The Humanist: September/October 2012

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MULTIPLE FRONTS: Can secular feminists hold strong in the conservative war on women while simultaneously liberating their own movement?

USA $4.75  CAN $5.75

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UM GL AN OR IST IA IN ST TER EI VIE NE W M W

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HERE COME THE SECULAR WOMEN

with Susan Jacoby, Sikivu Hutchinson, Greta Christina, Jennifer Kalmanson, Cleo Kocol, and Gloria Steinem SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012

Florynce Kennedy (1916-2000)

You’ve got to rattle your cage door. You’ve got to let them know that you’re in there, and that you want out. Make noise.

Cause trouble.

You may not win right away, but you’ll sure have a lot more fun.

—Florynce Kennedy

Image from Reclaim the Media’s Media Heroes Trading Cards series: www.reclaimthemedia.org/ mediaheroes.

An unconventional civil rights lawyer and feminist, Florynce Rae Kennedy was born on February 11, 1916, to Zella and Wiley Kennedy. Her father was a Pullman porter and waiter who later owned a taxi service and, other than his brief encounter with the Ku Klux Klan, was able to provide a secure childhood for his five daudhters in Kansas City, Missouri. “Our parents had us so convinced we were precious that by the time I found out I was nothing, it was already too late,” Kennedy said. “I knew I was something.”

In 1934 Kennedy graduated with high honors from Lincoln High School, but instead of going to college, she opened a hat shop with her sister and worked odd jobs, including singing on a radio show. She later organized a boycott against a local bottling facility after it refused to hire black drivers, an event that sparked her fervor for social justice.

After her mother died in 1942, Kennedy moved with her sister Grayce to New York City and enrolled in the pre-law program at Columbia University in 1944, graduating with honors four years later. True to her personality, she resisted encouragement to become a teacher and instead applied to Columbia Law School. At first she was denied admission (she later wrote that the associate dean had told her it wasn’t because she was black, but because she was a woman), however Kennedy threatened to sue and was admitted. In 1951 she became only the second African-American woman to graduate from Columbia. She passed the New York Bar in 1952 and opened her own practice in 1954.

An interesting departure from Kennedy’s sovereign nature was her 1957 marriage to Charles Dudley Rye, a Welsh writer ten years her junior. The marriage was short-lived, as Kennedy grew tired of nuptial restrictions and of her husband’s alcoholism. He died shortly after the divorce.

Civil rights activists, black libertarians, the estates of jazz greats Billie Holiday and Charlie

Parker—Kennedy represented these clients and more. The bigotry she faced in the courts, however, caused her to doubt whether practicing law could affect social change, a concern she outlined in her 1976 autobiography Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times. Still, Kennedy persevered. In her signature cowboy hat and pink sunglasses, she participated in anti-Vietnam War protests and picketed big businesses. In 1966 she created the Media Workshop to combat discrimination in the media. She encouraged black and white women to fight oppression together, often traveling and speaking with Gloria Steinem.

In addition to the Women’s Political Caucus and the National Black Feminist Organization, Kennedy started the national Feminist Party in 1971, which nominated Representative Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, for president. She even challenged the Roman Catholic Church’s campaign against abortion, insisting the church had violated the Constitution’s separation of church and state. “It’s interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy flourished as a lecturer, TV host—The Flo Kennedy Show ran from 1978 to 1995—and director of consumer rights organizations before her health declined. She spent her later years in a wheelchair and, on December 22, 2000, died in her Manhattan apartment at the age of eighty-four.

Never content with complacency, Flo Kennedy brazenly advocated for oppressed human beings of all kinds. And she was never apologetic. “I’m just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady with a fused spine and three feet of intestines missing and a lot of people think I’m crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I’m not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren’t like me.”

HUMANISM is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion. Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports liberty and opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. Free of theism and other supernatural beliefs, humanism thus derives the goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny.

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Contents September/October Volume 72, Number 5

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47

Features 12

A Woman’s Place?

Women who break away from social and cultural conventions risk greater ostracism and moral stigma than do men (such as being labeled a slut, a fallen woman, or a bad mother).

—Page 21

The Dearth of Women in the Secular Movement

by Susan Jacoby PLUS: The Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association

by Cleo Fellers Kocol

21

The “Return” of the Welfare Queens

Feminism, Secularism, and Anti-Racism

by Sikivu Hutchinson

24

The Humanist Interview with Gloria Steinem

by Jennifer Bardi

32

Nonreligious and Pro-life

The New Normal or Same Old, Same Old?

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

36

Free Will and the Anders Breivik Trial

by Sarah Lucas

36

www.thehumanist.org

Columns 40 CHURCH & STATE

Building Bridges or Blowing Them Up? Secular Americans and the Future of Humanist Activism

by Rob Boston

42 FIERCE HUMANISM

How Confrontationalism Can Open Doors

by Greta Christina

44 HUMANISM 101

Interpersonal Dimensions of Humanism

by Michael Werner

45 SCIENCE WATCH

Higgsology

by Phillip F. Schewe

Cover illustration by Molly Stone Cover design by Lisa Zangerl Top left photo by Jenny Warburg Bottom left © Effectteam | Dreamstime.com

September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

1

Contents Departments 3

Editor’s Note

5

Letters

6

Up Front

Let’s Deal with It! A Rational Response to Sexual Harassment in Secular Spheres

by Jennifer Kalmanson

1Flesh: Putting the “Sexy” Back in Abstinence

by Nina Goodwine

46

Poetry

“The Assistant Professor of Physics”

by Franz K. Baskett

47

In Memoriam

Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

by Fabian Bouthillette

48

Worth Noting

by Karen Ann Gajewski

THE FIRST-EVER WOMEN IN SECULARISM conference, hosted by the Center for Inquiry (CFI), was held May 18-20 in Washington, DC. It focused on the history of women in secular movements, the challenges women face today, and what lies ahead. In the photo at the top, Jessica Ahlquist (right), the high school student who challenged her school’s display of a prayer banner, meets researcher Linda LaScola of the Clergy Project.

Above, Syrian human rights activist Wafa Sultan discusses “Women in Islam,” and Edwina Rogers (bottom left), executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, talks about SCA’s future plans.

Below, CFI’s Melody Hensley (right) poses with long-time secular activist and conference presenter Margaret Downey.

PHOTOS BY BRIAN D. ENGLER

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www.americanhumanist.org

editor’s note W

E ARE NOT at war with men,” writes the new co-chair of the American Humanist Association’s Feminist Caucus, Zelda Gatuskin. “We are at war with history—a history defined by a patriarchy so tenacious and entrenched it feels almost dangerous to say the word aloud.” True that. And yes, with increasing restrictions on women’s reproductive freedom, rising poverty, and the deteriorating myth of “having it all,” it does sometimes feel as if women are being sucked back, or are somehow stuck, in time.

There was a time, not long ago, when people wondered why a liberal group like the AHA needed a feminist caucus at all. Wasn’t the entire organization inherently feminist in its outlook and its goals? humanists asked. But as Cleo Fellers Kocol states in her brief “herstory” of the Feminist Caucus, we need it now more than ever, primarily because American women in general haven’t achieved equality, and because secular women still haven’t leveled the playing field of their own movement.

Young secular women seem to be the most misunderstood. On the one hand, they’re apparently way into sex and black clothing. (In a radio interview with a Secular Student Alliance member from the University of Nebraska-Omaha, conservative radio host Scott Voorhees opined: “You know why the Christian kids helped you out in your debate? Because atheist chicks are easy.

And a lot of them are goth and hot.”) On the other hand, young female skeptics are dubbed prudes or feminazis for complaining about sexism and about unwanted, sometimes creepy sexual attention from folks at secular gatherings. (For the record, I think nice invitations are nice and pestering is pathetic.)

Meanwhile, a recent article in the Atlantic

by Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor and former high-ranking State Department policy advisor, went viral as readers weighed in on whether “having it all” (in terms of family and a fulfilling career) has set the bar impossibly high or whether women can and should www.thehumanist.org

work as hard as they can to clear it. “Women of my generation have clung to the feminist credo we were raised with,” Slaughter wrote, “because we are determined not to drop the flag for the next generation. But when many members of the younger generation have stopped listening, on the grounds that glibly repeating ‘you can have it all’ is simply airbrushing reality, it is time to talk.”

On top of that, the novel Fifty Shades of Grey has become the fastest selling paperback of all time. Classified as “mommy porn” for its popularity among middle-aged and older women (although those in their 20s and 30s are also big fans) it’s widely considered a poorly written romance novel in which the heroine agrees to be the submissive in a sadomasochistic relationship and loves it. Readers report a sense of liberation in their enjoyment of the book.

No wonder no one seems to know what feminism means anymore! If you’re curious about what it means to humanists, we give you… our feminissue. From the recent implementation of sexual harassment policies at secular conferences to the new abstinence pushers, from the intersection of feminism and racism, to the history of women in the secular movement, I’m thrilled with the stellar lineup of women herein (surely featuring more female writers, designers, illustrators, and organizers than any single issue of this magazine ever has before), all anchored by the amazing Gloria Steinem. The chance to sit down with her was a career highlight for me, and as you read that interview, I’m sure you’ll agree she’s still got it: the wisdom, the humor, the warmth, and the bite. And for male readers who think this issue isn’t for them: think again. Because it isn’t for man-haters. It isn’t about man-haters. It’s about women-lovers. And it’s where the womenlovers are at.

—Jennifer Bardi

September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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Humanist —DO YOU?

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THE HUMANIST | September - October 2012

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Letters Putting Scientists in Their Place?

“Nobody ever went into convulsions and died because they stopped having sex.” ­­—Valerie White Sharon, MA

Questionable Drone Attack

Armed and Humanist

As a long-time Humanist subscriber and a retired USAF colonel, I was left shaking my head after reading David Swanson’s “Drones in U.S. Flight Paths: What Could Go Wrong?” (J/A 2012).

What could go wrong is an author writing a piece that presents his uninformed views masquerading as fact.

For example, Swanson erroneously suggests a Navy drone can self-destruct simply by touching the space bar on a computer keyboard. In fact, this is only the first of several necessary actions. In his best “Chicken Little” alarm, Swanson insinuates unmanned aircraft are unsafe because they crash. So do manned aircraft, often with many people on board, but with more than 3 million hours of operation, unmanned military aircraft haven’t caused a single casualty due to mechanical failure or other accidents.

And then there are the unsubstantiated claims that the programs lack oversight and that congressional members are being bribed both by the Defense Department and private companies.

As a career military person and Fourth Amendment advocate, I’d like to see an end to all wars too, but this one-sided attack on civil and military unmanned aerial vehicle programs wasn’t informative and likely won’t sway many opinions.

In response to Tina Dupuy (“Trust Me: You Believe in Gun Control,” J/A 2012): trust me, if you research the issue you won’t. I used to be in favor of gun control until I became interested in the issue and studied it for myself. Dupuy states, “making gun ownership unlimited doesn’t make us safer. It’s a lie. A fairy tale of the gun lobby. Completely unsupported by data or logic. A falsehood.” This statement is a lie. The writings of our founders support the gun rights interpretation of the Second Amendment, and most of the social science research along with sound reasoning actually support the position of the gun lobby.

As a humanist I revere life and freedom, as should all humanists. Because of these values I believe that I have a moral duty to remain armed so that I can protect my own life, the lives of my loved ones, and the lives of my fellow citizens. I urge all fellow humanists not to trust me but to verify for themselves.

You may be surprised at what you find.

By the way, the NRA was founded in 1871, not 1870, and it is the oldest civil rights organization in the United States.

I found Ryan Shaffer’s interview with Richard Leakey (“Evolution, Humanism, and Conservation,” J/A 2012) quite interesting, but one statement

by Leakey disturbed me—that he is an atheist. Reference was also made to the atheistic beliefs of Richard Dawkins, whose insistence on atheism I find equally disturbing.

The basis of my thought is that God is supernatural. Scientists can only study natural phenomena, therefore, there can be no scientifically valid datum regarding the existence or nonexistence of God. As a result, the belief in God or atheism must be nothing more than a faith position. This is not a criticism of non-scientists who are atheists, nor do I wish to separate myself from atheists in the political and social realm, for we all have the same problems dealing with prejudice. However, if a scientist chooses to be a believer in God or an atheist, I believe that he or she has the responsibility to state that this is based on faith, not science.

John Hendrix Ft. Collins, CO

Sex Talk Thank you for Marty Klein’s fine piece on the misguided use of the word “addiction” to describe sexual conduct (“You’re Addicted to What? Challenging the Myth of Sex Addiction,” J/A 2012). Those of us who have suffered physiological addiction tend to resent the application of the word “addiction” to the exercise of poor judgment regarding sex. Nobody ever went into convulsions and died because they stopped having sex.

Valerie White Sharon, MA

Joseph F. Boetcher Las Vegas, NV

Ken Lynn Fleetwood, NC www.thehumanist.org

September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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Up Front Let’s Deal with It! A Rational Response to Sexual Harassment in Secular Spheres

by Jennifer Kalmanson At one point in my career as an engineer in the aerospace industry, my duties included delivering training for, and ensuring compliance with, our organization’s sexual harassment policy. As you may imagine, the emotional responses from my all-male team varied widely: from resigned patience that this was yet another box to check, to pure indignation that they’d somehow have to stop being what they thought of as male to appease corporate management. Neither response fit my intentions for the course, and no one on my team walked away from that training feeling threatened as a male. Why? Because I focused on how the company’s policy is there to uphold the laws of the land, and on why those laws exist as they do.

The rationale is this: if companies and organizations want to grow and meet their objectives, they need to provide an environment that all participants, male and female, customer and employee, vendor and guest, find safe

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THE HUMANIST | September - October 2012

and non-threatening. Sounds easy, right? Well, what about that cute intern you always seem to find an excuse to ask a favor of? What about the associate who expresses an interest in you when you’re alone with him on the elevator? Do these scenarios constitute harassment, or just normal human interactions?

Here’s where the law helps us— in directly negotiating the issue in a work environment, but also indirectly informing how we approach behavior in other settings where adults come into contact with each other.

It gives us tools to take an emotional topic like human interaction and put some logical filters on so we can make rational decisions about what behavior is appropriate, and what behavior isn’t. Notice I call out behavior, not attitudes. People can think or feel however they please about others but when those internal mental processes get externalized as harmful speech or actions, it’s a problem.

As I understand it, most U.S. state laws and federal law classify two types of sexual harassment in a work setting: 1) Quid pro quo, and 2) a hostile work environment.

In cases of quid pro quo, something is offered or threatened in order to obtain sexual favors: a security guard promises not to revoke the parking permits of several female employees in exchange for dates; the boss’s niece offers to put in a good word in exchange for a broom-closet affair; or someone from another department whom you desire sexually offers to give his or her body to you if you help them get a promotion.

All of these behaviors are illegal, and for very good reasons. Perhaps foremost, no one wants to feel like an objectified piece of sexual meat. We all want to be valued as individuals for the contributions we make to help our organization as a whole get ahead, not just to see that our bosses receive sexual favors. Flipping that around, no one wants his or her legitimate success to be viewed as ill-gotten gains from having slept around with the right influential players. We all want to be rewarded fairly for our efforts, and we want others to recognize the validity of the rewards we reap.

Most of us can agree to this point.

However, it’s the second type of harassment, the hostile work environment, which is a concept some find threatening in ways they can’t articulate. Partly that’s because no one seems to intuitively understand what a “hostile work environment” means. If I tell an offcolor joke and everyone laughs, did I just create a hostile work environment?

If I’ve got a picture of my husband in a tight bathing suit on my desk, is that creating a hostile work environment?

This is where the law got murky for me. My best understanding of a hostile work environment is one in which someone else feels threatened, intimidated, or offended, or in which a reasonable person should expect othwww.americanhumanist.org

Seen & Heard ers to feel threatened, intimidated, or offended. So here we have the chilling fear of having to second-guess the thinness of our colleagues’ skins to avoid committing sexual harassment. In my own experience implementing a sexual harassment policy, I had to find some way to help my team understand that this wasn’t an attack on their personalities, and to validate their own stake in valuing a non-threatening workplace—men shouldn’t have to put up with feeling intimidated any more than women should. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that by agreeing to a common set of boundaries within our common context, they were buying into a system that would protect them as well.

So what does this have to do with humanism and other secular movements? Over the past year or so, a seething discussion of how to handle inappropriate behavior at secular conferences and events has erupted into a sudden series of changes in tone and policy among the major players.

