stephanie’s such a fucking queen of the shit? Give me a break. Get over yourself.

Al says people aren’t familiar with your podcast. If they were, they would know what to expect. It’s like someone who tunes into Howard Stern. Nothing is sacred, there are no sacred cows, and people would get they if they listened to more of RP’s podcast. That’s how shock radio works.

That’s you, that’s how you are.

I listened to a couple of minutes more but then I couldn’t stomach any more of the shock radio schtick. I never have liked shock radio.

Meanwhile, we have new people joining FTB very soon. You will be thrilled! I promise.

Update: I forgot to add Al’s farewell post (although he apparently didn’t think of it as such when he wrote it).

Update 2: Al’s actual farewell post, which he wrote after I wrote this one. Note first two sentences:

Yes, I’ve decided to leave Freethought Blogs. Now, before you go assuming there were pitchforks and torches involved, this was my decision.

His decision.

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

I woke up the other morning, as one does, and found myself reading, at a free speech outlet not a million miles from here, a joke.  At least I think it was a joke.

Hell!  I hope it was a joke.  The notion was that women being systematically shoved from ‘always wear a head covering when you go out’ (which could almost have applied to my late mother) to ‘abaya at all times and a male escort if you ever go out’ should take advantage of their anonymity to create mischief.  Mischief?

Where dress codes are enforced they are, in the final analysis, enforced on pain of death though the death rate may stay low.  And as you read that, dear Westerner, think not of faraway places with deserts.  Think trans people.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, a cover story is unravelling in a very untidy manner.  One TV company did a story on, I think, 4 women who had been sexually assaulted, when teenagers, by a not-long-dead pop super-star.  First response, in chorus, was I don’t believe this because he was a good bloke.  End of story, as they thought.

As more women came forward that changed to but why didn’t they tell anyone at the time?  Within minutes the news came back  -  they had reported, not all of them but enough to establish a pattern, had anyone been interested.  Cases had been dropped, journalists had backed off, one distressed teen had been punished for telling lies about that great and good man.  And so forth.

There is, at last, to be a full police inquiry and two very successful women have come out and said that their success was bought  -  bought at the price of having uninvited hands shoved inside their clothing when they were live on mic and broadcasting to the nation, a culture enforced by managers to whom they complained asking, “What’s the matter with you?  Are you a lesbian or something?”

Should we be shocked?  Yes, but only if we can be as shocked about denial of the right to a personality, to full citizenship, as we are about sexual impropriety tipping into the criminal.  Anything less than this is prurience.

We are still together, right?  Now, what about freedom of the mind?  What about the right  -  which the teenage girls above were denied  -  to say, ‘This is what happened to me and this is the effect it had.’  And be believed!

Doing anything necessary to shut up a crying teenager may seem at 40 years distance to be a failure of empathy.  Yes, but we can’t leave it at that, can we?  At the time it was an abuse of power and  -  didn’t they tell you?  -  the effect of abuses of power is cumulative.  It acts against the social good as it damages individuals.

So the people who have done real damage to whatever it was  -  we can discuss that  -  in the 16 months since a woman of our acquaintance put up four words of advice to the lovelorn on YouTube are not the repetitive trolls.  Nor are they the idiots who have argued, inter alia, that women’s brains are entirely different in every way from men’s brains or that terms I learned in the social sciences 50 years ago are neologisms and should not be used, that the definition of a word given in a dictionary  -  even if that’s Dr Johnson’s original  -  is the only sense in which a word may ever be used, especially by a woman.  No, such people are merely incredibly boring.

The destroyers have been that small handful of men who, either all the time or just when drunk, believe that they are Genghis Khan and destined to be the ancestor of just about everyone a thousand years from now.  They have supporters, of course, and at two levels.  First line of defence  -  the powerful people of all genders who address bad behaviour with a sort of gamesmanship.  You know, I can get away with ignoring this, we can circulate our own version to key opinion formers, by next year no-one will remember exactly what happened and so forth.  And then there is the Greek chorus, very numerous, always masked of course, who make a lot of noise but seem always to be acting from fear and have no real part in the drama.

And now, because I am not a philosopher, I can sum this up in a sentence.  You do not get to barrack, harass, humiliate, exclude, disbelieve and disregard another group of your fellow humans and then call them the splitters.

Lessons of history and all that.

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

http://live.huffingtonpost.com/

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

Hey remember sexual harassment? Those were fun times, weren’t they?

The implication is that a combination of awareness, women’s growing economic power and legislation that began with the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act and has been updated repeatedly, has stamped out the problem.

Laura Bates, who set up the website Everyday Sexism earlier this year, isn’t so sure. Like those 1970s speak-outs, her site allows women to share their experiences, and over the course of six months 7,500 entries have poured in, “thousands of which pertain specifically to workplace harassment, workplace sexism and sadly, in many cases, workplace sexual assault and even rape”. “What I don’t know is whether the prevalence has diminished or not [since the 70s],” she says. “But I do know that an Equal Opportunities Commission report in 2000 said that 50% of women still experience sexual harassment in the workplace.”

Problem not so stamped out then.

