Author: S. T. Joshi
S. T. Joshi is the editor of Atheism: A Reader (2000) and other works on atheism, agnosticism, and freethought.
Punishing Women for Abortion
Our elation at the humiliating defeat of Donald Trump is tempered by our disgust at the contemptible and hypocritical appointment of the extreme Catholic Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by the Republican-controlled Senate, only weeks before the election. During the theater of the absurd that passed for confirmation hearings, Democrats missed the opportunity …
Farewell to the Pink Race!
[Extract from A History of the United States (2401)] As we, at the dawn of the twenty-fifth century CE, look back upon the recent history of this great country, we are struck by the spectacular fall of what used to be called the “white race” in the early twenty-first century. It has long been known …
Republicans Are Hazardous to Your Health
The one certainty that has emerged in the wake of this global pandemic is the utter moral collapse of the Republican Party. I refer to a moral collapse because, all apart from the appalling and inexcusable fecklessness of its leader in dealing with the medical issues of the outbreak, the party as a whole has …
Trouble among the Tyrants
All is not well with the autocrats of the world. I refer not only to the real McCoys but the seemingly innumerable half-tyrants, dictator wannabes, and other such riffraff who, in the past decade or more, have alarmingly populated certain otherwise sane countries around the world. Indeed, there are now so many of these pestiferous …
What the Anti-Abortionists Want
Readers of this magazine have no doubt observed that certain state legislatures have recently fallen all over themselves in passing the most severe and uncompromising anti-abortion legislation in decades—and that’s saying something, because hundreds of laws making abortion difficult (and in some instances nearly impossible) for those women who have the misfortune to be poor …
Man’s Mistreatment of Woman
I am a man—and I am beginning to be ashamed of that. The great majority of men, it would appear, somehow manage to scrub from their minds the multitudinous, indeed incalculable, ways in which women have been subjugated, degraded, and scorned over countless millennia; it is, quite frankly, too horrible a prospect to face honestly. …
The Demise of the White Inferiorists
Pity the poor white nationalist! He (and it is almost always a he) is not faring well these days. You think otherwise? Au contraire, mes amis! Take no notice of the fact that incidents of abuse and violence against persons of color committed by white racists are, in numerical terms, on the rise—whether it be …
The Long View
Let’s step back a bit. At a time when we are constantly bombarded with information (true, false, biased, or fabricated), it can be difficult to take note of broader social and cultural developments that have radically changed the simple act of living in the United States at this moment in history—and, in my view, changed …
The Nastiness of Conservatives
Some months ago, a conservative firebrand named Kevin Williamson was chosen as a columnist for the venerable magazine The Atlantic. The thinking, evidently, was that the magazine’s generally liberal readership might profit (it was never clarified exactly how) by absorbing a point of view remote from and generally hostile to its customary presuppositions. But then …
Gun Nuts on the Run
To those of us who wondered when, if ever, a significant majority of Americans would develop a shuddering loathing of the appalling gun violence that occurs daily in this country—rather than passing it off with callous indifference as some sort of inevitable, unavoidable by-product of the “price of freedom”—I can now say: The time is now. …
The ‘Cake Artist’ and His Bigotry
Do supporters of the “cake artist” understand the mischief that would follow if his argument for refusing service to same-sex couples became settled law?
This article is available for free to all.Gore Vidal (1925–2012)
Gore Vidal, a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism (a Council for Secular Humanism program), recently died at the age of eighty-six. Academy secretary Stephen Law said: “Gore Vidal has been an inspirational figure to a great many people, myself included. Of course, he will be remembered for being urbane, fiendishly talented, and terrifyingly …