The topic of women feeling threatened sexually in the secular community or discriminated against because of their gender has caught fire in various online forums, including at websites like Skepchick.org and PZ Myers’ Pharyngula, and it was also discussed at the recent Women in Secularism Conference hosted by the Center for Inquiry in May. In a follow-up piece to her September 2011 Religion News Service dispatch, “Do Atheists Have a Sexism Problem?” Kimberly Winston recently asked, “Do Atheists Have a Sexual Harassment Problem?”

“Nontheists—both male and female —have shared stories of unwanted sexual attention at nontheist gatherings, including propositions for sex and unwelcome touching,” Winston wrote.

“Chatter has ranged from calls for more women to attend nontheist events to personal attacks on prominent female skeptics for discussing harassment.”

The response to all this airing of dirty laundry has been overwhelmwww.thehumanist.org

If the recipient of a friendly, nonpressuring, noninstitutional (and OK, let’s say clumsy or even stupid) se xu al invitation isn’t gr own up enough , she (or he) will feel assa ulted. And with today’s heightened cons ciousness—and Internet access—she will have the op tion of describing hersel f as victimized to a large number of peop le. … Unwanted attention—whether se xual or non-sexu part of the cost al—is of stepping outs ide your front do … The whole id or. ea that women need to be protec discomfort, or fr ted from om men, or from sex, is a giant st wards. Obvious ep backly, sexual violen ce and coercion and unacceptab are horrible le realities in co ntemporary soci need special rule ety. But if we s to comfort or pr otect anyone re this reality, mod minded of ern life will com e to a screeching will be women w halt. And it ho will suffer mos t from this ‘prote ction.’

— Dr. Marty Klein “Sexual Harassm , in a June 14, 2012, Psychology Toda ent—Or Unwan ted Sexual Atten y blog post titled, tion?”

“Having review ed several act ual and proposed anti-ha rassment polic ies for skeptic freethought co / nferences, I ha ve three primary concer ns that I belie ve need to b addressed for e I fear the pen d ulum is swing ing to the poi nt of overly re strictive policie for behaviors s among peers . Other than these concerns , I think the p roposed policies look exce llent in gener al and would be wonderful additions to th e movement. … The questio n is what is in nocent unwant harassing unw ed sexual atte anted sexual ntion and wha attention. I am organizations t is not a lawyer, consider lang b ut ua I would sugges ge like this to ual attention will be consid end ambiguity t ered harassm : “Unwanted rejected; or, b ent when: a) se x) it includes th it continues a reats, coercion it is directed fter being or deliberate towards a sub intimidation; or dinate in a hi it is done by so or, c) erarchical org meone who kn anization … ows or should tion will be un or, d) reasonably kn welcome.” ow that the a tten—Todd Stiefe l, president an d founder of th an open letter e St pu tic and freetho blished June 28, 2012, at th iefel Freethought Foundati on, e ught leaders o n the topic of Friendly Atheist addressing sk in harassment po eplicies.

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Up Front

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tations: conference organizers can’t be everywhere at once, and we don’t want such a chilling atmosphere that normal social interactions are awkward and stunted. When we go anywhere else where there are lots of people mingling—a concert or a cruise, for example—we go with an expectation to look after our own safety. We watch our kids. We keep a hand on our purses.

We make sure we’re sober when it’s time to drive home. We also expect that if someone else there crosses our personal boundaries—cops a feel while we’re waiting in line, for example—we will hold that person accountable. If the violation is egregious, we expect prompt and effective intervention by the venue’s organizers and, if needed, law enforcement. If, on the other hand, what a person perceives to be an inappropriate sexual innuendo is just a really clumsy attempt at flirting, we need to be honest enough with ourselves and each other to (a) call the clumsy flirter out on why their remark is so offensive, and then (b) let it go.

It’s only when the offender can’t let it go that any kind of anti-harassment intervention by the conference organizers would be needed or even appropriate.

cartoon

In other words, a sexual harassment policy for a convention will never be a silver bullet that prevents harassment from ever taking place. Rather, in its ideal form it would provide the resources for victims to seek redress, and would put potential offenders on notice that inappropriate behavior won’t be tolerated in our circles.

Like it or not, sexual harassment exists in our larger culture, so it’s not surprising to find behavior so pervasive finding its way into secular events (even those that espouse enlightened thinking, progressive values, and reason-based policies). While different organizations are approaching issues of sexism and sexual harassment from their own perspectives, there isn’t a single one still sitting in the shadows of denial. That, if nothing else, gives me confidence that this is a problem with a solution.

Jennifer Kalmanson is a space systems engineer, a humanist celebrant, and a bottomless well of opinions. She serves on the board of directors of the American Humanist Association, the Institute for Humanist Studies, and the Washington Area Secular Humanists.

Bill Day

BILL DAY, CAGLE CARTOONS

ing: nearly every major secular organization, including the American Humanist Association, has taken steps to implement policies against sexual harassment at conferences and events. While this may seem trivial, it’s not. Having strong anti-harassment employment policies does nothing to protect the organizers or participants at a conference from bad behavior by people not employed by the sponsor.

However, just as in the workplace, we don’t implement anti-harassment policies for the sole sake of complying with the law, but also to create an environment that is conducive to the success of our business. The same is true of our secular community. If we want our movement to succeed, we must make sure that no one is left out (or abstains) solely because of a hostile environment. We just can’t afford the distractions from progress that the culture of harassment produces. As a movement, our viability depends on recognizing and resolving the problems of harassment within our own ranks: inappropriate quid pro quo offers, threats, and intimidation against those who voice unpopular opinions, sexual bullying (both online and at events), and ad hominem speech that’s directly disrespectful of a person’s gender identity.

It’s not necessarily about having a problem of sexual harassment, either.

Any movement or group can discover a problem exists. The merit or fault comes with how that problem is handled. Instead of covering up these problems and letting them fester, the doors of debate have now been blown wide open, allowing a rational solution to the problem to emerge.

As with most complex problems, there is more than one valid viewpoint.

On one hand, we certainly want to be as welcoming as possible to as diverse a group as possible. We also want to make sure that when anyone feels threatened, we step up and make sure that the appropriate actions are taken to ensure fair outcomes. That said, a little realism must temper our expec-

www.americanhumanist.org

GIVEN THE EVIDENCE where women are “especially hard hit by poverty, obesity, and high rates of smoking, and often struggle for access to family planning, prenatal care, mammograms, and Pap tests.”

of women to make their own reproductive choices and the freedom of all non-heterosexual individuals, who want to marry someone they love or adopt and care for children whose parents can’t.

much more beer more beer beer and churches equal more church much more church no data

PEOPLE TWEET MORE ABOUT CHURCH THAN BEER The data analysis group Floatingsheep.org is a band of U.S. and British Internet and geography academics who make cool maps. From June 22-28 they selected all geotagged tweets sent within the continental U.S. (about 10 million in total) and extracted all those containing the word “church” or “beer.”

Americans sent 17,686 tweets mentioning church and 14,405 discussing beer.

CNN reported that the group had “selected two words that it felt exemplified an American cultural divide.” According to Floatingsheep, their goal was to “explore some of the regional differences that make America great” in honor of the Fourth of July. A regional pattern did emerge, with more tweets from cities in the Northeast in the beer camp and more southern tweets about church. Notable distinctions were those who tweeted about “church and state” or who were playing the virtual game Foursquare in which people check into locations using a mobile device and compete to be at the same venuewww.thehumanist.org on the most days in

a two-month period. (The analysts dubbed this “competitive church going.”)

We at the Humanist had trouble making sense of a lot of this and headed to a lovely place called Beer Church (beerchurch.com). It’s a Seattle-based organization dedicated to “making the world a better place one beer at a time” by fundraising (beer in hand) for community food banks, women’s shelters, and other worthy causes.

The report noted that legislation intended to improve public health in these states is often seen as infringing on the “sanctity of the family.”

More than 300 U.S. counties saw a decline in women’s life expectancy from 1987 to 2007, while just six counties showed a similar decline for men.

(Comporting with the earlier item, beer is notably absent from the list of poor health factors for women, but we’ll leave it at that.)

FREEDOM? WHOSE FREEDOM?

THE 10 WORST STATES FOR WOMEN’S HEALTH Using data collected from a variety of sources, including the Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Women’s Law Institute, and the Guttmacher Institute, Health magazine compiled a list in July of the ten worst U.S. states in terms of women’s health. In no particular order, Mississippi, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming were identified as places

This July, in another example of the conservative right cornering the freedom market, the Alliance Defense Fund changed its name to the Alliance Defending Freedom. Founded in 1994 by a group of high-profile religious right leaders, including Bill Bright and James Dobson, the group staunchly defends the rights of conservative Christians to practice their faith.

HYPOCRISY WATCH Megachurch pastor Jack Schaap was recently fired from the First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, after a church deacon picked up a cell phone Schaap had left behind, only to discover photos of the pastor making out with a female parishioner who was later confirmed to be only sixteen years old.

Schaap, who’s married with two adult children, is also an author whose books include Marriage: The Divine Intimacy and Dating with a Purpose: Common Sense Dating Principles for Couples, Parents, and Youth Workers.

(Here’s a tip: don’t leave your phone on the pulpit.

Better yet, don’t use a position of power to prey on young girls.)

No doubt, Schaap will find a way to blame the young woman. This is the man, after all, who told a reporter, “The reason your sorry soul’s going to hell is because a woman told Adam what God thinks about things!”

In doing so it stands in direct opposition to others’ freeSeptember - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST 9 dom—namely the freedom THE HUMANIST

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Up Front 1Flesh: Putting the “Sexy” Back in Abstinence

by Nina Goodwine High divorce rates. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Abortion. The world is in bad shape, and the sorry state of affairs can be traced to one invention: birth control. If we didn’t have to fuss with condoms, rings, patches, and pills, our marriages would be healthy and happy. We’d love each other in a way we never have before. And our sex lives would be, in a word, awesome.

That’s what one group suggests, anyway. In March, blogger Marc Barnes corralled a fed-up bunch of college students to lead the revolution against artificial contraception, an ill they insist has taken the “sexy” out of married life. Dubbing their mission “1Flesh,” they enlisted a designer to give their website hip social media appeal, complete with meme-style graphics similar to the kinds younger folks like to share on Facebook. But while those images look cool, they make some serious claims: Condoms haven’t decreased the spread of HIV; oral contraceptives kill sex drive; the pill increases breast cancer risk and hasn’t reduced the unplanned pregnancy rate.

These are pretty scary “facts” proffered by 1Flesh. Their goal?

To promote abstinence till marriage—which presumably eliminates the risk of STDs—and to endorse a “natural” method of family planning called the rhythm method, or, as they prefer to label it, the Creighton Model FertilityCare System. As radical as they sound, 1Flesh’s arguments against birth control

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aren’t entirely without merit. A 2010 German study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine linked hormonal contraception to decreased interest in sex, and that same year researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine found that a decrease in libido could be a result of long-term oral contraceptive use. But of course, correlation does not equal causation.

And while the National Cancer Institute does indicate that oral contraceptives can increase the risk of breast cancer in younger women, that risk level shrinks after ten years or discontinued use of the pill. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make it entirely clear that latex condoms, when used correctly and consistently, are highly efficient in inhibiting the spread of HIV. So while 1Flesh is right about some things, they’re also spreading dangerous misinformation, the kind many young people aren’t equipped to dispute.

What 1Flesh doesn’t openly express, at least for those who haven’t already caught on, is that it’s a religiously based movement, even if there are no scriptural quotes on the glossy site.

Barnes is Catholic, and Catholics have a longstanding enmity with contraceptives. Is it a coincidence that a month after the Catholic Medical Association published an article in its journal Linacre Quarterly, titled, “Significant Risks of Oral Contraceptives: Why This Drug Class Should NOT Be Included in the Preventive Care Mandate” (February 2012), Barnes waged war

years ago…

How much freedom is too much? A growing number of voices are saying, “Not very much,” and they will give you excellent reasons for their desire to curb, curtail, stomp out, ban, burn, and eradicate.

What it boils down to usually is that society feels threatened. If I were society, I’d feel threatened too— what with high crime rates; the ozone layer dissolving, which is just going to wreck the orange juice business; AIDS; arable land turning into the Sahara Desert at the rate of one Nova Scotia per year; the collective U.S. nose dissolving in a haze of cocaine; single-parent families headed by mothers disappearing below the poverty line at an alarming rate; the

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advent of the square tomato; the revelation of the extent to which Rambo lives and democratic government dies, as it has with the CIA fifth column; the threat of nuclear war and the reality of nuclear waste; the return of the miniskirt; and other such ills too numerous to mention. Unfortunately, the usual response to this kind of social dismay has been to burn some witches. And, as you yourselves are prime candidates for witchhood under the present climate, I expect you will resist this.

—Margaret Atwood, in her 1987 Humanist of the Year acceptance speech, published in the September/October 1987 issue www.americanhumanist.org

Up Front

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Nina Goodwine recently completed an editorial internship at the Humanist. This spring she will graduate from Howard University with a B.A. in English.

cartoon

Pat Bagley

years ago…

Now that there are six times as many people on earth as in the year 1600, we also realize that large numbers paradoxically entail a greater solitude. In the large city one may walk unnoticed and have little contact with neighbors and passers-by, whereas in the village of former times all behavior was supervised within the purview of a common attitude toward life, essentially kept within certain limits by religion, faith and worship. True, this may have given rise to a feeling of constraint, but it also led to a feeling of being provided for, of safety. But now the word “adrift” is pertinent to describe all those drifting about, out of control, after they have seen that the old answers no longer suit their modern forms of

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Are condoms, oral contraceptives, shots, and diaphragms foolproof? No. Unplanned pregnancies still happen and diseases still spread, even in marriage. And there’s nothing inherently wrong in saving sex until then. But 1Flesh and similar groups are hurting young people and women when they distort facts, promote fear, and suggest we fill condoms with water and “throw them off buildings at unsuspecting people.” 1Flesh should instead toss its foolish ideas off the ledge.

PAT BAGLEY, SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

on birth control? I doubt it. And despite the sometimes crass swagger 1Flesh employs­—on its Tumblr account, the group takes issue with “doping pretty ladies with hormones and wrapping man parts in rubber”—the saving-sex-for-marriage spiel reeks of religious proselytizing.

1Flesh isn’t the only movement of its kind. While it doesn’t explicitly promote the bearing of double-digit broods, its philosophy seems to pair nicely with that of the religious movement Quiverfull. These folks claim their “first priority is to serve God through proclaiming that every child is a gift and blessing from our gracious heavenly Father.” In other words, refusing the meeting of sperm with an egg is a sin. The Duggar family, the stars of 19 Kids and Counting on TLC, are a shining example of this anti-contraception movement. The Quiverfull site also links to One More Soul, a directory of physicians who won’t prescribe, perform, or refer patients for contraception, sterilization, abortion, or in vitro fertilization. (At least they’re consistent.)

Anti-contraception movements such as 1Flesh and Quiverfull don’t acknowledge that somebody’s paying a price for all of this unprotected sex and biblical obedience, and it’s not the men. Women are the ones who carry the burden of maintaining a godly, contraceptive-free marriage. Because their bodies are strained with perpetual pregnancy, childbirth, and domestic duties, they can’t pursue work outside the home. Religious teachings keep them bound under their husband’s authority, so women who agree to marriage without contraception become completely dependent on men for their livelihoods. Many of these women smile through it all, stripped of their moral and physical authority but confident they’re doing God’s work.

Something isn’t right about that.

cosmic consciousness. That is the situation and this is the moment for ethical humanism to step forward and help. …Because humanism respects the person and because it does not have any dogmas or presupposed doctrines, it obviously cannot convert anybody. …Humanism does not want anything but to set each person free as a human being; it does not want to solve his problems for him by a set of rules. Each person should solve them for himself. But humanism can set itself the task of furthering knowledge and insight in order to facilitate personal decision.

—Karel Cuypers, “Humanism in Personal Life,” September/October 1987 September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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A WOMAN’S PLACE? The Dearth of Women in the Secular Movement

BY SUSAN JACOBY The following article is adapted from a speech given at the Women in Secularism Conference sponsored by the Center for Inquiry and held in Washington, DC, in May 2012.

T

HE UNDERREPRESENTATION of women in the expanding American secular movement is an uncomfortable issue for many secularists and atheists. Many deny that there is a “woman problem” in organizations dedicated to the promotion of secular values. As an author who speaks about secularism—specifically, America’s secular history—to many different kinds of audiences, I can assure you that there is a problem.

When I speak before non-college audiences—that is, audiences in which no one is required to be there to get credit for a college course—75 percent of the people in the seats are men. The good news is that this is a significant improvement over the situation that prevailed eight years ago, when my book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism was published; at that time, my audiences were about 90 percent male. The bad news is that the gender gap in this movement remains as large as it is, although it’s less striking among people under thirty. The question is why.