So why is there this idea that workplaces are so much better now? Part of it, perhaps, is that sexual harassment affects women at different times in their lives. Endean says it is a particular problem, for instance, for young female apprentices in male-dominated workplaces and, anecdotally, many of us are affected by the issue when we start work in our late teens and early 20s. It’s an issue of power. As individual women get older and more personally powerful, sexual harassment often has less effect on them, and so they believe it has been left behind in another era.

Paula Kirby please note. Not all women are treated the way Paula Kirby is treated, therefore what Paula Kirby knows from her own experience is of limited utility for understanding what women in general experience.

Not only is classic workplace sexual harassment still going on, says Bates, but technology has created new forms; in the space of six months, she has seen several thousand abusive emails, including rape threats and death threats. As those 1975 feminists knew, what’s important is to stop the silence around the issue. “I think there’s an idea that women have to put up and shut up,” says Bates. “They’re told they’re whining, being uptight, frigid, sometimes even blamed for causing it in the first place.”

Oh surely not! Surely that never happens.

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

Here’s Rebecca at the Humanists of Florida conference last weekend, with EllenBeth introducing her. Two of my favorite women!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8gs-C53ic

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

The Women in Secularism issue of Free Inquiry will be out in late November. Here is what it will look like on the front.

Via Melody Hensley

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

Like army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani for instance, who visited Malala in the hospital and took the occasion to talk comfortable pious bullshit. He

said Malala has “become a symbol for the values that the army, with the nation behind it, is fighting to preserve for our future generations.

“These are the intrinsic values of an Islamic society, based on the principles of liberty, justice and equality of man.”

Oh really. Is that a fact. Then why is Pakistan such a shit-hole? Why are all “Islamic societies” such shit-holes? If an Islamic society is based on the principles of liberty, justice and equality of man [sic] then why do so many people think it’s based on the principles of coercion, brutality and inequality of women and men? Why is there no Islamic society on earth that looks to outsiders like one that’s based on the principles of liberty, justice and equality?

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

Stephanie has some thoughts on Reap Paden. Who? I don’t know, really, except that he’s a friend of Justin Vacula’s. I saw a comment by him, or a mention of his podcast, or something, during the short period in which I was attempting to get Vacula to correct his misrepresentation of me on his podcast. (So many guys, so many podcasts.) That was all. I had no opinion on him until last Saturday, when someone pointed out a shouty podcast he’d just done and I listened to a bit of it. Man, it was shouty all right. He spent the first several minutes shouting at Stephanie louder and louder and louder and LOUDER. Calling her a fucking bitch over and over again. Not much substance, just louder and louder fucking bitch.

I skipped ahead and listend to a bit more – some more guys had joined him and they were talking about Rebecca (why? I have no idea) by pretending to be talking in her voice, saying, “I’m a stupid cunt” and “I’m a dumb cunt” and laughing a lot. Oh, so that’s who that is, I thought. Another one to avoid.

I see people saying it’s good they talk like this, because that way people can realize what they’re like. Huh. I don’t think so at all. It would be much better if they weren’t like it. Talking like this is what makes them like it, so if they stopped talking like this, they wouldn’t be like it, and that would be better. If people talk to me and don’t call me a fucking bitch or a cunting cunt, then that’s better than if they do and so I find out what they’re like. I don’t want to find out what they’re like if they’re like that, I want them to hide it.

So anyway this Reap Paden commented on Stephanie’s post. He showed us what he’s like again.

You already lost Stephanie. You are just too damn dumb to figure it out.

Listen to this well-

I don’t give a fuck what you say I don’t give a fuck what you do. There is nothing you can do to stop me from doing/saying what I feel needs to be said.

I’m one of those people you won’t make quiet. You can’t win

It doesn’t matter what simpletons like you say about me. Intelligent people will figure it out while you spin your wheels trying to make yourself look good.

Anytime you open that hole under your nose about me and I hear about it, I will have a reply to it.

In the future if you don’t want to be called a bitch I would suggest you refrain from being one, seems simple enough to me.

That last bit is especially interesting. He will call us bitches because we are bitches, and it’s our own damn fault that he calls us bitches, because we’re too bitchy to refrain from being bitches.

I have my doubts.

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

I heard a long report on BBC World about Malala Yusufzai a couple of hours ago, including a big chunk of an interview with her. On top of everything else, she’s fluent in English. I looked for it via Google and thought I’d found it but was surprised at how cheery the reporter sounded – then I belatedly looked at the date: it was last January. She starts reading from the diary she wrote for the BBC at 1:25 in.

The report I heard today interviewed the New York Times reporter Adam Ellick, who got to know her in 2009. He posted a photo to Twitter. The other guy is her father.

 Nighat Dad tweeted pictures of herself with Malala.

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

Charlie Fuqua, a Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives, wrote a book called (frighteningly) God’s Law. It’s not a satire; he really thinks there is such a thing and that he knows about it. One item of god’s law is that rebellious children should be subject to the death penalty.

The Huffington Post quotes from the book via The Arkansas Times.

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scrpture [sic] provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.

See he’s not really urging that children should be executed. He’s just saying there should be a law on the books that would allow them to be executed for not giving proper respect to their parents. Moderation itself.

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