What’s the best way to rid your school of deeply conscientious teachers? Try drafting a restrictive-and-unusually-specific morality clause. Make it so unrealistic that most teachers will have to lie to follow it. Then sit back and watch some of your best educators leave for reasons of conscience, while keeping the liars on the payroll. It’s hard to blame Catholic-school teachers in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana for choosing to affirm a strict Catholic moral code built into their contracts; after all, their livelihoods are at stake and it’s a tough job market. But at least two professionals affiliated with Our Lady of Fatima, a Lafayette parochial school, have announced their resignation as a direct result of these restrictive clauses. [More…] Read more
Let me say outright what we’re all thinking: If you’re gay, Liberty University is not the right school for you. That’s what one former student thought at first, too; after all, Liberty’s founder, the infamous Jerry Falwell, is perhaps best remembered for founding the anti-gay Moral Majority, claiming that pagans, feminists and gays caused 9/11, and warning of a “homosexual steamroller” that would “literally crush all decent men, women, and children.” (In the years since his passing, the misuse of “literally” in Falwell’s steamroller quote has inspired one of the best Oatmeal comics of all time, but that’s another story.) But in a piece for the Atlantic this week, former Liberty student Brandon Ambrosino says that when he came out as gay at Liberty, he was pleasantly surprised — at least to an extent. Ambrosino followed a girlfriend to Liberty, assuming God had intended for them to eventually get married. As the story often goes, they broke up, and it wasn’t long before Brandon knew he was actually gay. [More…] Read more
Inspired by Crispian Jago, Dehydration Station has made an updated, more complicated, and still-being-revised “Organized Collection of Irrational Nonsense” (click to enlarge): Glad to see Scientology’s position still hasn’t changed. Read more
Earlier tonight, young atheist and science advocate Zack Kopplin appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher. In the clips below, the conversation revolves around climate change, gay marriage, budget cuts, and why the GOP has such a hard time accepting reality: [More…] Read more
Last weekend, at the American Atheists conference, I filmed a few segments for a new documentary film called Refusing My Religion. It’s about pastors who become atheists and the struggles they go through, and you’ll see a lot of familiar faces in this early trailer: [More…] Read more
I thought it was bad when two North Carolina Republican state legislators tried to pass a resolution calling for a state religion. But that was nothing compared to what Katrina R. Jackson, a Democrat from Louisiana, is trying to do. Jackson has introduced House Bill 660, a bill that would “require the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to establish a policy and develop procedures relative to school prayer and the pledge of allegiance.” “Establishing a policy” seems harmless… but Jackson wants more than that. She wants to see the wall between church and state torn down, stomped upon, and replaced with a giant cross. [More…] Read more
Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University just revised (PDF) an important policy at the school: Students of Liberty University… who hold a valid concealed weapons permit recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and who are approved by LUPD to carry a concealed weapon, may possess and carry such concealed weapon on University property and all University facilities except residence halls, and may store the approved weapon in a secured container or compartment in their vehicle while on University property. So students (and staff) who have the easy-to-obtain weapons permit can bring a concealed weapon on campus. [More…] Read more
While we were all sleeping, Bill O’Reilly was replaced by Bizarro Bill O’Reilly (Rill O’Beilly?). Maybe it’s not too weird… The man has previously been known to defy all logic, eliciting this reaction from David Silverman: But here he is in a conversation about gay marriage and he’s… for it? Well, maybe not for it. But he rejects arguments made from religion, that’s for damn sure: [More…] Read more
You may remember the wonderful billboard put up by St-Matthew-in-the-City church based in Auckland, New Zealand last winter: It was their way of supporting LGBT rights and it was as controversial as you might expect. I bring it up because the church is currently selling the billboard at an online auction website (current winning bid: $666.00) and the best part is that they’re responding to the comments people are leaving… [More…] Read more
Even though Roger Ebert didn’t believe in God or the afterlife, that hasn’t stopped cartoonists from drawing him in a place he didn’t believe existed: [More…] Read more