The first and most obvious reason is that women, in the United States and every other country, are more religious and more devout in the practice of their religion than men. Public opinion polls show that this disparity affects every income, educational, and racial group—although it is much narrower among the highly educated than among the uneducated and the young than the old. African-American women, regardless of their level of education, are the most religious demographic in this country. This fact alone tells us that education is not the decisive factor, because although black women as a group are better educated than black men, black men are less religious. Space doesn’t permit a lengthy analysis of why women are more religious than men, so I’ll simply say that the greater religiosity of women means that both secular humanism and atheism are tougher sells to women.

I’ll also note that the very question of why women are more religious than men often elicits a prejudiced, sexist response. When I first began writing for the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post, one of the earliest questions asked for an explanation of women’s greater religiosity. An amazing number of men on my blog answered baldly, “Because women are stupider than men.”

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One of the big

differences between atheism and religion is that no atheist is obliged to agree with every single thing another atheist says.

Richard Dawkins is not the pope, Sam Harris is not a cardinal, Christopher Hitchens is not the Holy Ghost, and I am most definitely not a nun.

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I think most of us can agree, without parsing SAT and IQ scores, that this is not exactly a reasonable, evidence-based answer. It represents the so-called thinking of a group of modern-day social Darwinists who make up one component of the secular movement. These were the same angry white guys who would often call me “Susie” in their comments. Interestingly, the religious right-wingers on the blog simply referred to me as an “ugly old atheist.” (Apparently the former were under the impression that using a diminutive would make any woman burst into tears, while the latter group thought that calling you ugly or old was the worst possible insult.) I don’t want to make too much of this, in part because I place about as much value on anonymous opinions expressed on blogs as I do on professions of eternal love after drinking the night away in a bar. However, I don’t think it can be denied that the idea that women aren’t as, shall we say, tough-minded as men has long been held by an element in the secular movement, including the twentieth-century movement as it developed after World War II. This misogyny sometimes shows up as a distinction between “soft” and “hard” atheists, describing people like my friend Sam Harris as a “hard” atheist because he argues that so-called moderate religion is even worse than fundamentalist reli-

Steve Prothero once described me? Such distinctions merely reduce a genuine, reasonable disagreement— one as much about tactics as principle—to a difference between the sexes. Because what’s really being said here is that in disagreeing with a male colleague on an intellectual issue, a female is “soft”—a word that’s synonymous with flabby and weak-minded.

And she’s soft because, well, she’s a girl.

When I was writing my Washington Post column, “The Spirited Atheist,” I was often challenged to defend certain statements made by Harris or Richard Dawkins, and the point I always made was that one of the big differences between atheism and religion is that no atheist is obliged to agree with every single thing another atheist says. Richard Dawkins is not the pope, Sam Harris is not a cardinal, Christopher Hitchens is not the Holy Ghost, and I am most definitely not a nun. Now I’m in my sixties, and calling me soft—or even Susie-—is unlikely to crush my spirit or convince me that it’s time to repent and rejoin a church. But this kind of stereotyping is unwelcoming to young women atheists now on the fringes of the secular movement.

My two nieces are both in their twenties and both atheists, but they are not at all involved in organized secularism. They consider this a quaint activity of mine, only to be expected from the generation that came of age in the 1960s—a decade which, of course, they’re sick of hearing about.

Looking back further historically, it is just a fact that a great many founders of twentieth-century secular organizations, like the Center for Inquiry or the American Humanist Association, came from either a philosophy or science background— and these two areas of academia were particularly inhospitable to women before the 1980s. I should also point out that the few women who were engaged in science and philosophy had to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to maintain themselves professionally.

They didn’t have the time to become involved in a marginalized secular movement. The energies of many of the smartest and most energetic women of my generation instead went into the feminist movement, which directly affected our everyday lives for the better. Personally, I’ve been an atheist since I was fifteen, but I simply saw this as something I was—not as something in which I wanted to invest my energies as a writer.

Another longer-term reason for the lack

of visibility of women in the entire history of American secularism is the conscious effort that has always been made to deny the essentially secular nature of women’s rights movements, beginning in 1848 with the Seneca Falls convention. gion, because moderate religion provides a respectable cover for fundamentalism. Speaking only for myself—and certainly not for womankind—I don’t agree with Harris about this. The job of the secular movement would be much easier if religion in the United States consisted only of liberal Protestantism, along with the liberal Catholicism that tells its bishops just where they can stick their doctrines, and Reform Judaism.

So does that position make me a “soft” atheist?

A kinder, gentler atheist, as the religious historian

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Looking at this from the historical perspective of my generation as we came of age, I must also mention the seemingly anomalous fact that the best-known atheist in the United States in the 1950s and early ’60s was the founder of American Atheists, Madalyn Murray, known as “Mad Madalyn” to her detractors. (She later married a man named O’Hair and took his last name—something I found curious at a time when many women were beginning to keep their own last names.) Now she had not, for the most part, said anything more forthright or abrasive to Christians than have Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens—but let’s not forget that she made her points at a time when atheism was much more demonized than it is now.

And, above all, she was a woman. She frequently described religion as lunacy and silliness, and the fact that she was a female without any special academic or professional credentials made it much easier for the rest of society to dismiss her as a nut case.

In a speech at the University of Maryland in 1961, Murray mocked nonbelievers like Vashti McCollum—another extremely important but less wellknown woman in the twentieth-century history of American secularism—for calling themselves humanist rather than atheist. McCollum was the plaintiff in McCollum v. Board of Education of the State of Illinois, a crucial 1948 case that struck down the then-common practice of “released time” for religious instruction in public schools.

American Humanist Association President Vashti McCollum (center) with members of the AHA Board of Directors, 1962.

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Murray, however, was contemptuous of people like McCollum who described themselves as humanists. Murray was, of course, right about the prejudice against the term “atheist,” but she antagonized many people who called themselves secular humanists because of her insistence that only “atheist” could serve as an honorable self-definition.

In general, when women have made contributions to the secular movement, they haven’t been adequately recognized. The reason I emphasize Murray is that the reaction to her in the 1960s—from within the secular community as well as outside it—was not only a reaction to her sex, but to her failure to fit any socially acceptable definition of femininity. She didn’t look like Gloria Steinem, whose appearance had a lot to do with making feminism acceptable to young women. Atheists to this day are constantly accused of being shrill, but in a sexist atmosphere shrill seems shriller when it’s a woman who is speaking. As a Massachusetts newspaper wrote in the 1850s of Ernestine Rose, an immigrant from Poland who is another overlooked female figure in the history of American atheism, “We know of no object more deserving of contempt, loathing, and abhorrence than a female atheist. We hold the vilest strumpet from the stews to be by comparison respectable.”

It so happens that one of the most important and long-lasting atheist organizations—the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF)—was cofounded in 1976 by two women: Annie Laurie Gaylor and her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor. But FFRF and its activities were not nearly as well known as Murray and her organization at a time when the media nearly always focused on what could be portrayed as antisocial atheist activities. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t know much about the Freedom from Religion Foundation until 2004, when they gave me its Freethought Heroine of the Year Award. When I told a man who is a well-known figure in the secular movement that I was receiving this award, he said, “the Gaylor women have done a lot for this movement by showing that a female

Madalyn Murray O’Hair

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Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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atheist doesn’t have to look and sound like a shrill bitch.” He considered this a compliment.

It’s hardly surprising within the secular movement—which, after all, is not some sort of alien entity divorced from society’s other beliefs—that some men hold these beliefs. Another longerterm reason for the lack of visibility of women in the entire history of American secularism is the conscious effort that has always been made to deny the essentially secular nature of women’s rights movements, beginning in 1848 with the Seneca Falls convention, which gave national prominence to the women’s suffrage movement. In recent years, we’ve become familiar with the phenomenon of religion trying to take credit for all of the progressive movements in U.S. cultural history. There’s no denying that religion—certain kinds of religion— played a vital role in both the abolitionist and the civil rights movements. But we also know very well that religion, like the rest of the institutions of American society, was divided on the issue of slavery and, a century later, on civil rights. One of the more gruesomely comical political phenomena of the past twenty years has been the spectacle of leaders of the religious right in the South trying to take credit for the civil rights movement. You’d never know from their crocodile tears for Martin Luther King that most southern Protestant churches—among the most segregated institutions in the country—fought bitterly against civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s and drummed out of their ministry those who disagreed.

But religion never played an important role in the nineteenth or twentieth-century women’s rights movements. Orthodox religion has always been the staunchest enemy of women’s rights: even unconventionally religious women like the great Quaker Lucretia Mott were often accused of being atheists when they spoke out about discrimination against women. So, by the way, were the Quaker sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who in the 1830s took the then unheard-of step—for women—of speaking out in public about both abolitionism and women’s rights. When the Grimkés began talking about the rapes of female slaves by their masters, Congrega-

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tionalist ministers in Massachusetts issued a public condemnation to be read from every pulpit. The letter read, in part, “We appreciate the unostentatious prayers and efforts of woman in advancing the cause of religion at home and abroad; in Sabbath-schools; in leading religious inquiries to their pastors for instruction; and in all such associated effort as becomes the modesty of her sex, but when she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, her character becomes unnatural.”

Later in the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in 1892, published the Woman’s Bible (a compilation of criticism by female scholars of the upholding of male superiority in scripture), and she was written out of the woman suffrage movement.

It was thought, even by Stanton’s comrade-in-arms, Susan B. Anthony (herself an agnostic), that if the suffragist movement was perceived to be antireligious, it would never get the male support it needed.

At an 1885 meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Washington, DC, Stanton had made her position clear: You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman…What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, “Thus saith the Lord,” of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of women, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? … Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of women?

It teaches us the abominable idea—Augustine’s idea—that motherhood is a curse, that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?

A year after the Woman’s Bible became an international bestseller, the suffrage association passed a resolution disavowing the book and, in effect, one of the two most important founders of their movement.

Yet even after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the generation of suffragists that had cen-

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sured Stanton for her antireligious views continued to deny her role in the movement. As recently as 1977, when female runners carried a torch from Seneca Falls to a meeting in observance of International Women’s Day in Houston, Texas, Stanton was still treated as a nonperson.

Anthony’s grandniece was seated on the dais but no descendant of Stanton’s had been invited. Only in the 1980s did Americans rediscover Stanton because by then, the second wave of feminism had refocused attention on the issue Stanton was among the first to recognize—the need for women to change their view of themselves.

Today there are many religious feminists fighting for equal treatment of women within their faiths—something that doesn’t interest me but understandably interests them. But these women were the result, not the cause, of the twentieth-century feminist movement. Even so, there is still a tendency on the part of feminists themselves to downplay the role of secular women in the feminist movement.

Every one of us old enough to remember knows that the leadership of the feminist movement of the 1970s was disproportionately secular. But it’s not talked about or written about much, because one of the main accusations leveled by the right against feminism is that its proponents are godless. Certainly not all feminist women are godless, but a godless woman is more likely than not to be a feminist.

There are exceptions. Ayn Rand, the great heroine of the far right (which is willing to overlook her atheism because of her idolatry of the free market), was extremely misogynous in her views.

The restoration of secular women to the history of various social movements is, I think, essential to attracting more young women into our ranks. But that alone isn’t enough, because we need to admit that some political divisions within our movement may make secular organization seem particularly inhospitable to these young women.

Let’s just admit it: there is a real division between secular humanists and secular conservatives— something that would surprise the religious right, which considers all atheists as socialists. In the Center for Inquiry, the organization with which I’m most familiar, this often expresses itself as a division between “humanists” and people who call themselves “skeptics.” There is a lot of overlap between these two groups but, in my experience, the skeptics tend to be more conservative and more maleoriented. Incidentally, I’ve been invited only once to speak at an event put on by people calling them-

selves skeptics, but I’m constantly being invited to speak before humanist groups.

When I was organizing events for the Center for Inquiry in New York City, I came to see rather

Let’s just admit it: there is a real division

between secular humanists and secular conservatives—something that would surprise the religious right, which considers all atheists as socialists.

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quickly that male attendance at events focusing on what were perceived as women’s issues was very low.

One of the first events I organized was a panel on women’s rights as human rights—something that’s obviously a key issue for us—and it was the worstattended event we had that year. The Women in Secularism conference sponsored by the Center for Inquiry and held in Washington, DC, in May 2012 was a groundbreaking event, but it too was overwhelmingly female in its attendance. We have a long way to go in the secular movement before women’s rights are fully seen as one of “our” issues, that is an issue of equal concern to men and women.

So what can we do to move some of the audiences at secular events—ones not specifically directed toward women’s issues—toward something more representative of the educated population?

As I’ve already suggested, our first job is to write women back into secular history. I am not talking, by the way, about “political correctness”—a phrase I hate because it is generally used to mean a point of view at odds with whatever the person using the term is selling.

Our second task is to link the past denigration of women by conservative religion with the current relationship between theocracy and misogyny. I recently watched a segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews concerning a new book about the CIA’s twenty-year history in Afghanistan, and one retired operative said with a sneer that one of the things wrong with the current administration’s policy is its concern with such superfluous goals as “trying to make it safe for little girls to go to school.” It may well be impossible for well-meaning foreigners to make it safe for little girls to go to school in Afghanistan, but that goal does not deserve disdain.

The status of women within the Islamic theocratic world is a major secular issue, and secularists are in a better position than the religious to empha-

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size this because the religious are stuck with pretending that what happens to women in places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia—to take two very different examples— has nothing, perish the thought, to do with “true” religion. Last spring I debated Dinesh D’Souza in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he accused me of suffering from “antireligious dementia”—apparently a new psychiatric diagnosis. But listen to what D’Souza says in his book, The Enemy at Home: The left is responsible for 9/11 in the following ways. First, the cultural left has fostered a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world that are being overwhelmed with this culture. In addition, the left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional family and to promote secular values in non-Western cultures. This campaign has

THE FEMINIST CAUCUS OF THE AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION A BRIEF HERSTORY

BY CLEO FELLERS KOCOL

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N 1977 professional writer Gina Allen realized a disparity in the numbers of women versus men in leadership positions within the American Humanist Association (AHA), of which she was a member. Men and men’s issues predominated, and few women ever received awards from the group. Allen even learned that on membership lists, married women had identities only through their husbands (Mrs. John Doe, not Jane Doe). Realizing the need to address the sexism within, Allen founded the AHA Women’s Caucus and began a campaign to educate AHA members about the need to change sexist behavior. Her first target was gender-biased language (“mankind” instead of “humankind,” for example), which so often put women in a secondary position.

In 1981 I joined the AHA Women’s Caucus at a time when the struggle to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was coming to an end. Having been an active feminist for years, I was one of a number of others who felt that traditional actions weren’t working, and that it was time 18

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provoked a violent reaction from Muslims who believe that their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault.

Their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault? Like the right to throw acid on little girls who want to attend school? The right to keep women from driving?

The right to kill women who have been raped to restore honor to the family? By D’Souza’s claim the cultural left is responsible for making Islamists mad by denouncing these practices of the “traditional family” in countries that haven’t progressed beyond the fourteenth century in their attitudes toward women. There is a big opening for secular humanists on these issues. We need to put our money and volunteer efforts where our mouths are.

This certainly applies to issues at home—ranging from contraception to child day care—in which patriarchal right-wing Christian values are used to limit women’s opportunities.

for radical moves in order to get attention for the cause.

In November 1980 I had joined Sonia Johnson, who’d been ousted from the Mormon Church for her involvement in the feminist movement, and nineteen others in chaining ourselves to the Mormon Temple in Bellevue, Washington, thereby barring their leader, Spencer Kimball, from entering. Among the so-called chainers was one man whose name regretfully escapes me. What I do remember is that, when asked later why he’d chained himself with the group of women, he replied: “When my sisters hurt, I hurt.”

Still, in the early 1980s men made up the majority of the American Humanist Association, and they were not widely in favor of change. But Allen, thrilled by my militant actions, persisted, and in 1982 I joined her as co-chair of the caucus. She suggested we give Sonia Johnson an award.

I agreed, but thought the award should be given at an AHA event and that the name “Women’s Caucus” should be changed to “Feminist Caucus” (FC) to include men. Allen agreed. Incidentally, Johnson was in Illinois leading a fast for the ERA and couldn’t make the 1982 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Instead, I wrote and performed a one-woman historical show in honor of all women. While it wasn’t universally applauded by the men present, the women felt energized. I subsequently wrote and presented three multi-character shows throughout the United States, including Alaska. At each event I left humanist literature and in those early years gave part of the proceeds to the Feminist Caucus.

The FC became an integral part of all AHA conferences.

