Richard joins me for another fabulously entertaining episode of the Atheist News Podcast. This week we start the show off with a candid discussion about why Dragon Age is likely to ruin my life. We also talk a bit about my printing misadventure as well.
In the news this week: The Catholic Church is apparently bursting at the seams with uninsured gay couples, unrepentant fetus defenders, doing God’s work, mamby-pamby Muslims, bankrupting the baby-boffers one diocese at a time and PRAYNAPPING® for Dummies.
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Hi, Joe.
I needed to correct a couple of assumptions you & Richard made on podcast 18:
(1) The Roman Catholic Church is not even pretending that their threats to cease providing social services in DC is due to the costs of same-sex health insurance benefits. No, they have stated blatantly that they will refuse to provide married same-sex partners with health insurance precisely because they refuse to acknowledge that such a marriage is valid. Doing so within their social service agencies, which function as any other social service agency, would subject them to the city’s anti-discrimination laws. And so they have decided that their theology more requires them to deny gay spouses health insurance than it requires them to help the poor. Cost has nothing to do with it.
Similarly when Massachusetts legalized same-sex adoptions, they ceased providing adoption services, and to its credit, Massachusetts called their bluff. (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/11/catholic_charities_stuns_state_ends_adoptions/) Let’s hope that the DC City Council has the guts to do the same thing.
Churches often have semi-secular off-shoots that provide social services. Lutheran Social Services (http://www.lssne.org/LSS-Home.aspx) is particularly beneficial (and pervasive), but their operation is entirely distinct from the church itself, and everywhere they operate, they follow the human rights laws of the state without questioning them.
(2) Gay folks are no more or less religious than the general population. If you find 80% of the US is Christian, you will most likely find that 80% of the gay portion of the US follows almost lock-step in line with such a breakdown of beliefs. However, there are several gay atheist resources on the web. For example, there is the Gaytheists Blog (http://gaytheists.org/), a group blog that updates usually several times daily, and out of Australia, “Reality Check” podcast (http://realitycheckonline.blogspot.com/). I don’t know what it was like at the AAI convention, but I have it on good authority that there was a sizable gay contingent at TAM in Las Vegas.
Peace.
Oops! I forgot to include the link to the Washington Post article about the Catholic threat:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/11/AR2009111116943.html
Hi Guys,
I’m in San Antonio, home of the infamous James Hagee (boo, hiss). We were lucky to have the Texas Freethought Convention here this year, and I loved it. After it was over we went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants who put their table ware in a “sanitized” packet. I apparently had never paid attention before, and I turned it over where it had three different blessings - one for Catholics, one for Protestants, and one for Jews. Yep, a good ol’ blessin’ for the meal - two liners. Having just returned from the convention I took it upon myself to ask the waiter if he knew how long they had used them. He said he’d been around for seven years and they had always had them. Their home office is in Austin, so I gave them a call and left a voice mail telling them who I was and how upset I was by reading their sanitary packet.
Lo and behold! the manager called me. He said they had always used those same “prayer packets”, but that he understood my problem with them, because they assume and exclude. He is going to recommend they have them printed with all of their locations instead! Cool, right?
We have several Minute Man Press outfits here in SA. I think you should call where ever their main office is and let them know what happened. Now, can you imagine if you were a woman going to a pharmacy and needing birth control and the pharmacist says he or she won’t fill the prescription because they don’t believe in it? It actually happens all the freakin’ time - and don’t even start about Plan B for use after unprotected sex. I think the bastards view it as “Tough shit. You shouldn’t have had sex, suffer the consequences.”
Religious people suck and that’s all there is to that!
Peace,
Becky
Hey. Been listening to the podcast for a couple of weeks now. I think it’s quite good work.
I wanted to make mention of something in this episode that I thought needed some correcting. I think it’s Brother Richard who calls, and it’s toward the latter end of the podcast (I haven’t got it presently, so I can’t give the exact time), the paedophile priests gay.
Now, it’s likely that both Joe and Brother Richard know that paedophilia doesn’t equate with gay. They’re two very different things. Paedophiles are people who molest children and may be heterosexual or homosexual (though most often they’re heterosexual males).
Just wanted to clear that up so no one gets the wrong idea.