Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Dozens of ex-residents of the Irish Catholic children’s home Termonbacca have recently come forward with accounts of sexual and physical abuse that they say occurred there decades ago. Some of them reported slave-like conditions for the kids, referring to nuns kicking or caning residents considered not to be enthusiastic enough about scrubbing floors. One witness testified that a nun hit him so hard and so often in the head when he was a child that he suffered permanent hearing loss. Another… Read more
First-Amendment attorney Marc Randazza is a fellow atheist. I’ve known him for roughly seven years, and in that time I’ve seen and heard him say things that leave little doubt on the fucks he doesn’t give about Christianity. When he sees someone file a lawsuit to remove a huge cross from public land, he cheers. But not today. In American Humanist Ass’n v. Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Comm’n, the Humanists are seeking to tear down a huge concrete crucifix [the Bladensburg cross] from public land in the DC suburbs. Fundraising for the cross began in 1918, and it was formally dedicated in 1925. The purpose of it was to honor WWI casualties, with a distinctly christian message. Read more
Yesterday, in a move that is sure to embolden swaths of Muslim grievance junkies, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Google to remove the controversial short film Innocence of Muslims from YouTube. The 2-to-1 decision came when the judges found in favor of actress Cindy Lee Garcia (pictured above), who objected to the film … after learning that it incorporated a clip she had made for a different movie, which had been partially dubbed and in which she appeared to be asking: “Is your Mohammed a child molester?” If her account is true, it was an extremely douchey thing to do on the part of the film maker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who is a U.S. citizen and who cobbled together Innocence of Muslims as a crude anti-Islam propaganda piece. Read more
Our souls are in terrible danger from demonic warfare that is is just like HIV, warns Andrée Seu Peterson, writing for WORLD Magazine. An AIDS virus enters the body from outside and very purposefully looks for a T-cell (a white blood cell that should be minding the store against types like him) that is vulnerable. It finds an accommodating “receptor” on it and “attaches itself,” “tricking” the cell into thinking it is bringing nourishment, and then “gaining entry” and releasing its payload of destructive genetic information. So where does Satan come in? It’s when churches no longer choose to (or dare to) discriminate against women who fall in love with women, and men who fall in love with men. That’s the non-microbiology equivalent of AIDS and cancer, says Peterson. Read more
