As you know if you follow me on Twitter, last night I was on TV, being interviewed by Thom Hartmann for his show The Big Picture. I had a short segment discussing my latest AlterNet column on harassment of church-state plaintiffs. Watch it below: My appearance is at around 45 minutes into the show. If you'd like to skip directly to it, you can use this link. … [Read more...]
About Adam Lee
Adam Lee is an atheist writer and speaker living in New York City. His first book, Daylight Atheism, is available in paperback and e-book. Read his full bio, or follow him on Twitter.
New on AlterNet: Harassment of Church-State Plaintiffs
May 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
My latest column is now up on AlterNet, Outrageous Attacks on Supporters of Church-State Separation: Death Threats, Murdered Pets, and Vandalized Property. In it, I report on the campaigns of harassment, persecution, and even criminal violence that are all too often waged against First Amendment advocates in religious areas of the country. Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the rest: As often happens in these cases, FFRF plaintiffs asked to have their identities concealed … [Read more...]
Women in Secularism 2 Wrap-Up
May 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment
This past weekend, I was in Washington, D.C. for the second Women in Secularism conference, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry. As promised, here's my report. I was expecting the conference to be overwhelmingly attended by women, but I was pleasantly surprised that there was only a slight majority of women over men, maybe 55-45 or 60-40. That could just be a consequence of the fact that men generally outnumber women in the secular movement, but I don't think so, since I'm told the first WiS … [Read more...]
Some Sadly Necessary Remarks on the #wiscfi Intro
May 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Hey everyone - I'm checking in from the final day of the Women in Secularism 2 convention in Washington, D.C. I'm going to write a full wrap-up later (and I enjoyed it enormously, I want to be very clear about that), but there's something that cast a cloud over this weekend, and I want to clear the air about it first. Although every other speaker this weekend was a woman, as you'd expect at a conference about women in secularism, Ron Lindsay, the president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, … [Read more...]
Atlas Shrugged: Regulatory Capture
May 17, 2013 By 13 Comments
Atlas Shrugged, p.48-53 Orren Boyle, Jim Taggart, Hank's friend Paul Larkin, and someone named Wesley Mouch are having a conversation over drinks in a bar on top of a skyscraper in New York City. Boyle is complaining bitterly about being snubbed by Taggart Transcontinental, insisting that his failure to deliver the rail they needed isn't his fault. "My purpose," said Orren Boyle, "is the preservation of a free economy.... Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social … [Read more...]
Speaking Out Against Hate Directed at Women
May 15, 2013 By 11 Comments
This post originally appeared on Skepchick. Since the Women in Secularism 2 conference is this weekend, it seemed appropriate to repost it. There's one thing that just about every atheist activist agrees on, which is that religion has always treated women as inferior. Whether it's demonizing them as evil temptresses who brought sin into the world, demanding their silence and subordination, or treating them as male property with no desires of their own, every major church has a litany of … [Read more...]
The Political Dominance of Fundamentalism
May 13, 2013 By 21 Comments
Last week, Alex Knapp and I got into a friendly debate on Twitter about whether it's fair to stereotype conservative and fundamentalist religion as representative of religion generally. I wanted to flesh out some of my arguments there with additional data. I wish it were true that the religious left and the religious right were equally influential. If they were, they'd usually balance each other out, and there would be little reason for atheists to worry about undue religious influence in … [Read more...]
Weekend Coffee: Snap Responses to Current Events
May 11, 2013 By 4 Comments
In the Times this week, Israel's ultra-Orthodox rabbis are enforcing gender apartheid by sending their own women and girls to flood the Wailing Wall plaza, so that women who actually want to pray there can't get in: “They’re trying to change the religion and politics in Israel — they should do that in the Knesset and not at the Kotel,” Ms. Beskin said, using the Hebrew terms for Israel’s Parliament and the Western Wall. “The rules should be, honestly, just respect the tradition … [Read more...]
Atlas Shrugged: Corporate Philanthropy
May 10, 2013 By 118 Comments
I've got one more point to make about Hank Rearden, and then we'll move on to the next scene. Hank's brother, Philip, asks him to donate money to a charity he's working for, an group called "Friends of Global Progress": Rearden had never been able to keep track of the many organizations to which Philip belonged, nor to get a clear idea of their activities. He had heard Philip talking vaguely about this one for the last six months. It seemed to be devoted to some sort of free lectures on … [Read more...]
Building Walls Against the World
May 8, 2013 By 6 Comments
When I wrote last month about France enacting same-sex marriage, it wasn't even on my radar that two more U.S. states were about to do the same. But now, Rhode Island (which previously had civil unions) has graduated to full marriage equality, becoming the tenth state to do so, and Delaware followed right after. With this passage, every New England state now stands united in recognizing the humanity of same-sex couples. What makes this especially heartening is that Rhode Island is the … [Read more...]
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