equality
pharyngula | February 5, 2011The other day, this comic was posted on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Would you believe those crazy conservatives at the National Organization for Marriage — those blinkered bozos who think letting gays marry will destroy the fabric of society — posted it on their forums?
It's rather strange — the comic shows a bunch of kids who are aghast at the weird old fashioned way babies used to be made. The humor in it is that you have to realize that they aren't at all horrified by their technology, but find the old ways incomprehensible. It's actually mocking the rigid antiques, but NOM just…
pharyngula | February 2, 2011I've often wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with an insect — a creature that shares no moral or rational assumptions with me. Now I've seen something close, at least, a fellow named Seth, discussing his obligations to his partners in sex. Basically, he feels none. It's a long ranty comment, and much of it is more explicit than I'd rather post here, but it amounts to insisting that pregnancy and abortion are all the woman's responsibility, because it is her fault that she demanded a penis enter her vagina.
You want a man inside you, it's up to you to deal with the mess…
pharyngula | January 27, 2011Uganda is currently undergoing conflict over civil rights: a number of influential Christians in the country, under the influence of American evangelicals like Scott Lively and Rick Warren, have been pushing to have homosexuality condemned and people who love other people of the same sex arrested or executed. It's an ugly place where the dreams of the Christian right are actually being realized, but of course our evangelical leaders are denying their responsibility. Just last night on CNN I caught a bit of a nauseating interview with Joel Osteen, the smirking prosperity gospel pitchman, and…
pharyngula | January 15, 2011I don't suppose, given the reaction to a simple demonstration, that my suggestion that this video be shown in all high school sex ed classes will get much traction.
Lyrics not safe for work; if you're at home, turn it up!
Don't turn it off before you hear the message at the end, either.
pharyngula | December 18, 2010I'm so used to our do-nothing Democrats accomplishing nothing that I'm pleasantly surprised that they actually managed to repeal the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy afflicting our military. Congratulations, gay servicepeople!
Unfortunately, now we have to worry about marines' legs falling off, and Fox News has gone whining to popular opinion with a poll (big numbers there, we probably won't budge it much).
Will Ending 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Affect America's Ability to Defend Itself?
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/12/18/decide-dont-ask-dont-tell-military-gays/#ixzz18V7Ahe00
No…
pharyngula | November 30, 2010Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya has called for the arrest of all gay couples in the country. He's probably been listening to the American Christian evangelicals who've been busily poisoning Africa for the last century or so — the West has been such a blight on that continent for so long. Anyway, what's interesting is his rationale for outlawing gays — anti-gay ideology goes hand-in-hand with a dismissive view of women.
The premier thrilled the crowd in a largely conservative country when he asserted that the country's recent census showed there were more women than men and there was no…
pharyngula | November 24, 2010So, various factions at the United Nations have been pushing for anti-blasphemy motions — after all, we can't go around picking on weak ideas. But do you know who the UN thinks are fair game? Non-heterosexual people.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people were once again subject to the whims of homophobia and religious and cultural extremism this week, thanks to a United Nations vote that removed "sexual orientation" from a resolution that protects people from arbitrary executions. In other words, the UN General Assembly this week voted to allow LGBT people to be executed without…
pharyngula | November 12, 2010Oh, my…I think every postman ought to be equipped with a video camera to record their interactions with customers, even though sometimes it may be horrific.
pharyngula | November 10, 2010So far, this sounds so much like the Constance McMillen story: school has a big dance event, young lady wants to go with a date, the school tells her she can't because her date is also a young lady. This time, though, the story is set in Australia rather than Mississippi. I know there are many fine people in Mississippi, but trust us on this one, you shouldn't copy the social mores of one of the poorer and more benighted states in the US.
Savannah Supski was told that she couldn't bring her date, Hannah Williams, to her school's formal, and the principal is amazingly clueless. She claims she…
pharyngula | November 8, 2010The Pope has been touring Spain for the last few days (I wonder how much that has cost the country), trying to drum up some fervor for Catholicism in a country which was once the devout heartland of the faith, but is now reduced to being only nominally Catholic with just 15% of those calling themselves Catholic actually bothering to go to church. The revenue stream is drying up! Must get the suckers into the pews!
