Right-wingers are up in arms this week after Maybe He’s Not Gay, a horrific “guide” to homosexuality written by extreme homophobe Linda Harvey, was removed from the digital bookshelves of Amazon. It’s not entirely clear why the book’s no longer available on Amazon. Back2Stonewall initially reported that Amazon made the decision themselves after reviewing the book’s borderline abusive content, while Queerty says the publisher made the final call. The anti-gay Illinois Family Institute and the Christian Post say that Harvey herself asked for the book to be taken down after it received an influx of critical reviews from, you know, intelligent and reasonable people. “I saw the rotten reviews, a smear campaign by those who had not read the book, and the publisher attempted to get Amazon to pull the ad hominem reviews, but they were not immediately responsive,” said Harvey. “So, since the book is brand new and I didn’t want it to be harmed by this uninformed and vicious campaign stimulated by ‘gay’ bloggers, I decided to pull the page for now.” Harvey also told CP that Amazon left the option open to put it back online and that she and her publisher “will probably re-post it in the near future.” Jeremy Hooper reported that while the book costs around $10, the toll it will take on the LGBT kids who have to deal with bigoted, toxic parents who read Harvey’s vitriol is far greater. While this is an easy book to judge by its cover, I decided to buy it and dive into it so that 1) no one else has to and 2) we can all see just what we’re dealing with. Is the book really as vile as it sounds? Let’s find out. Read more
Last week, I posted about Ryan J. Bell, an adjunct professor at Azusa Pacific University and Fuller Theological Seminary and a former pastor of a Seventh-day Adventist church. Bell decided to run an experiment where he would live like an atheist for a year while documenting his journey: I criticized the methodology — I don’t think you can even pretend to be an atheist simply by reading books by atheist authors and attending atheist gatherings when your religious beliefs are still somewhere in the back of your mind — but I still applauded the fact that he was exploring atheism and wanted to learn more about it. Unfortunately, exploring faith with a critical eye, as Bell was attempting to do, was a little too much for his employers. Just days after he made his announcement, they fired him until he rededicates himself to Jesus: Read more
Later today, Marty Walsh (below) will be inaugurated as the new mayor of Boston and he was also the guest of honor for an interfaith prayer service yesterday hosted by Rev. Jeffrey Brown: “I think what you’ll see in the celebration tomorrow will be the width and depth of support within the city for the new mayor,” Brown said. “It’s not just the communities of color — it’s also part of that — but it is the big tent of supporters. People may have different ideas for the city but coming together we can find ways we can be one in the city.” We’ve seen these sorts of events before, with atheists pushed to the background as people of faith come together and offer words of encouragement to the new leaders. Even in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings this year, atheists were excluded from the city’s major interfaith service. But this ceremony was different. Read more
When, in the Democratic primary of this past fall, Gwen Goodwin decisively lost her race for a New York City Council position, she decided that her defeat was perhaps the result of supernatural forces. Now Goodwin has filed a million-dollar lawsuit against her winning rival, Melissa Mark-Viverito, alleging the infliction of “emotional distress.” Goodwin charges that under Mark-Viverito’s direction, a mural of a blue rooster’s head balancing on wooden slats was painted on the side of her building. Mark-Viverito was the head of an urban-art campaign launched last summer called Los Muros Hablan (“the walls speak”). The effort celebrates Latino culture by painting murals on walls across the five boroughs. … “According to neighbors of Puerto Rican and other backgrounds, in the Caribbean culture, [the rooster image] constituted a curse and a death threat, as a swastika or a noose would symbolize typically to many Jews or African-Americans,” Goodwin alleges in a Manhattan Supreme Court suit she filed Friday. This is the mural in question. It’s plenty attractive, except maybe for followers of voodoo or Santeria. Read more
Today, claims Trestin Meacham (pictured left, below), he completed two weeks of fasting. That’s a milestone worth pondering. You see, Meacham, a Mormon in Utah, has decided that no food shall pass his lips as long as gays are allowed to get married in Utah. He believes that Utah can nullify the recent federal court ruling [that allowed same-sex marriage] by simply choosing not to follow it. “Jefferson made clear that the courts are not the supreme arbitrators of what is and what is not constitutional. The states also have power,” said Meacham. Read more
A few days ago, I posted about how Tom Hayden (below), Mayor of Flower Mound, Texas, had declared 2014 the “Year of the Bible.” not only did the City Council have no problem with this, there’s a website run by a local church alongside the city that promotes the idea that the Bible is the true Word of God. A page of quotations from notable Americans on the site is filled with the lies of pseudo-historian David Barton, too. A couple of updates on the situation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to Hayden debunking the quotations and telling them what they could do to avoid a lawsuit: Instead of issuing a proclamation celebrating a specific religion text, you and the Town Council should instead issue a proclamation celebrating our freedom of conscience, or that our nation invented the separation of state and church. At the very least, the Town of Flower Mound must take action to disassociate itself from the website that was promoted during the proclamation and send a clear message to all Town of Flower Mound residents that the government does not favor Christianity over other religions or religion over nonreligion. In addition, Daniel Moran, an atheist activist running for Texas State Representative (who grew up in Flower Mound), made a video rebuttal to Hayden’s proclamation: Read more
A report on CNN’s website by Katie Engelhart claims that there’s a schism in the “atheist church” (*cue dramatic music*) that could even lead to the collapse of the movement: So popular was the premise, so bright the promise, that soon the Sunday Assembly was ready to franchise, branching out into cities such as New York, Dublin and Melbourne. “It’s a way to scale goodness,” declared Sanderson Jones, a standup comic and co-founder of The Sunday Assembly, which calls itself a “godless congregation.” But nearly as quickly as the Assembly spread, it split, with New York City emerging as organized atheism’s Avignon. In October, three former members of Sunday Assembly NYC announced the formation of a breakaway group called Godless Revival. … The squabbles led to a tiff and finally a schism between two factions within Sunday Assembly NYC. Jones reportedly told Moore that his faction was no longer welcome in the Sunday Assembly movement. Moore promises that his group, Godless Revival, will be more firmly atheistic than the Sunday Assembly, which he now dismisses as “a humanistic cult.” This is a complete non-story, a media invention, just a personality conflict involving two conflicting views of what atheists may want out of a community. Here’s the Venn diagram of people who may be interested in either one of these groups: There aren’t a lot of people who would have to make a huge decision here. Now, let’s take a broader view: The number of atheists affected by this “schism” is roughly somewhere in the low double-digits. Read more
Ark Encounter, the Creationist theme park that was supposed to break ground in 2011, has hit yet another snafu: Read more
Back in October, Christopher Schaeffer announced his candidacy for election to the Pomfret Town Board in New York. He was elected the following month and was sworn in Thursday. Why is any of that relevant to the rest of you? Because of how Schaeffer took his oath of office: With a strainer on his head as a representative of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster: When the OBSERVER asked afterward why he wore a colander on his head, Schaeffer said he was a minister with an even more unique organization – the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. “It’s just a statement about religious freedom,” he said. “It’s a religion without any dogma.” Fantastic 🙂 Read more
You may recall the story of Margaret Doughty, the 64-year-old who was denied citizenship in America because she was an atheist. When asked if she would “take up arms in defense of the United States,” she told them she would not because her moral convictions as an atheist prevented her from fighting in a war. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) initially told her that if she had a “conscientious objection,” it had to be on religious grounds and not moral ones. But they eventually caved in after an internet uproar and some help from a Republican representative from Tennessee. The Humanists of Houston invited Doughty to speak about her life and the controversy at an event in November and her speech is now up online: Read more