FC newsletters not only let members know what was going on in the organization but also around the country regarding feminist issues. When the National Organization for www.americanhumanist.org

Of course there is also a need to tap more women for positions of responsibility in secular organizations.

Women have played a very important role in grassroots battles—say, the teaching of evolution in public schools—but they’re not as well represented at the organizational level. Again, I think part of this is generational and is about to change, but experience in other social movements shows that such change doesn’t happen automatically.

Finally, it’s time for women’s rights to be seen not as a “special” issue but as something integral to our larger mission of freeing society from anti-rational, supernaturally based restrictions. And nothing, by the way, is more important in this effort than the education of children— an endeavor that can draw on both the traditional role of women and the urgent need to educate the young in reason. It was Ernestine Rose who argued in 1853 against the pseudoscientific idea that there is some sort of a “God gene.” No, she said, religion is the result of indoctrination—

Women and other groups marched in Washington, DC, for women’s rights, I led a contingent of feminist humanists carrying a banner that read: “Feminist Caucus, American Humanist Association.” I also represented the AHA at an ecumenical meeting in DC addressing Roe v. Wade. (Incidentally, one of our leading supporters was the late Roy Torcaso who challenged the Maryland law requiring belief in a god to qualify to be a notary public.)

Sonia Johnson was eventually presented with the Humanist Heroine award at an FC event in Washington, DC, in late 1982. A grand collection of feminist activists were in attendance, including the AHA’s Dolly Packard, Billie Khan, and Pat Shockley, along with others like Mary Anne Beale.

Sister Maureen Fiedler wrote that she was unable to attend but added that she would have been “especially honored to attend an event sponsored by a group so frequently vilified by the Moral Majority and other right-wing ideologues!”

Other Humanist Heroine awardees followed annually, including abortion rights advocate Patricia Maginnis (who shared the honor with Dr. Ben Munson, who performed illegal abortions prior to 1973); Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) co-founder Anne Nicol Gaylor; Barbara G. Walker; Kate Michelman; Amy Goodman; Kim Gandy; Robin Morgan; Judy Norsigian; and, most recently, anti-war activist and feminist Debra Sweet.

In 1988 peace activist Rosemary Matson and educator Meg Bowman became co-chairs of the AHA Feminist Caucus. Bowman continued carrying the torch for feminist humanism along with FFRF’s Annie Laurie Gaylor into the early 2000s. Pat Willis took over from there, and was joined in 2008 by Stephanie Downs Hughes, who now co-chairs the FC with author and book publisher Zelda Gatuskin. www.thehumanist.org

not of a “natural” propensity to believe the unbelievable.

“A child may be made to believe in a falsehood and die in support of it,” she said. “And therefore there can be no merit in mere belief … Bibles are always written so obscure [sic] as to require priestly interpreters, and their means of salvation is to strangle every one they come in contact with who does not believe as they do.”

This is just as true today as it was 150 years ago, and no issue is more important to the secular movement in the United States and around the world than combating such ideology. We need more women on the front lines of this battle, and we need them now.

Susan Jacoby is an author, most recently of the New York Times bestseller The Age of American Unreason, about U.S. anti-intellectualism. A former Washington Post reporter and “On Faith” columnist whose writing has appeared in a wide variety of national publications, she currently lives in New York City.

Cleo Kocol (middle) and Hank Kocol (right) picketing the Mormon Temple in Bellevue, Washington, in 1980.

“Though the female life force is indomitable, there is no question that millennia of second-class status has left a mark on our psyches. (Make that third-class status if God is involved),” Gatuskin said in her first address to the FC as co-chair. “There is nothing selfish about women defending our personhood and demanding the right to speak for ourselves, portray our lives accurately, and protect our physical security. Perhaps it is the single most essential task we have before us as humanists, because obviously we cannot fulfill our true human potential while one half of humanity is suppressed, restricted, and demeaned.”

Acknowledging that such feminist talk “sounds scary” to some, Gatuskin stressed that “we are not at war with men, we are at war with history—a history defined by a patriarchy so tenacious and entrenched it feels almost dangerous September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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Feminist Caucus Co-Chairs Pat Willis (left) and Stephanie Downs Hughes (right) at the AHA conference in 2009. to say the word aloud.” Today the Feminist Caucus of the AHA is organizing around two principal efforts: 1) Refocusing on passing the ERA and 2) Promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s also beginning an experiment to nest leadership in a local/regional FC chapter that will administer the national Feminist Caucus for a period and then pass those duties to another chapter. The FC of the Humanist Society of New Mexico (of which Gatuskin is president) is assuming the initial leadership under this new approach.

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The fact that the FC has, in a sense, come around full circle to the ERA is hardly cause for celebration. Women have made strides toward equal pay, but that’s nothing when you look at how long it took to achieve $0.77 for every man’s dollar. Today, too, many people buy into the notion that women can “have it all” and assume that means they’ve achieved equality. But for every law that helps women there is another that hurts women, and for every man who takes for granted that women are equal to men, there is another who doesn’t feel they’re equal. With right-wing religionists as well as male and female troglodytes in politics waging war against the U.S. female population, the ERA and the AHA Feminist Caucus are needed more than ever.

Visit the AHA website to join the Feminist Caucus or go to http://www.americanhumanist.org/What_We_Do/ Feminist_Caucus.

Cleo Fellers Kocol is a former board member of the American Humanist Association and former chair of the AHA’s Feminist Caucus. In 1988 she was named its Humanist Heroine. A poet and author, her latest novel, The Good Foreigner, takes place in China and the United States during the years 1947 to 1989.

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THE “RETURN” OF THE WELFARE QUEENS Feminism, Secularism, and Anti-Racism

BY SIKIVU HUTCHINSON “The percentage of white feminists who are concerned about racism is still a minority of the movement, and even within this minority those who are personally sensitive and completely serious about formulating an activist challenge to racism are fewer still.”

—Barbara Smith, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (2000).

I

N THE AMERICAN imagination, black women are the poster children for disreputable, irresponsible motherhood and Latina “illegals” are a close second. From birth to adolescence, every girl of color must navigate a political climate in which Ronald Reagan’s racist welfare queen caricature casts long shadows. Ending its “boycott” of feature stories on black women, the Los Angeles Times recently served up some red meat for welfare queen watchers. The front page featured an extensive profile of twenty-sevenyear-old Natalie Cole, a jobless, unmarried, unskilled black mother with four kids. Entitled “Caught in the Cycle of Poverty,” the article trots out an expert from Harvard who sagely proclaims that “poverty is bad for kids,” offering no further analysis on how the richest, most militarized nation on the planet pimps out its children. Instead, we are regaled with Cole’s hot mess of personal failure and pathology. Coming from a long line of young single mothers, by the time Cole turned seventeen she was already raising two children. Now she can’t be bothered to create a résumé or use birth control to avoid having a fifth child. The prayer, “God in heaven, hear my prayer, keep me in thy loving care,” is taped to her bedroom wall. Needless to say, she will not be getting her own Oxygen, TLC, or Lifetime reality show à la GOP teen mom Bristol Palin any time soon.

For me, the article was especially timely, tragic, and enraging because I recently found out that one of my most inquisitive students is pregnant at sixteen. Several of my Women’s Leadership Project alum, who worked incredibly hard to become the first in their families to go to college, speak of friends who have had children shortly after

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graduating from high school. As budding feminists they are overly familiar with the “validation” pregnancy supposedly provides working class young women of color inundated with media propaganda that hyper-sexualizes black and Latina bodies and demonizes abortion.

In this South Los Angeles school community, only a small fraction of the student body goes on to college and many youth are in foster care, often having to raise themselves. Small evangelical storefront churches grossly outnumber living wage job centers, God and Jesus are touted as some of the biggest “cultural” influences, and high teen pregnancy rates are a symptom of the expendability of “other people’s children” (to quote education activist Lisa Delpit). Thirty years ago, scoring a living wage job with benefits was still a possibility for a South L.A. teenager with only a high school diploma. Now, having a college degree is the bare minimum for getting a decent paying job. However, the regime of mass incarceration has made the barriers to college-going even higher for youth of color. One in six black men has been incarcerated and, in some instances, whites with criminal records elicit more favorable responses from employers than do black or Latino applicants with no records. Mainstream media focus on the staggering unemployment rates of men of color has eclipsed attention to the economic downturn’s equally devastating impact on black women. Deepening segregation, diminishing job prospects due to the gutting of public sector employment (23 percent of black women are employed in public sector jobs), and mental health crises have pushed more women of color into the church pews or alternative spirituality, with a vengeance.

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So what does the intersection of nontheism and feminism mean within the context of the New Jim Crow? And what might secularist feminism mean for women of color when the vast majority of them still view feminism as a “white” thing, chronically disengaged from critical issues of economic justice? These were some of the issues I cared about coming into the first-ever Women in Secularism conference put on by the Center for Inquiry and held in Washington, DC, this past May. The event was organized by DC CFI director Melody Hensley, who did an excellent job of bringing together a cross-section of writers, activists, and academics to discuss the politics of sexism, theocracy, women’s rights, and secular organizing. I was pleased to finally meet atheist feminists like novelist/blogger Alyson Miers (Charlinder’s Walk), Atlanta radio host Charone Pagett, and

Radical intersectionality demands that the movement go beyond the canned mantra of religion versus science, toward an anti-racist, antisexist, anti-heterosexist vision of secular social justice. writer Soraya Chemaly in person. Nonetheless, the overwhelmingly white (and female) audience highlighted the quantum leap that remains in making humanism, secularism, and atheism culturally relevant to communities of color.

One of the highlights of the conference was hearing Wafa Sultan, a physician, internationally renowned activist, and Los Angeles resident. Sultan spoke movingly about her experiences with misogynist violence and repression in Syria, detailing her niece’s tragic suicide after enduring an abusive forced marriage. As in the Bible, woman-hating is embedded in the very language and doctrine of the Koran (she alluded to most of the occupants of Islamic hell as being female). Sultan insisted that if Americans can lob bombs and send drones to Middle Eastern countries, they should certainly be allowed to develop secular schools there; an item that is clearly not high on America’s militarist agenda. While powerfully condemning Islam, she sidestepped the issue of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. There was no mention of how Western occupation has historically aggravated Muslim fundamentalism rather than spur secular movements and women’s rights in countries like Iran and Iraq.

She poignantly compared living under Islam to hell, then proceeded to criticize American women for “complaining” about their civil rights (and ostensibly cozier existences).

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Her dismissal was jarring in a nation in the throes of white Christian fascist/Tea Party/American Taliban backlash— which apes the very fundamentalist traditions white nationalists demonize in the “primitive” Middle East—against women’s rights, LGBT equality, undocumented immigrant rights, and economic justice. Perhaps sensing the cognitive dissonance her scold elicited, she circled back and expressed solidarity with American women at the end of her talk.

Sultan, Greta Christina, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Elisabeth Cornwell from the Richard Dawkins Foundation discussed the benefits and drawbacks of religion on a panel that delved into everything from anthropology 101 to organizing strategies. Discussing the need to organize across political interests, Christina gave props to the Secular Student Alliance, referencing the appeal of LGBT advocacy to younger activists seeking to coalition-build. On the subject of why male nonbelievers greatly outnumber women nonbelievers in most societies, Cornwell stressed the genderspecific needs of women in terms of caregiving and childrearing. She argued that women are effectively compelled to seek the social and community protections provided by organized religion. Christina argued that men didn’t need the comforts of religion because they already enjoyed gender, race, and class privileges in a stratified society. Hence, women who break away from social and cultural conventions risk greater ostracism and moral stigma than do men (such as being labeled a slut, fallen woman, or bad mother).

I spoke on a panel about the intersection of feminism and nontheism with fellow bloggers and writers Rebecca Watson, Jennifer McCreight and Ophelia Benson. Having received a slew of Internet hate mail and rape threats, Watson called out male atheists who love to rail against Islamic patriarchy and female genital circumcision whilst paternalistically denying sexism in the New Atheist movement.

McCreight challenged the audience to push back against sexist exclusion of the views of women activists and writers who speak out on women’s rights and the politics of diversity. She also slammed male conference organizers and attendees who sexually harass with impunity, but declined to identify specific offenders.

The general hesitance to out perpetrators highlights how gender power differentials promote a culture of silence that normalizes sexist treatment of women. Some organizations like CFI and American Atheists have responded by highlighting or revising their own sexual harassment policies.

However, even the most stringent sexual harassment policies aren’t going to redress a patriarchal culture in which men feel entitled to ogle, proposition, and touch precisely because “women’s issues” are deemed to be separate, marginal, and so on—not what real secularism is all about. So the panel underscored why calls for simple “diversity” in the secular movement are inadequate. Radical intersectionality demands that the movement go beyond the canned mantra of religion versus science toward an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-heterosexist vision of secular social justice.

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Susan Jacoby (far left) moderates a panel on “Why Women Need Freedom From Religion” with (from left) Wafa Sultan, Greta Christina, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Elisabeth Cornwell at the Women in Secularism conference in May.

In her 2007 book, Women in the Church of God in Christ, Anthea Butler discusses how “church mothers” sought sanctification as a form of social agency within sexist Black Church hierarchies. An alternative to ordination, sanctification allowed black women to “negotiate for and obtain power both within the denomination and without it …

Church members pursued sanctification through … fasting, prayer, scripture study, and other disciplines, creating moral and spiritual authority.” In short, church mothers in COGIC created meaningful spaces to compensate for their exclusion from official channels of power and authority in racially segregated communities. According to a recent survey by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, African-American women have the highest religious affiliation amongst all racial and gender subgroups. They are the most “churched” group in the country, the most openly devout, and the most deeply invested in church-going rituals. For many black women, being a Christian is an essential part of selfhood. It shapes their connection to family, community, politics, and intimate relationships. It also reflects the legacy of black female hypersexualization. Black women negotiated morality in a context in which their enslaved bodies were constructed as the criminal, sexual, racial other set against the backdrop of white innocence, reason, and Western civilization—in other words, no Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty models of femininity existed for little black girls forced to give birth to the master’s babies at thirteen.

On the panel, I framed this history vis-à-vis the explosion of fetal homicide, race-selection abortion, and other anti-family planning laws that disproportionately criminalize women of color as pathological breeders. Despite being less than 9 percent of the U.S. population, black women are the largest segment of the skyrocketing female prison population. Black children are six times more likely to have www.thehumanist.org

a parent or guardian in prison. And colorism plays a role in black female sentencing and incarceration rates as well.

According to a recent study done in North Carolina prisons, dark-skinned black women were more likely to receive and serve longer sentences than lighter-skinned black women.

The War on Drugs, draconian Three Strikes laws, suspension and expulsion policies that fuel the school-to-prison pipeline, and the gutting of the social welfare safety net have deepened black and Latino criminalization.

But these are not secular issues that are privileged in traditional humanist feminist discourse. As the labor activist Siobhan Brooks notes in her 2002 essay, “Black Feminism in Everyday Life,” (my mother) did not relate to white feminism because the poverty of women like her was never an agenda for them. I think the white mainstream feminist movement rarely considered issues of class regarding motherhood … Growing up I knew better than to get pregnant because of my mother’s warnings about how I would end up on welfare, like most of our female neighbors who were single mothers. Many hadn’t completed their education. My mother did not hold these views because she claimed to be feminist; she held these views because she knew firsthand the interlocking systems of racism, poverty, and sexism.

For the future of Natalie Cole and all those “other people’s children,” humanist feminism has got to stand up and face this radical challenge.

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars and the forthcoming Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels.

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The Humanist Interview with

Gloria Steinem

BY JENNIFER BARDI

2012 Humanist of the Year Gloria Steinem sat down with the Humanist magazine at the 71st Annual Conference of the American Humanist Association, held June 7-10, 2012, in New Orleans. The following is an adapted version of that interview recorded on Friday, June 7. Previously solicited questions from leading secular women writers are noted herein. Steinem’s speech in acceptance of the Humanist of the Year award will be published in the November/December issue.

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THE HUMANIST: You’re being honored with the 2012

Humanist of the Year award. What led to you accepting this award from the American Humanist Association? Do you feel that your writing and activism as a feminist intersects with humanism?

GLORIA STEINEM: I always thought that “humanist”

was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word. It seems to me that it means you believe in the great potential and the best of human beings, so I didn’t have to overcome anything to accept this award; it seemed an unmitigated honor. And since the ultra-right wing has tried so hard to make it a bad word— “humanist” has been demonized in much the same way that the word “feminist” has—it seemed especially important to identify as humanist and support humanist groups. This is the only national group I know of, but I run into local ones, too.