The most amusing episode in the tour is that a mob of gays and lesbians lined one of his parade routes to stage a kiss-in. Those militant radicals! Now they've resorted to…
pharyngula | November 2, 2010The Ms magazine blog has an awful little article on the New Atheists that completely misses the point. It's about the sexes and atheism, of course, but it has little to say except to whine that the New Atheism is just like the old religion, and gosh, look at all those Old White Guys in the fore. Yes, we know; the visible leadership of atheism right now is largely male, but it's not because they pushed aside the women. The New Atheism is really dominated right now by senior academic types, which means that we are the lucky survivors of the old all-pervasive sexism that we're seeing so well-…
pharyngula | October 29, 2010Hey, I've seen this phenomenon a few times.
Read the whole thing. It's got a happy (?) ending! With a kitten!
pharyngula | October 27, 2010These are the words of Clint McCance, a school board member in the Midland school district of Arkansas. He was a little bit annoyed that people in his school were wearing purple in remembrance of students who had been bullied into suicide.
Being a fag doesn't give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then don't tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die.…
pharyngula | October 27, 2010This is a very poor quality recording of a group of fraternity pledges marching about the Yale campus chanting. You should be able to make out what they're chanting, though: "No means yes, yes means anal."
These privileged man-children made it a point to march past various sororities letting the women know exactly what to expect from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity; the president of the frat has since apologized, calling it a "lapse in judgment".
I don't think so. I think it goes deeper than that: this was a lifelong failure, the result of a poor upbringing that generates bully-boys who…
pharyngula | October 21, 2010Mike Adams must really hate the "It gets better" campaign, which is trying to give gay kids some hope, rather than letting them die of despair. Being Mike Adams, though, the only way he can deal with it is by lying. So he writes an essay in which he describes eight heterosexual kids who were hounded into suicide by homosexuals, just for parities sake, I guess.
Only he didn't. All eight cases are based on true events of young Republican nitwits getting slapped down for anti-homosexual bigotry…but the part where Adams says "and then they killed themselves"? Total fabrication. In every case,…
pharyngula | October 13, 2010So…not all Texans are dumbass crackers. It's good to be reassured about that now and then.
pharyngula | October 11, 2010It's a standing joke that the most homophobic ranters are likely to turn up in the news some day getting their luggage lifted. As it turns out, though, some of them face a fate that's even sadder.
Remember Jonathan Katz, the physicist who briefly held an advisory position with the Obama administration until his online essay declaring that he was proud to be a homophobe made the news? He raved about how homosexuality was simply disgusting and people with "unnatural desires" need to learn to repress them, for their own good and to prevent disease from spreading through the population.
Surprise…
pharyngula | October 5, 2010By now, everyone knows that the hateful gerontocracy of the Mormon Church was on proud display by Boyd Packer. Besides the message of ignorance he's passing on, this video also reveals something we became familiar with in our years of living in Utah: the leadership of the church is really a collection of feeble-minded, doddering old fools, who frighteningly have an audience that thinks they're wonderful, no matter what they say.
A Salt Lake City television station is running a poll on whether the audience agrees with that benighted homophobia. The numbers aren't as bad as I expected, but…
pharyngula | September 29, 2010Anderson Cooper nailed Andrew Shirvell. Shirvell has been on a long-running crusade against a fellow named Chris Armstrong, creating a blog called "Chris Armstrong Watch" (always a bad sign), picketing his house, monitoring his facebook page, making wild accusations that Armstrong is abusing his power, etc., etc., etc. Shirvell is the perfect picture of insanity. He's so out of control that he was invited to appear on CNN, presumably because crazy haters make good copy.
Shirvell acknowledged protesting outside of Armstrong's house and calling him "Satan's representative on the student…
pharyngula | September 27, 2010Minnesota should be embarrassed to have two organizations targeting our elections with the goal of blocking the possibility of gay marriage. The Nincompoops Opposing Marriage (NOM) is campaigning for the Rethuglican candidate for governor, Tom Emmers, while the Catholic church is sending out DVDs whining about gays. But they're both following the same playbook: they're making these pious, earnest appeals that it's only fair that the issue be put to a vote, and they're sounding exactly like the creationists, who make similar pleas for their pseudoscience.
What they so blithely ignore, though,…