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.
Five years ago, abortion became legal in Victoria, Australia. The law is carefully written to allow women to undergo the procedure without compelling doctors to perform it. Medical professionals who are morally opposed to abortion may refuse (except, as I understand it, in exceedingly rare circumstances where the patient’s life is imminently at risk). They are obligated, under the law, to advise women where to go instead, and the answer can’t be “to hell.” The patient has to be referred to another doctor who can help her. In the words of Daniel Mathews, a pro-choice mathematics lecturer and blogger Down Under, The law thus balances rights of women, on the one hand — rights to autonomous control of their own bodies, self-determination of their own lives, freedom of conscience, and religion — with the rights of doctors to freedom of conscience and religion, on the other. And as a practical matter, physicians certainly need not engage patients in uncomfortable, unwelcome discussions: [They] can simply notify patients of any objection in advance, through a notice in the waiting room or on their website. The Australian Medical Association has even provided templates for this purpose. In 2011, Dan Mathews’ Facebook feed lit up with a discussion that got his attention. The most strident participant was a suburban Australian medical doctor he didn’t even know, a fervent Christian named Jereth Kok. Read more
Back in July, I wrote: In the world of Judaism alone, news reports of child abuse are so numerous that the admirably tenacious and prolific writer Shmarya Rosenberg, who runs the Failed Messiah blog, has a hard time keeping up. There’s actually another Rosenberg who has made it his laser-focused mission to expose this evil — and who’s suffered the consequences. Vice has an interview with Nuchem Rosenberg, a rabbi who throws out an eye-popping guesstimate: Read more
Curiosity, as we all know, killed the cat. It is also responsible for humankind’s fall from paradise (thanks, Eve), for the spread of evil all over the world (great job, Pandora), and for the humiliations suffered by Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Our culture and vernacular are full of ancient warnings against inquisitiveness, but most of us no longer believe in them. On the contrary: Over the past few hundred years, curiosity has gone from an affliction born, supposedly, of vanity and lack of piousness, to a virtue that is celebrated in everything from space exploration to family movies (Hotel Transylvania, The Croods). British author Philip Ball chronicles this journey of liberation in his 2013 book, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. Read more
Fifteen years ago, tired of yobs and hooligans and a perceived decline in civility, British prime minister Tony Blair and his New Labour cabinet cooked up a nasty little legal concoction. It’s called an ASBO. The acronym stands for Anti Social Behavior Order. These civil orders were designed to be issued to people whose unpleasant behavior was not otherwise (easily) prosecutable under U.K. law. And as long as we’re talking about things like vandalism and public urination, no argument here. But soon, British police and magistrates were handing out ASBOs for virtually every behavior that someone, somewhere, disliked, including public cursing, loitering, using (allegedly) racist language, and “being rude to members of the public.” The standard for issuing an ASBO was astonishingly low from the start: anyone thought to be causing “harassment, alarm or distress” could find himself on the wrong end of one. Read more
The other week, staunch Catholic Bridget Kurt took the Pope Francis prayer card down from her fridge and threw it in the trash. “It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Ms. Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in pro-life, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.” That’s from a piece in Sunday’s New York Times that describes conservative Catholics as feeling “abandoned and deeply unsettled.” They despair that after 35 years in which the previous popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, drew clear boundaries between right and wrong, Francis is muddying Catholic doctrine to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Wrote Catholic blogger Steve Skojec of recent papal pronouncements (including one that criticized proselytizing as “solemn nonsense”): Read more
