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Khomeini, Iran, and More Islamic Clerics on Sex With Children
July 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday morning my traffic had enough of a surprise bump to indicate to me one of my posts must have been linked somewhere attention grabbing. With a little sleuthing. I traced the cause back to this Richard Dawkins tweet: User Actions Following Richard DawkinsVerified account@RichardDawkins “@ateisthafiz: pic.twitter.com/AcoqB97yGE” Is this a genuine quote from Ayatollah Khomeini? [Read More...]
What Are You Doing Labor Day Weekend, Pennsylvania?
July 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
I know I will be going to Pittsburgh for Labor Day weekend, August 29-31. I will be speaking at the 2014 Pennsylvania Atheists/Humanists Conference. I went to the 2013 conference just as an attendee and had a blast, finally met a lot of friends from online, and for the first time met a lot of new cool [Read More...]
Social Pushback On Slurs Does Not Violate Free Speech Rights
July 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
When someone tells you not to call black people “niggers” or women “cunts” or gays “fags” or transgender people “trannies” or the mentally disabled “retards” or your enemies “assholes”, “douchebags”, “idiots”, or “stupid”, etc., this is not a free speech issue. It’s a how-to-use-speech-without-being-abusive issue. I would vociferously defend the legal rights of people to use all [Read More...]
“Why Do We Need Feminism, Shouldn’t We Just Be Humanists and Equalists?”
July 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment
A lot of people say that of course they believe in equality for women, but they oppose feminism. Or they say that they’re not a feminist, they’re a humanist. So why should humanists and egalitarians also be feminists? Why isn’t being a feminist superfluous to egalitarianism and humanism or, even worse, somehow anti-humanist or anti-egalitarian? Let’s start [Read More...]
Why Do We Need Labels Like “Gay”, “Bi”, “Trans”, and “Cis”?
July 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In this post I want to address skepticism about identity labels. I want to deal with people who say things like the following: People shouldn’t have to identify as gay or straight or bi, they should just be people. Or People shouldn’t identify as gay or bi because that’s defining yourself by who you want [Read More...]
Nietzsche, New Atheism, and Me
July 15, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Every now and then a religious apologist comes along and bashes the New Atheists for being far shallower than the great atheists of yore. And when they reach into history for shining examples of admirably honest and deep atheists who had something at least worth taking seriously, they invariably laud Nietzsche. David B. Hart devoted [Read More...]
The “Tranny” Debate: A Musing in Two Anecdotes, a Comparison, and a Proposal
July 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
This is a guest post by Das Janssen. Das Janssen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Chicago State University and a member of several of Chicago’s overlapping queer communities. His lifetime quest is to avoid having the last word. The word “tranny” has become the center of a lively debate in recent weeks. Some say the [Read More...]
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