Rachel Ford is a programmer, and since 8:00 to 5:00 doesn't provide enough opportunity to bask in screen glare, she writes in her spare time. She was raised a very fundamentalist Christian, but eventually "saw the light." Rachel's personal blog is Rachel's Hobbit Hole, where she discusses everything from Tolkien to state politics.
Lazy clerks and religious bigots in North Carolina got some great news this week. On the other hand, the Republican legislature handed a rather raw deal to gay couples, those who support equality and actual freedom of religion, and taxpayers who prefer that government officials do the jobs they’re paid to do. On Thursday, the North Carolina House, following the lead of the Senate, voted to override Governor Pat McCrory’s veto of the “religious freedom” bill, SB 2, that allows magistrates to refuse to officiate weddings if they object on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs. Essentially, the faith-based personal opinions of public officials in North Carolina now count as legal excuses to not do their jobs. Read more
Happy “offense-free Friday,” fellow heathens! Stephan Pastis, the cartoonist behind the brilliant Pearls Before Swine comic strip seems to have heard the “I believe in free speech, but…” crowd loud and clear. And he answered the call to avoid offense in a strip he shared today, explaining in the first panel, “In deference to those who say cartoonists should refrain from depicting anything that could cause offense to others, today we delete all the Pearls characters who have ever caused offense to others.” Read more
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was one of many celebrating Ireland’s historic vote to legalize same sex weddings last month. One of her tweets in particular, proposing a wedding between Dumbledore and Gandalf in Ireland, caught the eye of the Westboro Baptist Church. Keen to demonstrate their brilliant sense of humor, Westboro tweeted back an image replete with their typically vitriolic language, and a threat to protest such a wedding if ever it occurred. So how do you respond to such a hate-filled attempt at humor? You out-troll them, obviously. Read more
Creationist Ken Ham took to his blog yesterday to discuss Miley Cyrus’ nude photo shoot and accompanying interview in Paper magazine (the same publication that “broke the Internet” with its provocative pictures of Kim Kardashian). Ham’s thoughts are certainly worth reading — not because he makes sense, but because they offer more insight into his own views of the world. After some pearl-clutching about Cyrus “shak[ing] her fist at God and promot[ing] sexual perversion,” Ham kindly explains the Creationist version of why-humans-wear-clothes (spoiler: it involves sin in the Garden of Eden). Read more
Rick Santorum recently made some eyebrow-raising comments about how the Pope should leave science to the scientists with regards to climate change. It was strange not only because those words were coming from Rick Santorum (who is both a climate change denier and a Creationist), but also because he was criticizing Pope Francis for embracing the scientific consensus on the issue. This incongruity did not escape Fox News host Chris Wallace, who raised the issue during an interview this past weekend with the presidential hopeful: Read more
