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Archive > Volume 30

Rights, Gays, and Otherwise

October / November 2010
Volume 30, No. 6

Rights Gays and Otherwise
Rights, Gay and Otherwise, Introduction
Tom Flynn

Secular humanism has a long, proud history as a champion of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. As Ronald A. Lindsay notes in his introductory article, in the West the focus of that activism has shifted over decades from protecting the mere legality of homosexual behavior to fighting for—and often …

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Rights Gays and Otherwise
Humanism, LGBT Equality, and Human Rights
Ronald A. Lindsay

Secular humanism has been identified with support for gay rights for decades. The Council for Secular Humanism was founded in 1980 in part to counter the influence of religion on law and public policy and to promote fundamental human rights. In the context of sexual relations, this agenda resulted in a commitment to work to …

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Rights Gays and Otherwise
The Case for Civil Unions for All Couples
Alan Dershowitz

Those who oppose gay marriage believe deeply that marriage is sacred and divine, a blessed sacrament between man and woman as ordained in the Bible. If they are right, then the entire concept of marriage has no place in our civil society, which recognizes the separation between the sacred and the secular, between church and …

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Rights Gays and Otherwise
Homosexuality in Africa
Leo Igwe

In Africa, issues concerning sex are treated with utmost secrecy. Talking openly about one’s sexual life is taboo. Discussing sexual feelings, acts, and experiences in public is frowned upon. Little or no sex education takes place in African schools or homes. Parents and teachers are reluctant to teach children about matters relating to sexuality because …

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Rights Gays and Otherwise
LGBT Rights in Malawi
George Thindwa

Malawi is a landlocked country situated in Southern Africa and bordered by Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia. When Malawi became independent of Britain in 1964, its constitution enshrined a bill of rights. However, when the country reorganized as a single-party state two years later, a new constitution was promulgated, and the bill of rights was removed. …

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Rights Gays and Otherwise
The Next Level: LGBT Equality in South Africa
Tauriq Moosa

Since its emergence from the clutches of apartheid, South Africa has attempted to insert itself back into global politics without raising eyebrows. The “legacy” of apartheid is not so much a memory as it is the nation’s current condition. All too often, political promises are defined by their failure to bear fruit; disappointment remains constant. …

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The Confessions of Second Timothy
Timothy J. Madigan

Throughout 2010, Free Inquiry is publishing special features to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Council for Secular Humanism. In the pages that follow, Timothy J. Madigan and David Koepsell, two figures who were instrumental in the growth and development of the Council, reminisce. —The Editors Growing up in Buffalo, New York, …

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Humanist Leadership and Me
David Koepsell

Tom Flynn recently offered me the opportunity to write about my four years as head of the Council for Secular Humanism (from late 2003 to 2008). To sweeten the deal, he assured me that I could write whatever I wanted. Well, such an offer could hardly go unanswered! But as I thought back on my …

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Spiritual Healing Revisited
Ryan Shaffer

I have been following faith healers for several years, fascinated by the psychology of those who attend and by the performances offered by the “healers.” Of particular interest has been Walter Vinson Grant Jr., who as W. V. Grant achieved worldwide fame in the 1980s and 1990s. During that rise to fame, skeptics looked into …

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Editorial
Secular Humanism is Emancipatory
Tom Flynn

Center for Inquiry CEO Ronald A. Lindsay and I will be taking turns in the magazine’s lead editorial slot. (His editorial “Expressing One’s Views on Religion” appeared in the August/September 2010 issue.) In this issue, I’d like to open a dialogue about the varying meanings secular humanism can hold. What does the lifestance we share …

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Leading Questions
Of Fright and Freethought

S.T. Joshi is a prolific author and critic credited with almost single-handedly bringing H.P. Lovecraft, once denigrated as a mere pulp writer, into the literary mainstream and winning him recognition as the father of modern horror fiction. Joshi’s restored original texts are available from Arkham House as well as in a series of annotated collections …

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News Beat
Landmark Case Will Go To Trial
Nathan Bupp

The Florida Supreme Court has cleared the way for Council for Secular Humanism v. McNeil to proceed to trial. It denied the defendants’ motion seeking a review of the Council’s recent appellate court victory. The suit challenges the use of Florida taxpayer dollars to pay for the faith-based substance abuse transitional housing programs under contract …

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Letters
Letters

Analyzing the Affirmations With a skosh of trepidation I take exception to Paul Kurtz’s exceptional, comprehensive “Affirmations of Humanism.” I dissent not just from several specifics butalso itsgeneral tone and purpose: so many “We believe . . .” (eg., “We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence”). These theses—although mailed and not nailed—seem, both in …

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Op-Ed
The Mosque at ‘Ground Zero’
Christopher Hitchens

The argument about whether or not to have a memorial mosque in the vicinity of the Ground Zero of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on downtown New York City is currently being conducted on lines that are distressingly simplistic. As with some similar disputes in Europe, it seems to pit chauvinistic and xenophobic forces …

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Op-Ed
Reinventing Christianity
Shadia B. Drury