THE HUMANIST: So let’s talk a little about women in secularism. I attended the first-ever Women in Secularism conference in May, and I’m wondering if it would surprise

gressive, and so forth—shouldn’t we hold these men up to a higher standard in terms of sexist behavior?

STEINEM: Yes. But, it’s not only holding humanist men up to a higher standard, it’s saying you can’t win unless you’re a feminist. Because the patterns that are normalized in the family—the whole idea that some people cook and some people eat, that some listen and others talk, and even that some people control others in very economic or even violent ways—that kind of hierarchy is what makes us vulnerable to believing in class hierarchy, to believing in racial hierarchy, and so on.

THE HUMANIST: Can men be seen not just as participants, but as effective leaders in the feminist movement?

STEINEM: Yes. I definitely think men can be leaders. I see

an analogy in the case of what helped me think about racism, which was to find parallels with sexism. In other words, I don’t think I was such a great ally until I got mad on my own behalf. Until I thought, wait a minute, how dare anybody tell me who my friends are or where I should live. That only happened after living in India and suddenly coming home and seeing how race-conscious we were, and how restricted I was, in a different way, as a white person.

The men I’ve met who were the best allies of feminism are those who see their stake in it; who see that they themselves are being limited by a culture that deprives men of human qualities deemed feminine, which are actually just the qualities necessary to raise kids—empathy and attention to detail and patience. Men have those qualities too but they’re not encouraged to develop them.

And so they miss out on raising their kids, and they actually shorten their own lives. When men realize that feminism is a universal good that affects them in very intimate ways then I think they really become allies and leaders.

It’s not only holding humanist men up to a higher standard, it’s saying you can’t win

unless you’re a feminist. you to learn that there are problems with sexist behavior within the secular movement, including in online forums and at conferences.

STEINEM: No, it doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is

bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked. I think we’ve learned that we have to contend with these divisions everywhere.

There might have been more surprise, say, in the 1960s and ’70s when people were active in the antiwar movement or in the Civil Rights movement, only to discover that women sometimes had the same kinds of conventional positions there. But I think there’s a much deeper understanding now of how widespread patriarchy is, on the one hand, and that it didn’t always exist, on the other.

THE HUMANIST: So, if humanists and secularists consider themselves enlightened individuals—reasonable, pro26

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THE HUMANIST: In May, when President Obama came

out in support of same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, Newsweek’s cover anointed him “The First Gay President.” Maybe it was just a catchy headline but still, it makes you wonder, if he were to come out and say something really bold about women—that we’re truly better off when we can decide how many children to have (or not have)— would we call him “The First Woman President”?

STEINEM: No, of course not. We would call him a femi-

nist or a feminist-leaning president. And it also makes little sense to call him a gay president because being gay specifi-

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whose books include the New York Times bestseller, The Age of American Unreason (2008), asks this: Some say the importance of secular women in the feminist movement of the 1970s and ’80s has never been properly acknowledged by leading feminists—as was the case with nineteenth-century feminists. Was there a fear that equality for women would be tarred by ungodliness?

STEINEM: I don’t know. I’m more often confronted by

women who come from religious traditions and don’t feel that they have a place in the feminist movement. Helen LaKelly Hunt, for instance, wrote a book called Faith and Feminism in which she writes about how the feminist movement seemed so secular to her that she didn’t feel like she belonged. On a personal level, I’ve felt pressure when reporters asked me, “Do you believe in God?” I do say, “No. I believe in people. I believe in nature,” but I still understand how much cultural pressure there is.

THE HUMANIST: There’s a lot at stake. Elizabeth Cady

Stanton was a feminist, but she was a freethinker and so her relationship with Susan B. Anthony was strained in that regard.

STEINEM: It has so much to do with what feels like home to us. It makes such sense to me to say that many of us are trying to rescue the good in what we grew up with. There’s a lovely poem by Alice Walker in which she talks about being taken as a little girl to a church by the women in her family.

She talks about the church service. She’s leaning against the women’s knees and she’s listening. She says, “I think about it now and salvage mostly the leaning.”

THE HUMANIST: In the introduction to your 1983 book,

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, you talked about the need for a female-controlled magazine for women and some of the challenges you faced with Ms., for instance, convincing advertisers that women would look at an ad for shampoo without an accompanying article on how to wash their hair. “Trying to start a magazine controlled by its female staff in a world accustomed to the authority of men and investment money should be the subject of a musical comedy,” you wrote. What do you miss most about being involved in the day-to-day operations of Ms.? Are you happy with where it’s at today?

STEINEM: What I miss most are the editorial meetings.

In some sense, to me, life is an editorial meeting. But ours were so free and open and full of spark. They included pretty much the whole staff and people who just wandered by and people who were visiting, so they were quite open

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REPRINTED BY PE RMISSION OF MS

THE HUMANIST: Journalist and author Susan Jacoby,

. MAGAZINE. © 20 12

cally means that your affectional, sexual energy is, at least some of the time, engaged with people of your own sex.

Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1972 with five other women. This year Ms. celebrated its fortieth year in print. meetings and quite different from the ones at New York magazine, where everyone was looking at [editor-in-chief] Clay Felker to get his approval.

I do wish Ms. was still a monthly magazine rather than a quarterly, but it has a life online as well. It also has a lot of currency on campuses, where more classrooms are using it. Ms. also has a prison program so that women who are incarcerated can get free subscriptions.

THE HUMANIST: There’s still a perception that the femi-

nist movement is white women’s territory; that they’re not really reaching women of color. And, unfortunately, in this country it’s mostly women of color who are incarcerated.

Do you feel like the magazine is doing a good job of tailoring its content to these groups?

STEINEM: I think so. Ms. has published many articles

about prison practices that have had an impact. But there shouldn’t be just one magazine either. Of course there are others— there’s Bitch and Bust and other feminist magazines. There should be distinct voices for whatever the experience is.

Regarding the idea that the women’s movement is white and middle class—a fair share of the country is white and middle class. And certainly, there are racist white women.

Certainly, there are sexist black men. All those things are true. But the other thing that’s never said is that black women are much more likely to support feminist issues than white women. It makes sense because they’re much more likely to be on the paid labor force than white women.

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And if you’ve experienced discrimination for one reason, you’re probably more likely to recognize it for another reason.

Personally, I learned feminism disproportionately from black women. Women in the National Welfare Rights Organization, for instance. (They did an amazing, funny analysis of the welfare system as a gigantic husband, jealous and looking under the bed for another guy’s shoes).

My long-time speaking partner, Flo Kennedy, is another who taught me, as did Margaret Sloane, who was editor of Ms. and a poet. To say it’s a white, middle-class movement renders invisible all the black women who were there from the beginning, along with groups like the National Black Feminist Organization.

THE HUMANIST: So you’re saying it’s a little bit of a myth.

as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it’s just too much.

Their stance on abortion is also quite dishonest historically, because as the Jesuits (who always seem to be more honest historians of the Catholic Church) point out, the Church approved of and even regulated abortion well into the mid-1800s. The whole question of ensoulment was determined by the date of baptism. But after the Napoleonic Wars there weren’t enough soldiers anymore and the French were quite sophisticated about contraception. So Napoleon III prevailed on Pope Pius IX to declare abortion a mortal sin, in return for which Pope Pius IX got all the teaching positions in the French schools and support for the doctrine of papal infallibility.

STEINEM: It’s a purposeful myth meant to divide and con-

THE HUMANIST: It’s interesting how there’s always some

quer, especially the middle class part. If you think about Martin Luther King and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, they were all college-educated, middle class people. Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class.

It’s true that the National Organization for Women in its early years was white middle class. But once it was joined by younger women from civil rights groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) it changed profoundly. In any case, my life’s ambition is to make white women as smart as black women. Because the group of women who still vote against their own self-interest are white married women. Single white women don’t; they mostly vote for their own self-interest.

THE HUMANIST: In a Gallup poll conducted in May, 68 percent of Americans with no religious attachment identified as pro-choice; 19 percent identified as pro-life. The nonreligious were categorized as the most supportive of choice among demographic subgroups. My question is: Do you think that opposition to reproductive rights is largely based on religious grounds?

STEINEM: I’m not sure because the truth of the matter

is that if you look at those who actually have abortions, it turns out to be relatively equal among religious and nonreligious women.

THE HUMANIST: What do you think of the U.S. Catholic

sisters who were reprimanded for not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion, or the notion of women priests? They were actually faulted for focusing too much on poverty and economic justice.

STEINEM: I was perversely delighted to see the Catholic

Church and the Vatican go after nuns because I think they made a major error. People are quite clear in viewing nuns

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very naturalistic reason why these positions are held and why it’s in the power brokers’ best interests to promote them.

STEINEM: My favorite line belongs to an old Irish woman

taxi driver in Boston. Flo Kennedy and I were in the backseat talking about Flo’s book, Abortion Rap (1971), and the driver turned around and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I wish I’d gotten her name so we could attribute it to her.

THE HUMANIST: On June 5 the Paycheck Fairness Act

failed in the U.S. Senate. All Republicans voted against it including female senators, some of whom said it would lead to excessive litigation or hurt small businesses to require employers to demonstrate that any salary differences were not gender-based. Others felt that existing laws like the Lilly Ledbetter Act are protection enough. Do you think there is any merit to those justifications?

STEINEM: No, because the Lilly Ledbetter Act was quite

specific about addressing the statute of limitations for pursuing an equal-pay lawsuit; it’s a separate question addressing a hole in the law that says that the date it becomes actionable is when the pay is unequal, not when you learn about it.

This war against women started a long time ago with old Democrats who took over the Republican Party, which was, before that, the very first to support the Equal Rights Amendment. Even when the National Women’s Political Caucus started, there was a whole Republican feminist entity. But beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right-wing Democrats like Jesse Helms began to leave the Democratic Party and gradually take over the GOP. So I always feel I have to apologize to my friends who are Republicans because they’ve basically lost their party. Ronald Reagan couldn’t get nominated today because he was supportive of immigrant rights. Barry Goldwater was pro-

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choice. George H.W. Bush supported Planned Parenthood.

No previous Republicans except for George W. Bush would be acceptable to the people who now run the GOP. They are not Republicans. They are the American version of the Taliban.

THE HUMANIST: Exactly. And you’ve got a marriage of

convenience with the religious right and powerful moneyed interests.

STEINEM: Like the Koch brothers. They’ve taken over

one of our two great parties. This causes people to wrongly think that the country is equally divided but if we look at the public opinion polls, it isn’t. So, I can’t think of anything more crucial than real Republicans taking back the GOP.

THE HUMANIST: So are you going to go on the road promoting the Republican presidential candidate?

STEINEM: No. But I think feminists and progressive Dem-

ocrats err when they accusingly say to Republican women, “How can you be a Republican?” Nobody responds to that.

But if you say, “Look, you didn’t leave your party. The party left you. Let’s just look at the issues and see what they are and forget about party labels and vote for ourselves,” I think people would really respond.

THE HUMANIST: Greta Christina is a feminist and atheist

writer and speaker whose blog is very popular in the atheist community. Her question is: Do you think policies and attitudes about sex work should be informed by the voices of sex workers? What do you think of the “Nothing About Us, Without Us” demand that many sex workers are making in regard to sex work laws and policy?

STEINEM: Of course, someone who’s experienced some-

thing is usually much more expert than the so-called experts. If someone wants to be called a sex worker, I call them a sex worker. But there is a problem with that term, because while it was adopted in goodwill, traffickers have taken it and essentially said, “Okay, if it’s work like any other, somebody has to do it.” In Nevada, there was a time when you couldn’t get unemployment unless you tried sex work first. The same was true in Germany. So the state became a procurer because of the argument that sex is work like any other. This is not a good thing.

I also do not feel proud when I stand in the Sonagachi, the biggest brothel area in all of South Asia. It’s in Kolkata, and everything is written in Bengali except “SEX WORK.” And the term is used in various sinister ways by sex traffickers, who even describe what they do—which is to kidnap or buy people out of villages—as “facilitated migration.”

I’ve only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn’t have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That’s so rare. So we have to

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look at the reality and not romanticize it. We have to be clear that you have the right to sell your own body but nobody has the right to sell anybody else’s body. No one has that right.

THE HUMANIST: Annie Laurie Gaylor is a long-time fem-

inist and is the co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Her question is: In terms of women’s plight in Islamic societies, did the Arab Spring do anything for women?

STEINEM: Yes. The Arab Spring did a great deal for women

because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street. Nawal El Saadawi is a founding figure of Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism who wrote a book opposing female genital mutilation (of which she is a victim). She’s been banned. She’s been in prison. She’s now in her eighties and during the Arab Spring she was like the wise woman of Liberation Square, sitting in the middle of it as young women and young men came to her for instruction, for blessings, and so on.

But it’s very often the case with revolutionary moments that women are present but then they’re drummed out of it afterwards. The worst case in my memory was the Algerian revolution. Because women were so much a part of that and they were told that when the French were gone, everything

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would be fine. But actually what happened was the re-Islamization of culture to the degree that the suicide rate among women went up dramatically. It was incredible. To some extent we don’t know yet with the Arab Spring.

THE HUMANIST: Can you tell us a little bit about the Women’s Media Center, its purpose and current activities?

STEINEM: About five years ago it dawned on me, Robin

Morgan, Jane Fonda, and others that while there were more women in the media now, there wasn’t a place for them to gather, and that they had no advocate on the outside. Also, women who were very expert and should be spokespeople in the media were not being made to feel comfortable, or being trained or helped to get booked.

So we decided to start the Women’s Media Center, which is really devoted to making women more visible and powerful in the media in a wide variety of ways. The WMC has a website. It publishes original material. It has a very soughtafter training program so that women who are experts have a path into the media. It has particular projects like Women Under Siege, which is drawing the connections and parallels between, say, the new revelations of the sexual abuse of Jewish women during the Holocaust and more recently in Bosnia and the Congo, trying to make what have been isolated stories connect in a way that’s instructive. To see a woman who survived being raped in the Congo listening to a woman talking about something very similar that occurred in a concentration camp, a woman she perceives as an older, wiser, or more powerful woman from another place—this kind of sharing really helps women know they’re not crazy. They’re not alone. I think that’s the state of human rights now.

THE HUMANIST: This almost seems trivial compared to

what you were just talking about, but the Women’s Media Center supported Sandra Fluke when she testified before Congress. Of course, she was attacked by Rush Limbaugh, but more recently the WMC came out in support of another woman, S.E. Cupp, a conservative commentator who supports the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Can you talk a little bit about what happened to her?

STEINEM: The point is that women should be covered

fairly. For example, I didn’t want to read that Sarah Palin couldn’t be in political office because she had young, dependent children or hear only about what she was wearing, not about her views and so on. So we did defend Palin and we defended Cupp, too, because she was pictured in Hustler with a penis photoshopped in her mouth. It was so ridiculous. It’s very important to defend basic principles whether they’re happening to your friend or your not-such-a-friend.

THE HUMANIST: Returning to Sandra Fluke, Limbaugh famously dubbed her a slut. Feminists have been actively

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reclaiming that term with SlutWalk marches and now there’s a “Rock the Slut Vote” campaign to focus on women’s issues in the upcoming election. Didn’t you employ some similar tactics in the 1970s? Why is it an effective strategy to reclaim certain words?

STEINEM: I think most social justice movements take the

words that are used against them and make them good words. That’s partly how “black” came back into usage.

Before we said “colored person,” or “Negro.” Then came “Black Power,” “Black Pride,” and “Black Is Beautiful” to make it a good word.

“Witch” was another word I remember reclaiming in the 1970s. There was a group called Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). They all went down to Wall Street and hexed it. And Wall Street fell five points the next day; it was quite amazing! “Queer” and “gay” are other examples.

THE HUMANIST: And isn’t it true that these words can only be reclaimed by the members of that group?

STEINEM: That’s right. I think we all have the power to

name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them. Actually, I had done that earlier with “slut” because when I went back to Toledo, Ohio, which is where I was in high school and junior high school, I was on a radio show with a bunch of women. A man called up and called me “a slut from East Toledo,” which is doubly insulting because East Toledo is the wrong side of town. I thought, when I’d lived here I would have been devastated by this. But by this time I thought, you know, that’s a pretty good thing to be. I’m putting it on my tombstone: “Here lies the slut from East Toledo.”

THE HUMANIST: That is really funny. You know, some-

thing that struck me at the Women in Secularism conference is that the older women on the panels were strong and they were forceful, but they didn’t employ humor the way the younger women did. And the other thing I noticed was that the younger women’s humor sometimes had a selfdeprecating tone. For feminists, do you think there’s a line we shouldn’t cross in this sense?

