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.
With all the people leaving the Mormon church over the past week, due to the Church’s bigoted stance toward gay couples and their children, Mark Naugle has been working like mad to make sure all those resignation letters are being processed correctly. He’s an immigration attorney by trade, but he knows what it takes to leave the Church since his own family did it when he was a teenager. Several months ago, he posted on Reddit about how he could help people through the process for free. When the new policies were made public, there were more people than ever before looking for the exit sign, and he’s been helping as many of them as he can. Read more
For almost a decade now, this has been the seal of Los Angeles County in California: There’s a lot going on there, but check out the center right image. That’s supposed to represent the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel, a Catholic mission dating back hundreds of years. It’s conspicuously missing a cross because, from 1987-2009, the actual building didn’t have one (due to it being destroyed in an earthquake, then stolen). It wasn’t until 2009 that the cross was restored on the building. So now, some members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors want to change the seal to reflect that. Which is verrrrry convenient considering how often Christians try to get crosses on government seals… So earlier this year, the supervisors voted 3-2 to revise the seal to include the cross, inviting a challenge from the ACLU. Since the supervisors began using the “revised” seal while that challenge was pending, the ACLU filed a lawsuit. I bring this all up against because one of the supervisors, Mike Antonovich, was furious after the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial opposing the seal with the cross. He referred to the newspaper as “secular extremest” [sic], whatever that means for an intangible object. Now, the LA Times has responded to Antonovich since they found out about the insult after it was “included in court filings about the seal,” and their latest editorial is glorious: Read more
The Texas Board of Education has long been a punchline for the rest of the country. There was the time when it was led by Creationist Don McLeroy, who did all he could to dismantle the teaching of proper science in the classroom. There was the time after he left when the Board approved textbooks suggesting Moses influenced the writing of the Constitution. There was the time the Board was led by evolution-doubter Barbara Cargill. And we’re currently at a time when the Board is led by Liberty University graduate Donna Bahorich, who thinks so highly of public schools that she home-schooled her own kids before enrolling them in a private school. But the latest decision by the Board tells you the problem isn’t just with who’s leading the group, but most of the people on it. The Board just rejected a proposal that would allow experts to fact-check textbooks before they’re approved for use in the state’s public schools. Read more
You knew this was going to happen. After Joshua Feuerstein’s rant against the new Starbucks cups got us all laughing at him and put the Christmas-y cup at the center of a national non-troversy, the whole situation was ripe for parody. Now, DJ Dudley D and Ben Quam have channeled Toby Keith in an ode to the “Red Starbucks Cup”: Read more
