Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
When politicians and pundits say women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, it’s usually a prelude to the “equal pay for equal work” argument. That’s a fine goal, of course, but the statistic is misleading. The problem isn’t that women and men get paid different amounts for the same work, but that a variety of forces lead women and men to take different jobs with very different salaries. According to a working paper by Travis Wiseman (Mississippi State University) and Nabamita Dutta (University of Wisconsin, La Crosse), religion is one of the main factors shaping that wage gap. Read more
More than two years ago, Republican legislators in Pennsylvania attempted to pass a bill that would put the words “In God We Trust” in every public school — and possibly every classroom — in the state. The goal was obvious: The government wanted students to believe in God, as if that were a good thing. It also sent the message that we live in a “Christian nation” (whatever that means). The bill thankfully went nowhere, which is why Rep. Cris Dush (below) is now trying to do it again. House Bill 1640 just passed the House Education Committee today. It’ll now go to the full chamber for a vote. Read more
Readers of this site are undoubtedly familiar with Matt Walsh, a conservative Catholic blogger for The Blaze (founded by none other than Glenn Beck). It’s difficult to miss Walsh’s inflammatory rhetoric while he’s espousing conservative values in his blog posts — or rather his anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-feminist, anti-liberal rants. On Wednesday, I visited The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. to hear Walsh speak about his recent post on religious liberty, “Pay Attention Christians. They’re Coming After the Churches Now.” Read more