STEINEM: There were never that many women stand-up

comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset. But the ones who were performing were making jokes on themselves usually and now that’s changed. So there are no rules exactly but I think if you see a whole group of people only being selfdeprecating, it’s a problem.

But I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel

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fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent—it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too. I think it was Einstein who said he had to be careful when he shaved because if he thought of something suddenly, he’d laugh and cut himself.

So I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don’t separate laughter and seriousness. There’s none of this kind of false Episcopalian solemnity.

THE HUMANIST: Do you consider yourself a humanist?

THE HUMANIST: Going back to our discussion of self-

sive term.

identifiers, there’s a lot of talk within the secular movement about reclaiming the word “atheist.”

STEINEM: If it were up to me, I would not define myself

STEINEM: Yes, a humanist except that humanism some-

times is not seen as inclusive of spirituality. To me, spirituality is the opposite of religion. It’s the belief that all living things share some value. So I would include the word spiritual just because it feels more inclusive to me. Native Americans do this when they offer thanks to Mother Earth and praise the interconnectedness of “the two-legged and the four, the feathered and the clawed,” and so on. It’s lovely.

THE HUMANIST: So we need a more positive and incluSTEINEM: Yes, because it’s not about not believing. It’s about rejecting a god who looks like the ruling class.

by the absence of something; “theist” is a believer, so with “atheist” you’re defining yourself by the absence of something. I think human beings work on yes, not on no.

THE HUMANIST: Some people call themselves post-theo-

THE HUMANIST: So “humanist” is sort of a beautiful

last five-to-ten thousand years has been an experiment that failed and it’s now time to declare the first meeting of the post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-nationalist age. So let’s add “post-theological.” Why not?

term then.

STEINEM: Yes, humanist is a great term.

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logical, which is kind of a mouthful.

STEINEM: It’s kind of great though. I like to say that the

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PHOTO COURTESY OF SECULAR PROLIFE

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NONRELIGIOUS AND PRO-LIFE The New Normal or Same Old, Same Old?

BY MARCO ROSAIRE ROSSI

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HE AMERICAN ATHEISTS’ annual convention held this past March had some surprising attendees.

Between the usual suspects in the exhibit area selling secular literature and soliciting memberships to various groups was a table representing the organization Secular Pro-Life (SPL)—a nontheistic anti-abortion group. According to the organization’s website, the mission of SPL is to expand the pro-life movement “beyond the cathedral walls” by mobilizing like-minded atheists, theists, and agnostics “eager to save lives” and to fight the media portrayal of prolifers as religious extremists. Could it be true? Is there really such a thing as a pro-life atheist? What’s next, Intelligent Design Agnostics? How about Secularists for Sharia Law? It would be easy to write Secular Pro-Life off as a very small fringe group with a less-than-professional-looking website. However, they are but one of a number of pro-life organizations (such as the Atheist and Agnostics Pro-Life League, Americans United For Life, the Susan B. Anthony List, Created4Life, and the National Right to Life Committee) that consider themselves secular-minded or that have refocused themselves towards a secular orientation in the last few years. Without a doubt, the secular identity is on the rise, even within movements that secular activists have traditionally opposed.

Even more astonishing is how groups like Secular ProLife may actually reflect the thinking of the average American. A recent Gallup poll showed that the number of people in the United States who identify as pro-choice has dropped to its lowest point (41 percent) in recorded history, while those who identify as pro-life have continued with their decade-long rise. In 1995, 33 percent of Americans considered themselves pro-life. Today that number has climbed to 50 percent—with a remarkable 9 percent jump in the last five years.

Part of the reason for this shift in the American zeitgeist has to do with tactical innovations within the pro-life movement. For years the arguments against abortion had been deeply embedded in religious—mostly Christian—rhetoric and doctrine. But, these overtly religious aspects of the movement have not meshed well with an increasingly secwww.thehumanist.org

ularized America. Despite the religious right’s best efforts, people continue to leave their churches in droves. The fastest growing belief group in the United States is comprised of people who claim no religion at all. How then has the prolife movement remained politically relevant in the United States? The answer: follow the lead of other religiously based movements and co-opt popular aspects of secular culture to mask the faith-based nature of your beliefs. It used to be that creationists were creationist—then they became advocates of intelligent design; advocates for prayer in school used to defend Christian values—these days they’re defenders of religious freedom; before, the Ten Commandments trumped the Constitution—now, the Ten Commandments inspired the Constitution; and so on.

The pro-life movement has gone through a similar transformation. Groups like SPL declare themselves “pro-life for a reason” and agree with conservative author and radio producer Dustin Siggins, who wants the pro-life movement to stop using biblical arguments to debate abortion. “The science of life is in our favor,” states Siggins, “and we should emphasize this.” Indeed, being pro-life “for a reason” and favoring the so-called science of life can be persuasive stuff.

The only problem is that the reasons for being pro-life are often based on erroneous logic, and the “science of life” has been anything but scientific.

According to SPL, the secular argument against abortion rests on four basic premises: 1) the fetus is a human being, 2) there is no consistent, objective distinction between a “human being” (biologically speaking) and a “person” (legally speaking), 3) human beings merit human rights, and 4) bodily integrity is not sufficient to justify most abortions. These premises are essentially a more elaborate version of a popular syllogism among the nonreligious sections of the pro-life movement: a fetus is a human being (major premise); all human beings are entitled to human rights (minor premise); therefore fetuses are entitled to human rights (conclusion). Syllogisms, of course, are an important tool of deduction, but they are not foolproof. No syllogism can detect the defects of its own assumptions. In this case, it is the assumption that all human beings are entitled September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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to human rights, or—as SPL puts it—there is no objective difference between a “human being,” biologically speaking, and a “person,” legally speaking.

There is in fact a major difference between human beings as fetuses and human beings as persons: human beings as persons are born. Within the context of the minor premise that all human beings are entitled to human rights, this is no trivial matter. Many nonreligious pro-life organizations like to quote human rights documents to support their views, but it is quite clear that they haven’t read them in full. The most revered human rights document in the world today is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 of which states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” [Emphasis mine.] This verbiage is not accidental. Rights only exist within the context of a community where they have the potential to be realized and the possibility of being threatened. Birth is our universal entrance into any community. It is the point at which we are able to break away—literally—from the absolute dependency of our mothers. The fact of the matter is birth transforms us. It simultaneously makes us into individuals and members of a group, and thus embeds in us rights-bearing protections.

The nonreligious pro-life movement waves away the significance of birth as essential to rights-bearing protection by focusing on an erroneous analogy between fetuses and other marginalized groups. They argue that since the historical denial of rights to human beings who were not considered full legal persons (blacks, children, Jews, women) has proven damaging to society, then the denial of rights to fetuses, which are also considered human beings but denied legal personhood, should also be considered damaging. The analogy is problematic in that it ignores the essential differences between historically marginalized groups and fetuses.

Unlike fetuses, blacks, women, children, and Jews are all autonomous beings able to be members of a community.

important Article 16(e) of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women that states all women shall have the right: “to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights.” Human rights theory considers all rights as interdependent. No right is absolute and can be used to justify canceling out another right. The only way that this interdependence can exist between a child’s right to life and a woman’s right to her body is by demarcating the moment of right-bearing at birth as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states.

All humanists can agree that it is foolish to not extend the circle of compassion that human rights provides, but it is equally foolish to over-extend this circle and, in the process, undo the very same compassion that the rights are intended to uphold.

Even if we discount faulty reasoning, it is impossible to deny the troubling aspects of the nonreligious pro-life movement’s “science.” Many laws restricting access to reproductive services are based on pseudo-scientific claims regarding women’s health. Instead of calling for an evidenced-based approach to abortion, nonreligious pro-life groups have either accepted these claims at face value—often putting them far outside the medical consensus—or have adopted a wishy-washy stance in opposing them, emphasizing uncertainties and doubt even after experts have reached a consensus.

For example, currently five U.S. states require doctors to warn women of the link between abortion and breast cancer, and eight states require doctors to warn women about the possible psychological problems that abortions can cause.

The published medical research justifies neither of these requirements. The National Cancer Institute has researched the alleged link between breast cancer and abortion, and has concluded that the research “consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.” In an email exchange about the validity of this claim, Monica Lynn, SPL’s blog coordinator, responded that the group found the evidence conflicting, but that its president, Kelsey Hazzard—who has studied law, not medicine—believes that women should be informed of the “conflicting” nature of this evidence before an abortion. Similarly, the research on abortion and psychological stress has shown that the phenomenon of PASS—Post Abortion Stress Syndrome—doesn’t exist either. Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study from Danish researchers which confirmed that the majority of women who underwent an abortion in the first two trimesters were no more likely to seek out psychological counseling after their abortion than they were before. While Lynn says the PASS label is problematic, SPL believes women should be informed of the possible psychological repercussions and their risks before having an abortion.

While it’s true that more Americans identify as pro-life, the percentage of Americans who believe that abortions should be legal has been relatively consistent over the past decade.

Fetuses neither have this characteristic, nor can they organize as a group to demand the rights that they are supposedly due.

Secular Pro-Life’s literature quotes Article 6 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as saying: “Every child has the inherent right to life.” They quote this line with the implication that childhood should be recognized at conception. What they ignore is the equally

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Despite their lack of validity, such positions continue to permeate our political discourse, and have played a major role in the policy blitzkrieg on reproductive rights. The new Virginia law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound prior to an abortion was designed by the organization Americans United for Life—another nonreligious pro-life group. According to Charmaine Yoest, CEO and president of Americans United for Life, the Virginia bill was necessary to protect women with ectopic pregnancies from the possibility of dying during a medication-induced abortion.

Warnings like these are half-truths that only serve to whip up hysteria around the risks of abortion. An ultrasound before an abortion is a standard practice for most providers, and is an essential tool for helping determine gestational age, viability, and yes, the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy. However, doctors determine ultrasounds based on medical necessity—not ideology. In reality, the risk of a medication-induced abortion in the case of an ectopic pregnancy is phenomenally rare, and the possibility of the mother dying is even more remote. When asked about the ultrasound requirement, Secular Pro-Life responded that doctors should not only be required to offer women an ultrasound twenty-four hours prior to an abortion, but they should also be required to explain the stages of fetal development with the women before she agrees to an abortion.

Fetal pain legislation is another area of focus for prolife groups. Laws in several states effectively outlaw elective abortions for women who are over twenty weeks pregnant based on the idea that the fetus is able to experience suffering during this stage. And yet the idea of fetal pain at twenty weeks is highly dubious, with no clear consensus from doctors or medical researchers as to when a fetus feels pain.

The United Kingdom’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has gone on record that there is no evidence that a fetus feels pain prior to twenty-four weeks.

Responses to stimuli before this stage are the same for a fetus with brain development as it is for those without, suggesting that such responses are reflexive of the nervous system and not wired to the brain’s cortex. This view concurs with the findings from a systematic review of the evidence published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that fetuses are not able to perceive pain until after the thalamocortical system—pathways that reciprocally connect the thalamus to the neocortex in the brain—begins to function. This doesn’t occur until weeks twenty-nine and thirty. Even then, experiments done at the College of London using electroencephalography to measure fetal responses suggest that fetal response to pain may not even occur until weeks thirty-five and thirty-seven.

In any case, all serious research on the matter indicates that fetal pain isn’t likely to occur until well beyond the twenty-week mark that fetal pain laws claim. Disregarding this medical consensus, Secular Pro-Life’s president has referred to the research supporting the claim of fetal pain

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at twenty weeks as “methodologically sound” and believes that the current state of the published research produces conflicting conclusions.

Unsurprisingly, pro-life advocates have been quick to cheer the recent Gallup poll that shows the political winds have tilted in their favor. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List—an anti-abortion advocacy group named after the early feminist and agnostic— declared that being pro-life is becoming America’s “new normal.” There is no denying that advocates for reproductive freedom have lost serious ground in recent years, but the idea that nonreligious pro-life groups like the Susan B. Anthony List represent a “new normal” is not supported by the data. While it’s true that more Americans identify as pro-life, the percentage of Americans who believe that abortions should be legal has been relatively consistent over the past decade. The same Gallup poll that reported 50 percent of Americans identifying as pro-life also showed that 77 percent believe that abortions should be legal under certain or all circumstances (52 percent certain circumstances; 25 percent under all circumstances). Generally speaking, a strong majority of Americans still support the parameters for abortion established under Roe v. Wade. This means that while many Americans identify as pro-life personally they don’t take this stand politically and think the government shouldn’t compel others to adopt this belief.

Still, women and all who support reproductive choice must be vigilant, as the organized pro-life movement will continue its campaign of logical fallacies, misinformed factoids, pseudo-scientific claims, and outright lies—along with its co-opting of secular figures and values—until it gets its way.

Marco Rosaire Rossi is an activist and former Planned Parenthood employee who has published articles in Z Magazine, Works In Progress, and the Peace and Conflict Monitor.

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FREE WILL AND THE ANDERS BREIVIK TRIAL

BY SARAH LUCAS

O

N THE FIRST day of his trial, Anders Breivik admitted to planting a bomb that killed eight people outside the Norwegian prime minister’s office in Oslo on July 22, 2011, then shooting dead sixtynine people, most of them teenagers, hours later at a summer camp on Utoya Island. Given there is no question of guilt, the principal responsibility of the Oslo court trying Breivik’s case, which will rule on August 24, is to establish whether he was sane at the time of the attacks. Two psychiatric examinations have so far produced conflicting diagnoses. The initial examination in November last year found that Breivik was, during and after the attacks, a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic and criminally insane. A subsequent psychiatric report concluded that Breivik suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder but is sane.

Breivik’s mental state during the attacks is of interest to the court because it is central to establishing criminal responsibility. The court began with the premise that it is possible for a person to be responsible for murder, and that sanity and responsibility are synonymous. It has assumed that, as long as Breivik was of sound mind during the attacks, he exercised control over his actions (that is to say, he had a choice between good and evil, and he chose evil).

The ability of humans to act with such free will—uncritically accepted in modern legal systems—is the subject of extensive debate among philosophers and scientists in other contexts. If doubters of free will are correct, the foundation of Breivik’s trial— that if he is sane he is responsible—is false.

What ultimately turns on the court’s determination in regard to sanity is whether Breivik is made to suffer for his crimes.

Criminal punishment is based on three standard justifications:

community protection from dangerous individuals, deterrence of future crimes, and retribution for past crimes.

Without knowledge of whether he is technically sane, it is obvious that Breivik, who has told the court that he would carry out the attacks again if given the chance, must be separated from society. As with community protection, sanity is similarly not central to deterrence. Whether Breivik spends his long detention in Oslo’s Ila prison, or in a psychiatric ward that will be specially built for him inside the prison in the event that he is found to be insane, the court will have reinforced the deterrent to mass murder. The main difference is that, if found to be sane, Breivik will be held criminally responsible for his actions and punished accordingly. The Norwegian justice system prides itself on its orientation toward treatment and rehabilitation rather than revenge. Yet even under Norway’s comparatively humane system, Breivik can be jailed, that is to say incarcerated in a punishment setting, for up to twentyone years.

Obtaining revenge for heinous crimes appeals to our moral intuitions; if someone intentionally harms others, he or she should suffer the consequences. Revenge has been an understandably present theme in Norway in the aftermath of Breivik’s killing spree. On the opening day of

Had you been born with Anders Breivik’s genes, grown up in the same environment, been dealt the same life experiences and woken up on that July 22 morning with an identical brain, you would have committed his crimes (after all, you would have been him).

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the trial, the daily newspaper Dagsavisen carried the headline, “The Hour of Reckoning,” surrounded by the name of every person killed on Utoya. VG, Norway’s most-read paper, quoted a survivor who said, “I’m looking forward to him receiving his punishment.”

Our conviction that punishment is just in the face of crimes like Breivik’s is so strong that it obscures a built-in assumption. We take for granted that humans possess free will, and that each individual is therefore at liberty to act as he or she chooses. Our assumption is rooted in the powerful feeling of free will we experience: if I want to raise my hand right now, I will. Free will does not, however, flow from a materialistic (non-supernatural) understanding of the world. Without resorting to the supernatural, it is difficult to make a case for the existence of free will, at least for the type that would imply moral responsibility.

Three main schools of thought have emerged from the long-running debate on free will. Determinism holds that every state of affairs, including every human act, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states. If we could comprehensively describe point A in the past (the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe), then holding fixed the laws of nature, we could predict the (only possible) future at point B. Because determinists see www.thehumanist.org

human behavior as fully determined by the laws of nature in this way, they reject the notion of free will.

Determinism is in accord with the understanding of human behavior given to us by cognitive neuroscience.

