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.
Usually, when we hear stories of Christians being discriminated against, it’s all nonsense. They’re nothing more than the wet dreams of Todd Starnes. Every story sounds the same: Christians did something wrong or illegal, they were punished for it, and now they’re hiding behind their religion. But in 2014, there actually was a case of anti-Christian discrimination that appeared legitimate. Trinity Western University is the Christian school in British Columbia that made headlines after a few provinces said they would not allow graduates of its law school to practice in the region because the school wouldn’t allow gay students who embrace their homosexuality to attend. Bethany Paquette went to their undergraduate campus, which works the same way. She’s a river rafting guide who applied for a job at Amaruk Wilderness Corp. where she figured her experience could be put to good use. But after sending the company her cover letter and resume, she was surprised to see this response from the hiring manager: Read more
The man keeps winning! The Islamic Human Rights Commission, a UK-based Muslim civil rights group, declared Donald Trump the overall winner of its “Islamophobe of the Year” award, a distinction given by voters to people who “outrageously displayed their prejudice for all to see over the past year.” Before you get too excited, though, this award isn’t really all that meaningful, even in a satirical sense. Read more
Last night, in a debate filled with questions about important policy issues, one questioner managed to throw in a couple of meaningless questions about God, basically asking both candidates to pander to her. But I thought Bernie Sanders answered the question as well as anyone could have in his position. Read more
When we talk about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, it’s easy to think of the victims as fitting a certain profile or just being a number. We don’t always hear their individual stories or think about them as individuals. Now, in a very compelling video for BuzzFeed, two of those victims — one man and one woman — share what happened to them. They talk about how the priests gained their trust before taking advantage of them. Read more