From the very moment of its invention by Jesus of Nazareth, Christianity has been in need of reinvention. So unpalatable was the religion of Jesus that the overwhelming success of Christianity could not have been possible had it not been for the ingenuity of the Catholic Church. To triumph, the Church had to obscure the …

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Op-Ed
Rethinking Drug and Device Testing
Arthur Caplan

What is going on in the drug and device industry? Hardly a month goes by without a medication or medical device being identified as having dangerous side-effects, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) holding hearings, lawyers taking out ads looking for victims, class-action suits getting filed, or patients being left to talk with their equally …

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Op-Ed
Not by Divine Creation
Peter Singer

Last May, a team of scientists led by Craig Venter announced that they had created a synthetic form of life: a bacterium with a genome designed and created from chemicals in a laboratory. They thus brought us a step closer to an ancient alchemists’ dream: the artificial creation of life. The new bacterium, nicknamed “Synthia,” …

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Op-Ed
The Marketing of Elena Kagan
Nat Hentoff

Since the 1950s, I’ve been reporting on education from the pre-kindergarten to college and university levels. But I’ve been remiss in not exploring law schools—though I’ve lectured at some of them. I will report on them from now on, however—after sixty-nine of the two hundred law school deans in the country wrote the Senate Judiciary …

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Op-Ed
The Atheist Spot
Tom Rees

What happens to the soul when the brain is split in half? Well, if you define the soul as a person’s essential personality, then science can give an answer. Remarkably, patients whose brain hemispheres have been surgically separated act as though they have two separate consciousnesses residing in the same body. What’s more, it seems …

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Great Minds
Andrew Dickson White
Tom Flynn

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) did more than any other American to impress upon late – nineteenth – and twentieth-century thought the idea that science and religion are enemies locked in combat on an almost military scale. Ironically, this was precisely the opposite of his intent. Born on November 7, 1832, in Homer, New York, into …

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Living Without Religion
Decomposing Humanism
Austin Dacey

Meet the latest critics of the New Atheists: the old humanists. It is not enough, they say, to take a stand against religionwe must stand up something in its place. Humanists are right to think that there is more to life than denying God but wrong to think that they are the ones to provide …

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Islam Watch
Historical Methodology and the Believer, Part 2
Ibn Warraq

In Part 1 (June/July 2010), Ibn Warraq chronicled a series of seemingly disingenuous comments by scholars of the Qur’an insisting that their findings regarding the history of the Qur’an and Islam itself have no bearing on the truth or falsity of the religion. He referred to a letter in the New Statesman by scholar Michael …

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God on Trial
Does God Destroy Our Duty of Compassion?
Stephen Maitzen

The great majority of believers in God would answer my title question with a resounding “On the contrary!” Far from destroying our duty of compassion, they’d say, the existence of God gives us a duty to act compassionately toward others. Some would go so far as to say that it also works in reverse: a …

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Humanism and Philosophy
Absurdism Is a Type of Humanism
Stephen J. Gallagher

Jean-Paul Sartre was not a tranquil personality. When he found himself disagreeing with other intellectuals of his time—which was often—his first instinct was to dash off an amphetamine fueled essay in defense of his position. One such essay, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” was written in 1946 during one of his attempts to unseat Martin Heidegger …

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Humanism at Large
They Say Merry Christmas–and You Say . . .?

Christmas is a perennial problem for secularists: the tender sensibilities of the Christian majority are grievously offended by neutral phrases like “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings,” yet the same majoritarians seem unmoved by the nonreligious minority’s reciprocal displeasure with the obsessively repeated “Merry Christmas.” It’s been a long time since this country’s population could be …

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Reviews
A Tragedy and a Continuing Embarassment, The Last Train from Hiroshima
George Zebrowski

You cant get The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back by Charles Pellegrino at a bookstore. Amazon has used copies at ridiculous prices. A library might have it; I have a review copy. The publisher, according to the author, has recalled most copies not to the warehouse but for pulping and recycling (I …

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Reviews
Thinking Secularism Through: The Open Society and Its Enemies–Part 3
Floris van den Berg

The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism, by Paul Cliteur (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4443-3521-7) 328 pp. Paper $29.95. Secularism is one of those concepts that is widely used without a clear notion of what it is. Dutch humanist philosopher Paul Cliteur’s The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism …

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Reviews
A Pair of ‘Losers’
Edd Doerr

 The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism, by Mary Eberstadt (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-58617-431-6) 148 pp. Paper $13.95. Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity, by S.E. Cupp (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010, ISBN 978-1-4391-7316-9) 269 pp. Cloth $24.00. Shortly after the 1994 United Nations …

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Reviews
Testing . . . Testing . . . Testing . . .
Edd Doerr

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff, writing in his 2004 book Don’t Think of an Elephant, attacked George W. Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education “refor m” legislation. NCLB instituted a regime of testing, not only of students but also of schools. “Failing” schools could have their funding cut back. Wrote Lakoff: “Less funding in …

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Poem
Humans
Ted Richer

One last time. I saw her, alone, in the Garden: Standing. In white. She was without a sign. “Why is that?” “I have given in . . . ” she said. “Why is that?” “No one dares to . . . ” she said. “Humans are like that,” I said. “Humans—” she said. “What, now?” …

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