Behavior is a product of the brain, the structure and function of which are determined by factors outside our control—our genes and our environment. (Our environment is, of course, influenced by our choices, but our choices are themselves fully determined.) One way to think about determinism, offered by Sam Harris in his latest book Free Will, is the following: had you been born with Anders Breivik’s genes, grown up in the same environment, been dealt the same life experiences and woken up on that July 22 morning with an identical brain, you would have committed his crimes (after all, you would have been him).

Recent experiments in neuroscience support the conclusion that physical states of the brain, operating under the known laws of science, determine our behavior. In one pioneering experiment, the physiologist Benjamin Libet used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the time lag between brain activity and the emergence of a conscious intention to make a physical movement. Volunteers wearing scalp electrodes were asked to carry out a simple motor activity such as flexing a finger. Libet found that significant September - October 2012 | THE HUMANIST

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activity in the brain’s motor cortex could be detected 300 milliseconds before the volunteer registered the intention to make a movement. This has been interpreted as evidence that the brain makes the decision to move before we become conscious of our intention to move.

If we look at Anders Breivik as determinists, he appears a victim of his undesirable brain. In Free Will, Harris uses a thought experiment to demonstrate that this is exactly how we should regard murderers. He asks the reader to consider a twenty-five-year-old man raised by wonderful parents who shot dead a young woman “just for the fun of it.” He then asks the reader to imagine that a scan of the man’s brain finds a golf ball-sized tumor in his medial prefrontal cortex (a region important for the control of emotion and behavioral impulses). When we learn of the tumor, Harris points out, we automatically feel differently about the man. The fact that his brain was affected by a tumor seems to strip him of at least some responsibility for his actions. But, had the man not suffered from a tumor, his behavior would still have been every bit as much the product of the physical composition of his brain, which he did not himself design.

A second approach to the analysis of free will is libertarianism. Libertarians typically believe that there is a physical part of the human brain that operates independently of the natural laws of physics (a religious person might call it a soul), and that this non-determined part of the mind endows humans with free will. The dubiousness of this idea was deftly captured in a Dilbert cartoon, in which Dogbert (Dilbert’s dog) asks his owner: “Do you think the chemistry of the brain controls what people do?”

“Of course,” Dilbert answers.

“Then how can we blame people for their actions?” counters Dogbert.

“Because people have free will to do as they choose.”

“Are you saying that ‘free will’ is not part of the brain?” inquires a perplexed Dogbert.

“Of course it is,” replies Dilbert. “But it’s the part of the brain that’s out there just being kind of free.”

Dogbert is confused: “Do you think the ‘free will’ part of the brain is attached, or does it just float nearby?”

This line of thinking is hardly restricted to Dogbert.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are also puzzled by how it is possible for our behavior to be determined by the chemistry of our brains, while at the same time being subject to our autonomous control. They write in The Grand Design: “It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.”

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While there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the existence of a mysterious section of the brain that operates outside the laws of physics, humans are naturally libertarians. It comes instinctively to us to see our minds as an entity somehow separate from our brains. It would be considered perfectly reasonable to suggest in conversation, for instance, that Anders Breivik should have resisted his impulse to kill, as if there were a little man in his head who could have directed his brain to choose right over wrong.

It remains to be seen whether advances in neuroscience will lead to a shift in thinking about free will and moral responsibility that is reflected in the law.

Quantum physics might at first appear to give reprieve to libertarianism. Quantum chance, some libertarians have argued, provides the scientific basis for a non-determined mind. However, it is thought that quantum events don’t significantly interfere with traditional mental faculties, which are determined by material states of the brain. And even if they did interfere, quantum indeterminacy wouldn’t amount to the kind of free will libertarians purport. Were our decisions subject to quantum chance, it wouldn’t feel as though we had free will. Rather, it would feel as though every decision were made by a roll of the dice. As Harris puts it, “every thought and action would seem to merit the statement ‘I don’t know what came over me.’”

Compatibilism, the approach by which many philosophers, including Daniel Dennett, argue for the existence of free will, doesn’t offend scientific principles as libertarianism does, but it also doesn’t justify the assumption that a person can be morally responsible. Compatibilism derives its name from its assertion that a deterministic world and free will are, in contrast to what determinists would say, compatible. This is possible, compatibilists contend, because as long as we act according to our uncompelled preferences, we are effectively exercising free will.

The problem with this conception of free will is that we have no control over our own preferences. A compatibilist would argue that my choice to have a ham sandwich rather than egg salad for lunch today—so long as my decision was not made at gunpoint or under some other kind of intimidation—demonstrates my free will. But did I have the capacity to change my preference such that my hunger pangs were better satisfied with ham? Was Breivik exercising free will because it was his preference to go on a shooting spree, even if he played no part in the formation of this preference?

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In his latest book, Free Will, neuroscientist Sam Harris points out that while learning a murderer had a brain tumor when the crime was committed does elicit some sympathy, without a tumor a murderer is still at the mercy of his or her brain.

We assume that we exert differing levels of control over different types of preferences. Some preferences (whether or not you like seafood), are just part of who we are. There are preferences that we used to be sure were self-chosen but which we now know are not (for instance, it’s now taboo to even suggest that sexual orientation is chosen).

We’re still inclined, on the other hand, to see rapists and murderers as somehow accountable for their impulses (or their failure to resist them). Unless we subscribe to the idea of a libertarian mind separate from the brain, it is clear on closer thought that all of our preferences are determined by forces outside our control. Compatibilists can argue that being forced to do what you want is a kind of free will, but it isn’t the kind of free will that implies moral responsibility.

Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, psychologists who have written an influential paper on the implications of neuroscience for the law, illustrate our powerlessness over our intentions using a thought experiment they call the “Boys from Brazil problem.” Imagine that Nazi fugitives living in South America after the war decide to bring Adolf Hitler back to life by raising a genetically identical child. Using some salvaged DNA, they create an individual genetically identical to Hitler. The Nazis plan the life of the newborn clone so as to recreate exactly Hitler’s life experiences. For example, Hitler’s father died when he was a child,

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so the clone’s surrogate father is killed at precisely the same age. Suppose then that, as an adult, the clone, who Greene and Cohen give the name Mr. Puppet, engages in violent criminal activity of some sort. He is caught and brought to trial. Should Mr. Puppet be held responsible? The fact that he was designed by the Nazis to be violent must divest him of at least some responsibility for his violent acts. In this case, where there are identifiable designers, this is obvious. But how different is Mr. Puppet really from me or you or Anders Breivik? We are all the product of forces outside our control. As Greene and Cohen identify, whether these forces are deliberate (like the Nazi scientists) or natural is not relevant to the question of moral responsibility.

Greene and Cohen predict that new conceptions of responsibility (or lack thereof) will have implications for the law. As neuroscience increasingly illuminates what they call the “black box of the mind,” revealing the mechanical processes behind human behavior, “more and more people will develop moral intuitions that are at odds with our current social practices.” In a world organized according to our new moral intuitions, we would still have compulsory detention for criminals. As Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky puts it: “Whereas you do not ponder whether to forgive a car that, because of problems with its brakes, has injured someone, you nevertheless protect society from it.”

But criminal “punishment” would be limited to its forwardlooking aims of community protection and deterrence— those aims that seek to maximize the total welfare of society. Retribution, which relies on a libertarian conception of free will, will be a thing of the past.

Once we view Anders Breivik as a Mr. Puppet, the premise of his trial—that he can by virtue of his mental state be judged responsible or not—is revealed to be a false dichotomy. Sane or not, it was his brain that made him do it. For the moment, the use of neuroscience in criminal law is limited to the functions of establishing guilt and supporting claims of mitigating circumstances. It remains to be seen whether advances in neuroscience will lead to a shift in thinking about free will and moral responsibility that is reflected in the law.

In the meantime, the Breivik trial demonstrates that, even in the world’s most humane system of justice, the debate on free will is in practice ignored entirely. The conclusion we might draw from this is as frightening as it is far-reaching: if Breivik’s actions on that fateful Friday were completely beyond any free will, then punishing him (as distinct from restraining him from further harm to the community) may be as immoral as our perception of Breivik’s criminal acts themselves.

Sarah Lucas works at the World Bank in Paris, France, and is also a freelance writer. She has degrees in economics and politics from Melbourne University, and holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.

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Church & State

BY ROB BOSTON

Building Bridges or Blowing Them Up? Secular Americans and the Future of Humanist Activism Polls indicate that some interesting shifts are under way in religious life in the United States.

The number of people identifying their religion as “none” has crept upward again, now hovering at around 20 percent. At the same time, trust in institutionalized religion is dropping.

What might this mean for politics and social change in the United States? David Niose, president of the American Humanist Association (AHA), explores this question and others in his new book, Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans. In the book’s concluding chapter, “A Secular Future,” Niose discusses the things nonbelievers need to do to be more visible and active in political and public life. He has many good things to say, and I recommend the book to you.

But the road ahead will not always be smooth, straight, or pot-hole free. As secular Americans grow in number, they will be forced to confront an issue that I fear may divide our community: How are we to deal with moderate or liberal religious people? Can they be our allies? Do we want to align with them?

During my travels in the world of organized nonbelief, which span nearly three decades, I have encountered many people who’ve had bad experiences in religious communities. Some were raised in strict fundamentalist homes (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and so on) and carry hard memories of verbal or physical abuse. I’ve met former members of faith-healing sects who didn’t get medical treatment when they were sick or in pain, and ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses who recall sitting at home while all of their friends were having fun at a birthday party.

I’ve heard ex-Catholics talk about being harangued by nuns and priests with stories of an everlasting hell. Former fundamentalists have told 40

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me tales of ultra-strict upbringings, faith healings that didn’t work, and long church services punctuated by threats of hellfire and damnation.

One thing I don’t hear often are comments like this: “The services at the United Church of Christ have scarred me for life” or “You know, those Quakers really scared the daylights out of me with all of that silence in church.”

My point is, humanists who have bad experiences with religion tend to come from fundamentalist or ultra-orthodox backgrounds. While many humanists who were raised in mainline churches may now find the theology of those communities unpersuasive, they don’t generally report a lot of horror stories.

My talks with moderate and liberal religious believers bear this out. Through my work at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I’ve met thousands of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans, and others who do more than merely embrace religious and philosophical toleration; they also celebrate the range of theological thought in the United States, including the right not to believe in God or espouse an affiliation with a faith tradition.

They envision America as a vibrant and open society where the right to believe or not is dictated by individual conscience, not the state. They embrace separation of church and state and a host of other concerns favored by humanists, such as women’s rights, LGBT rights, international cooperation, economic justice, and so on.

We agree on so much—so why aren’t we working together? We are, to some extent. Americans United, for example, is a coalition of believers and nonbelievers that has been very effective, in part, because we’re diverse.

And, of course, humanists already do coalition work. In the nation’s capital, the AHA is involved www.americanhumanist.org

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not helpful. They alienate and insult the millions of Americans who belong to moderate or liberal faith communities, people who share none of the values of politicized fundamentalism.

Humanists have more in common with some believers than we realize. Fundamentalists have no love for liberal Christians. They also often attack non-Christians, especially Pagans, Wiccans, and followers of Eastern religions.

Members of these communities are routinely lambasted by the religious right, which labels them a subversive and even dangerous force that is corrosive and seeks to undermine American values. Sound familiar? These folks are not our opponents; they are potential allies. We ought to be working alongside them, not taking potshots because we don’t agree with their theology.

The final step is to realize that mature political and social movements understand the importance of playing nice with others. You work together when you can. There might be occasional areas of disagreement, but as long as there is more overlap than division, you keep the partnership moving forward.

Humanists and other secular Americans may indeed be on the cusp of some great advancements—leaps forward that people who have long been active in this movement might never have thought possible. That won’t happen if we decide our main goal is to tear down all religions—including those that agree with us 90 percent of the time—instead of building up humanism.

Rob Boston is senior policy analyst at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a board member of the American Humanist Association.

cartoon

Bill Day

BILL DAY, CAGLE CARTOONS

in coalitions—such as the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination and the National Coalition for Public Education—that include religious groups. If current demographic trends continue, my sense is that we’re going to have to do more coalition work if we want to be serious players on the public policy scene.

At Americans United, we learned long ago that you can only do so much on your own. When we work alongside Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and secularist communities, our voice is amplified and our effectiveness rises.

Yet there is a bit of resistance to this among some humanists. Some see all religion as an enemy. The goal of humanism, they argue, is not to work alongside religion but to supplant it.

But how likely is this? Is it an effective strategy for success in the policy arena?

Non-religious Americans may be on the upswing, but the United States is far from looking like the secular democracies of Europe, where church attendance has plummeted. Here, humanists will remain a minority for some years to come.

Even in the face of that reality, we can still be more effective in public policy coalitions. The first step is to realize that not all religions are the same. My boss, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, is a United Church of Christ minister. His tradition represents liberal Christianity. A separate denomination, the Church of Christ, is fundamentalist in approach. One word (ironically, “United”) and a theological gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon separates these two groups. It’s short-sighted to behave as if there’s no difference between the two.

Humanists would feel comfortable living in Lynn’s vision of America because it is based on our shared values of mutual respect, diversity, tolerance, equal rights for all, and, most importantly, a government that remains neutral on matters of theology and doesn’t presume to impose religion on anyone at any time for any reason.

The fundamentalist vision, by contrast, is a nightmarish theocracy where the state not only endorses religion generally but undertakes to enforce the narrow theology espoused by hardline Christian denominations.

The second step—and I concede that this will be controversial to some—is for secular Americans to dial back the rhetoric of religion bashing. Such talk has been a staple of organized nonbelief for decades. It might have been understandable when we were totally marginalized, but as our numbers and political influence grows, we’ll find that it’s doing us no favors. If we want Americans to get interested in what we have to offer, we must define ourselves on the basis of what’s good about humanism, not what’s bad about religion.

Blanket assertions that all religious people are stupid or that mainline faiths are just apologists for fundamentalism (or, worse yet, gateways to it) aren’t only untrue, they’re

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Fierce Humanism

BY GRETA CHRISTINA

How Confrontationalism Can Open Doors A woman walks into a café, orders a coffee and, before she pays, crosses off “In God We Trust” on her $20 bill. The woman is me, and scratching the motto off money is something I often do.

This time the woman behind the counter gave me a look. Irritated, offended. She looked like she wanted to tell me off, or start an argument. But instead she shrugged, and said (paraphrasing here), “Whatever floats your boat.”

I felt uncomfortable. Like most people, I don’t like upsetting others or making them mad at me.

I’m fairly comfortable with confrontation online— heck, it’s my job, and it’s a job I enjoy—but when it’s in person, it makes me feel self-conscious and anxious. While the woman was getting my coffee, I had a brief argument with myself in my head.

Was this bit of visibility for secularism worth the irritation and offense I had caused? Had I actually turned someone off to the ideas I was trying to convey? Was it obnoxious of me to do my little “secular government” visibility action in front of the barista, who is professionally required to be polite to me and doesn’t have the option of telling me to piss off? In doing my visibility shtick and trying to open some eyes to some new ideas and questions, had I instead just closed a door?

Here’s what happened next.

The woman came back with my coffee and said, “If you don’t mind my asking—why do you do that?”

And the door opened.

I said (again, paraphrasing here), “Because it shouldn’t be on the money. Whether you believe in God or not, the government shouldn’t be taking sides on the issue. I don’t happen to believe in God—it’s okay with me if you do, you certainly have that right. But the government shouldn’t be telling me that I’m supposed to believe in God. It

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shouldn’t be telling any of us what to think about God. If we want religious freedom for everyone, the government should stay out of that question.”

And she thought about it for a moment, and nodded, and said, “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”

When activists in the humanist/atheist/godless community talk about confrontationalism versus diplomacy, we often assume that the two are mutually exclusive. Even those of us who think both methods of activism are useful tend to assume that you can’t do both at once; you can get in people’s faces or you can have a friendly conversation with them—just not at the same time.

But this ended up being a civil conversation. A friendly one, even. It was a conversation where I got my idea across: a somewhat important one, about secular government and separation of church and state. It was a conversation where I got someone to think differently, possibly even to change her mind.

And it started as a confrontation. In fact, I’ll go further than that. The friendly conversation wouldn’t have happened without the confrontation.

I wouldn’t have gotten that idea across if I hadn’t been willing to start a confrontation.

Did you read about the bus ad campaign in Pennsylvania? The one where the local atheist group, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Freethought Society (NEPA), tried to run an ad featuring one word: “Atheists” with a period after it, along with names and urls of the group and their co-sponsor, American Atheists, in smaller type? Did you read about how the bus company rejected the ad because it was too controversial?

