Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Back in 2013, when the Ohio legislature was considering a budget bill that contained some onerous abortion restrictions, reproductive rights advocates urged supporters to ask the Governor to line-item veto the restrictions. At the time he seemed he hadn’t decided what he would do but in the end he let the restrictions stand. Administration emails, recently obtained by the AP, show the Governor’s staff helped write the restrictions. The Governor lied about being neutral.
Senator Rand Paul, a ‘libertarian’ darling, is running for President. Some on the left and some progressives seem to love him because he supports a few liberal issues like being against a Big Brother style government and against war. It’s dangerous to support a candidate running for a national office, like President, based only on a couple of narrow issues, especially ones that won’t help 90% of the rest of the country. It might be fun to get high with him but then you would need to put up with his non-liberal views on women, religion, and civil rights.
Most progressive love for Rand Paul goes like this recent exchange on Democracy Now!:
Back on March 11th, Hemant Mehta, over at his Friendly Atheist blog, had a guest post by Kristine Kruszelnicki that attempted to give some secular arguments against abortion. Naturally Mehta received some heat for the post. However his need to ‘debate’ abortion didn’t include allowing a rebuttal from the group Secular Woman. I agree with Secular Woman that abortion shouldn’t be debated like some kind of flavor of ice cream.
Kruszelnicki’s post was a response to a comment American Atheist President David Silverman made to a reporter that there were secular arguments against abortion.
As much as I get frustrated about the unnecessary backlash against atheist feminists, it makes me even more upset to see some well meaning opponents of feminism in the movement who fail to learn from history. Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry and the executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, points out the work of women on the front lines in the struggle of freethought in the last 40 years of the 20th century. Women have led the major atheist groups from the 1960’s to the present.
The second Women in Secularism Conference was held in Washington, DC this weekend. The conference is a response to the struggle inside secular groups to reach out and encourage more participation by women. There has been a vocal minority of mostly men who have taken it upon themselves to defend the dominance of males and male-centric attitudes in the various secular groups. This political “debate”, at times, has not been respectful or rational. It seems the President and CEO of the conference sponsor, Center for Inquiry (CFI), Ronald A. Lindsay decided to use his opening remarks to light a match in the vapor enriched environment then complain when he got caught in the firestorm. I would hope he has learned how a community leader should NOT respond to criticism.