For humanists and atheists and other nonbelievers, the unfortunate reality is that our ideas are, in and of themselves, confrontational. Heck—our very existence is confrontational. Some of this is because, to a lot of people, our ideas are very new.

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Some of it is because these aren’t just new ideas—they’re ideas that challenge some very important, very basic assumptions that people build their lives and families and communities around, and re-thinking those ideas can take a lot of work and create a lot of upset, both emotionally and practically.

But some of this is because of a very basic reality that we don’t always like to admit: We are being confrontational.

When we come out as godless, we’re telling believers that they’re wrong.

This is a fundamental difference between coming out as an LGBT person, and coming out as godless. When you come out as queer, you’re not telling straight people they’re wrong to be straight. But there is no way to say, “I don’t believe in God” without implying, “If you do believe in God, you’re wrong.” No matter how gentle our words are, no matter how many pretty pictures of blue skies and clouds we put behind them—and don’t get me wrong, I love the billboards with the pretty blue skies and clouds—some people are going to feel confronted.

They’ll feel that way because it is that way.

So that’s the bad news. If we’re godless, and we don’t keep it a secret, we’re being confrontational. But the good news is that confrontation doesn’t have to be the end of a connection.

Confrontation can be the beginning of one.

Yes, I know. One conversation in a café shouldn’t make up the basis for an entire movement strategy. But I’ve seen this before. At the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the secular student group, Illini Secular Student Alliance (ISSA), participated in the controversial “Everybody Draw Muhammad” day—an action that angered and upset the Muslim student group. But rather than ending any possible relationship between the two groups, the event wound up beginning one. ISSA sent the Muslim group a letter explaining that they understood the action would be upsetting, and explaining why they felt they had to do it anyway. The Muslim group wrote back and explained their position. And although the action went on, and it didn’t make the Muslims happy, the two student organizations now have a good relationship, and work together on service projects and other common interests. The confrontation didn’t close the door. It opened a door that stayed open.

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Confrontation is often a spark to changing our minds.

Ask any good-sized gathering of non-believers how many of them used to be believers. And then ask how many of them changed their minds, at least in part, because of arguments from atheists that they read, or heard, or saw on YouTube, or engaged in with their friends or family. I guarantee you the number will be very high indeed.

I’m not writing this to try to persuade anyone to cross “In God We Trust” off the money at coffee shops. We all pursue visibility and activism in our own way, and I’m more than fine with that. I’m saying this: If I hadn’t been willing to be a little confrontational with that barista, we would never have had the conversation about why having “In God We Trust” on the money is bad for everyone. Confrontation doesn’t have to mean a fight or a schism. Instead it can start a conversation worth having.

Greta Christina is a widely read and well-respected atheist blogger (Greta Christina’s Blog, freethoughtblogs.com/greta).

She is also the author of Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (Pitchstone Publishing), is a regular contributor to AlterNet, and has been published in Ms., Salon, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, and the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Humanism 101

BY MICHAEL WERNER

Interpersonal Dimensions of Humanism This is a tough world where our heroic selves emerge from our wounded selves in order to help us survive. Still, studies of what makes humans thrive shows that our intimate relationships are what really matter to us. Deep, trusting, supportive relationships, as vexing as they can be, are what buoy us through the tough times and elevate us in moments of shared exuberance. We all know this. But how often do we forget that, in relationships, supportive intelligence is more important than critical intelligence, forgiveness is more important than retribution, intimacy is more important than being right, and love is more important than knowledge?

All ethical and effective relations begin with empathy. While we have genetic impulses to fear and reject the other “tribe,” humanism’s primary ethical message asks that we widen our natural circles of caring and concern and that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of each person. This is a prescriptive statement, not a descriptive one; equal moral worth isn’t an entity, it’s a practice that can transform both us and the world.

Ethical Culture leader and humanist Felix Adler’s primary ethical rule was, “Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thy self.” I love the challenge of this interpersonal ethical guidepost, as it asks us to forget about vapid intellectual theorizing and moves us toward our own personal responsibility in raising ethical consciousness.

The American poet Edwin Markham captures another view of transformational toleration in his 1913 poem, “Outwitted”: He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him in.

How can we nurture our best tendencies toward empathy and understanding? How can we speak to those we disagree with and see they are part of our common humanity? How can we acknowledge their equal moral worth and dignity? We must practice.

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The 1967 Humanist of the Year Abraham Maslow saw a maturing person evolving out of his or her primary physiological and safety needs, to the social needs of belonging and love, and ultimately to self-actualization. Eventually most mature people move beyond a simple egoism to identify with others’ needs and larger values. It makes us feel good to better others’ lives and is surely better for us, which is why a mature humanism widens our circles of compassion despite our proclivities toward selfishness and tribalism.

In one of Charles Schultz’s famous Peanuts cartoons Lucy tells Linus he can never be a doctor because he doesn’t love mankind, to which Linus responds, “I love mankind … it’s people I can’t stand!!” Studies estimate that only 1 percent of the population can be described as sociopaths who lack empathy, but how can the other 99 percent become more sensitive in their interpersonal affairs? Science can inform us as to what works to develop healthy human relations, but commitment to intentionality in our relations should become part of a lived practice rather than a sterile ideal.

In our commoditized, consumerist culture, human relations become increasingly devalued.

Minimizing the benefits of compassion, and intimacy, we’re continually told that what’s valuable are the things we can buy—preferably on the spot.

Most humanists seek not only happiness but what the ancient Greeks called eudaemonia, roughly translated as “welfare” or “human flourishing.” We’re rightly committed to the use of reason toward gaining the good life, but to really flourish in our short time here on Earth, it’s our interpersonal connections and all the associated loves, hopes, dreams, and the vulnerabilities within these friendships that give us reference points for meaning and purpose, that help us expand outwards beyond mere egoism towards our highest and noblest aspirations. There is no identity of self without others.

Michael Werner is past president of the American Humanist Association and remains active in many humanist organizations. www.americanhumanist.org

Science Watch

BY PHILLIP F. SCHEWE

Higgsology At $7 billion, the discovery was a bargain. The money went mostly to building and staffing the world’s most complex machine, buried deep beneath the French-Swiss border at Geneva. The discovery was actually an affirmation of the idea that the visible material universe is made from a small inventory of elementary particles under the influence of a special force field.

An international posse of scientists, tracking its particular quarry for almost fifty years, announced its triumph at a special physics meeting in Australia. The shy object of all this attention is referred to as the Higgs boson or the Higgs field, named for the British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.

In the 1960s many scientists came to believe that the constituents of atoms, such as protons and neutrons, had constituents themselves, referred to ever since as quarks. Higgs was one of several theoreticians who predicted that elementary particles like quarks and electrons possessed varying degrees of mass because they are subject to a universal but invisible interactive influence.

Ever pushed the plunger through a French press coffee maker? The plunger passing sluggishly down through all those coffee grounds is like a particle being endowed with “mass” (an object’s mass is usually defined as its resistance to being accelerated).

And the Higgs field is analogous to the grounds.

One more bit of physics: in quantum science every known field can be manifested in the form of a particle, and the Higgs field is no different. The field usually operates unseen but, if a huge amount of energy can be squeezed into a very tiny volume of space, that energy can be converted into particles that weren’t there a moment before.

Thus it was that Higgs particles were finally produced at the Large Hadron Collider. The long delay, from prediction to verification, arose from the difficulty in mustering all that energy and knowing where and how to look for the telltale daughter particles left behind when the Higgs particle decays.

What are the social implications of this discovery? First, we can congratulate the scientists involved in the present experiment and for all those who have, over the past few decades, assembled a grand theoretical and empirical picture—usually www.thehumanist.org

under the bland name of the Standard Model— about the fundamental structure and dynamics of nature that should rank with Copernicus’s model of the solar system or Darwin’s all-encompassing theory of evolution through natural selection.

The appreciation of the Higgs discovery gets a bit trickier insofar as this bestower of mass is seldom mentioned in popular culture without referring to it by its nickname, “the God Particle.” It picked up that moniker years ago as a gimmick to sell more copies of a book about particle physics. Look, went the marketing, here is a particle that in its universal application is all but a godlike thing.

(The book’s author, Leon Lederman, also joked that the publisher offered the title as a consolation to his first choice, “the Goddamn Particle”.)

Since it’s too late now to take back the name, the particle can serve as a reminder of the ongoing debate over the respective roles of science and religion. This debate heated up a few months ago with the publication of Lawrence Krauss’ book A Universe from Nothing. Krauss argues that recent developments in physics and cosmology have made spectacular progress in explaining things that were long thought to be in the realm of religious revelation, such as the creation of the cosmos out of nothing.

With his substantial scientific credentials—he helped to lay the theoretical explanation for the now-observed accelerating expansion of the universe—and his crusading effort to draw out the intellectual ramifications of science to a variety of audiences, Krauss is essentially the Richard Dawkins of physics. One of the stated goals of Krauss’s book is to shift the discussion of the genesis of the universe from the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” to the more tractable question “How is there something rather than nothing?”

The discovery of the Higgs particle gives Krauss, and indeed everyone else, an extra way of thinking about the “something” we see all around us.

Phillip F. Schewe is the director of communications of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. His book about theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson will be published this winter by St. Martin’s Press.

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POETRY

BY FRANZ K. BASKETT

THE ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS

I watch her in that crosswalk every day, Her stride, the way she swings her hair.

Her strong eyes track up this way And challenge. She surprises me in class.

Now, I contemplate, I do, The romance that would display The qualities of a rare isotope: Unstable, dangerous, luminous as radium.

My father’s voice reminds me of my age: Twice hers. Simply twice hers. Ok, dad.

And I am weak when I think of the energy Needs of such experiments, The intricate Magnetic fields required for containment, For safety. She’s skipped across, a cascade Of a million motions in a golden fall.

I was reading in Scientific American That men till forty, married or not, Think of sex every five seconds.

After that it falls All the way to fifteen. Thanks, Was all I could think.

I had thought to get some work done soon.

This year or the year after. To grow up.

To somehow kind of get clear.

Franz K. Baskett is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Arkansas and an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in the Southern Review, the Pacific Review, the Houston Literary Review, the Grey Sparrow Journal, and elsewhere. His book, The Accident Prone Man, was published in 1994 by Orchises Press.

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www.americanhumanist.org

IN MEMORIAM

BY FABIAN BOUTHILLETTE

Gore Vidal (1925-2012) “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn,” Gore Vidal famously said.

I came across the quote in his Los Angeles Times obituary. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it; Gore said it to me himself. Really, it’s a humanist quote, applicable to any form of spirituality or philosophy that seeks happiness and enlightenment. The not giving a damn part was perhaps a bit aggressive, but that was Gore, and it’s me too.

I entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1999 thinking that I would one day become an admiral. After realizing the imperial nature of our government and armed forces, I left the Navy in 2005. The transition to civilian life was the most difficult task I have ever had to accomplish— ongoing, really. From 2005 to 2008 I lived in New York City and gave much of my time to Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and a group called Military Resistance.

These two groups were my identity for those three years.

They’re still a part of me, but I’ve since found balance and peace with the entire world and myself—we’re actually inseparable.

Finding that balance began when I moved to Los Angeles, California, in September 2008. Two months later, Gore Vidal called me on my cell phone, catching me in the middle of a slight hangover, and invited me to his house the following day. Gore’s friend Jean Stein, whom I’d met in New York through anti-war activism, had told Gore I was a Naval Academy graduate engaged with anti-war organizing and that he should meet me.

The next day, Gore received me in his bedroom (where he died on July 31, 2012) and thus began a twenty-two month partnership that finally got my head settled into the civilian world, and forced me to mature into a man at a rate that was at times overwhelming. Basically, Gore challenged me to know who I am, know what I want to say, and not give a damn. He drilled me by pushing my brain and body to the brink of exhaustion as I accompanied him and pushed his wheelchair all over Los Angeles, New York, and much of Europe. He never referred to me as his assistant, rather as his “naval attaché.” Serving him was the greatest duty of my life.

Gore was many things to many people, but at his core he was an anti-war veteran and also a humanist. He avoided front-line duty in World War II (thanks to his family connections to West Point) but lost many childhood friends. His best friend (and lover), a Marine named Jimmie Trimble, was killed on Iwo Jima. Gore never forgave the military machine for Trimble’s death, nor for the deaths of all those used as cannon fodder. Iwo Jima was a battle of vanity, unnecessary for the conquest www.thehumanist.org

Gore Vidal (left) and Fabian Bouthillette (right) in Nimes, France, in May 2009. of Japan. Trimble and so many others were slaughtered for the glory of the United States and its generals.

Fortunately, the United States is going through an evolution of consciousness right now that’s leading to some sort of revolution. Gore Vidal was on the leading edge of that evolution—the “tip of the spear,” as we military types so often like to think of ourselves. It was he who longest taught, and resisted, the perils of the top 1 percent accumulating most of the nation’s wealth. And for my taste, Gore did it the best. His writings, specifically the seven historical novels that are commonly referred to as his “Narratives of Empire,” give personality and emotion to our nation’s history. Understanding Gore’s historical context would make any future political movement more united and therefore more successful.

While the loss of Gore and of his powerful voice is a blow, I feel sure that his lessons can be advanced into a new era, a humanist era, where love and compassion are the driving emotions.

Fabian Bouthillette was Gore Vidal’s assistant, “naval attaché,” and friend. He’s currently writing a book about his military service and his time with Vidal.

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Worth Noting

BY KAREN ANN GAJEWSKI

▶ The 2012 installment of the United Nations’ once-a-decade conference on sustainable development wrapped up June 22 without any concrete progress. Despite attendance by nearly one hundred world leaders and more than 45,000 people, the best result of the Rio+20 Earth Summit was a nonbinding declaration committing member states to modest goals. Unfortunately, many world leaders managed to have vital sections or phrases deleted or weakened from the consensus document, and the Vatican prevailed in having any references to “access to reproductive health services” stricken.

while Minnesota is considering a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

▶ Researchers from the World Health Organization are reporting a rapid increase in drug-resistant HIV in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade. WHO experts found that the annual incidence of drugresistant HIV more than doubled from 2001 to 2011 in some regions and warn that, without continued and increased national and international efforts, rising HIV drug resistance could jeopardize a decade-long trend of reducing HIV- and AIDS-related illness and death in low- and middle-income countries.

▶ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 25 that juveniles convicted of murder can no longer be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Twenty-nine states have such laws. Human Rights Watch estimates that over 2,500 people in thirty-eight state and federal prisons are currently serving life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles. Statistics further show a stark racial disparity in the imposition of the sentence, with black youth sentenced to life without parole ten times more often than white youth.

▶ A four-week UN conference ended July 27 without international consensus on a conventional arms trade treaty (ATT). Representatives of 193 member states of the UN had gathered to negotiate what has been called the most important initiative ever regarding conventional arms regulation. However, the initiative stalled when the United States, Russia, and China requested more time to consider the draft. Proponents of a universal gun control measure argue an international ATT would fail to impact private firearms ownership in the United States due to the Second Amendment. ▶ The founder of Amazon.com is donating $2.5 million to defend a gay marriage law in the state of Washington. Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie are joining other proponents of the law—including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and cofounder Bill Gates (who each donated $100,000)—to encourage Washington voters to vote “yes” in November. The law was due to take effect June 7 but was put on hold when conservative opponents successfully petitioned to have a referendum on the fall ballot. A ballot referendum in Maine would reinstate gay marriage laws that were previously passed but then overturned. The District of Columbia and Maryland legalized same-sex marriage this year but will put the issue to voters in November,

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THE HUMANIST | September - October 2012

▶ A new Alaska regulation scheduled to take effect August 11 will allow transgender individuals to correct the gender marker on their driver’s licenses without undergoing major surgery. The U.S. State Department no longer requires transgender people to have surgery before it will correct the gender marker on passports. In the past, individuals could not change their gender identity on official documents without proving that they had undergone gender reassignment surgery.

▶ Arizona’s harsh anti-abortion law was upheld on July 30 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. The law would criminalize virtually all abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy and would force a physician caring for a woman with a high-risk pregnancy to wait until her condition imposes an immediate threat of death or major medical damage before offering her the care she needs. Opponents of the law plan to file an emergency appeal of the decision to the U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals and ask the court to prevent the law from going into effect. ▶ Nothing like a massacre to stir up gun sales.

One week after the July theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, applications for gun permits in the state rose 43 percent, with over 2,800 people approved for gun permits over the weekend. Gun shop owners reported a sharp rise in sales and lines of people waiting for them to open their stores. The Associated Press reported sales were up in other states as well, including Florida, which saw a 14 percent rise and Oregon, where July sales rose 11 percent over sales in June.

Karen Ann Gajewski is a contributing editor to the Humanist and a documentation project coordinator.

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