Coming out was very easy for me. I had already gone through the same thing coming out as an atheist. The only hard part was the fact that my mother took it very hard. She is still struggling with the fact that her daughter likes to have sex with women.

Anyway, I found this great video a friend posted on facebook. It discusses the coming out stage for a young atheist. The video is well done and perfect for young teens struggling with their philosophical identity.

Interestingly, the entire time I was watching it I could not help but think that the same advice is given to gay teens. Now watch the video and tell me what you think. Is there much of a difference between the process of coming out as a member of the LGBT community and coming out as an atheist?

This is completely unrelated to homosexuality, atheism, or anything really, but nevertheless, it’s quite fun. This is what my brain feels like after a week of studying.

I’ll be waiting all night on the Maine gay marriage referendum results. Voter turnout was so high that they had to use photocopied ballots in some precincts. It’ll be a long night of waiting.

Many news agencies are already calling New Jersey for gubernatorial candidate Christie (Republican) and New York City for mayor Bloomberg (Independent), but those aren’t too terrible compared to the loss in Virginia.  Virginia enjoyed a wonderful year as a blue state, but it’s back to the dark ages for the Democratic Party in Virginia.

I am astonished that an ex-Professor of Law, and the current vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University could produce a rant such as the one embedded below.

Brimming with insecurity and paranoia, Craven spends the entire article amusing himself by displaying the exact qualities he derides in others. In fact, the article is so bizarrely rabid, illogical, vitriolic, unfunny, misguided, bigoted and insulting that I believe Craven has brought shame upon himself, his faith and his educational institution. Could this be a prank? Poe’s Law, anyone?

A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target | The Age

Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny, writes Greg Craven.

FROM time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk.

Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer’s blowflies, we are beset by atheists. Worse, they are not traditional atheists. These tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceramics, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.

No, the new hobby atheist is as brash, noisy and confident as a cheap electric kettle. They want everyone to know that they have not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics. On the surface, this is odd, as there are plenty of other religious targets just waiting to be saved from a vengeful, non-existent deity. Smaller herds, such as the Christadelphians or the Salvation Army, might seem more manageable. But the Catholic Church has two incomparable advantages as an object of the wrath of proselytising atheists. First, it is the biggie. Taking out the Catholics is the equivalent of nuking the Pentagon. Guerilla bands of Baptists and Pentecostals can be liquidated at leisure.
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On behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I apologise.

I still think that we would be a blue state if Terry McAuliffe won in the primaries instead of Creigh “Lesser Evil” Deeds.

Fuck.

Hi there, everybody!  I’m one of the newer writers here at Gaytheist, nice to meet you all.  While I don’t have a very exciting life, I do have reproductive cells.  And I’m wondering, do you know where your gametes are?  What those filthy little buggers are up to? (I mean, besides sitting in a sock, a wad of cotton, or some other non-reproductive place).  Because if you happen to live in one of the 13 or so states* where wingnuts would like to extend the idea of legal personhood to zygotes and gametes, this may be something you want to think about.

Now, this idea of quibbling over when “personhood” begins isn’t anything new.  Various states have proposed amendments to define life as “beginning at conception”, and there have been many instances of states attempting to control and regulate early fetal loss.  Those promoting this idea of personhood for human fetal tissue freely admit that this is about making abortion illegal.  Some of them may cop up to wanting to abolish women-controlled contraception, and the super crazy ones want to do away with all forms of contraception all together.  Every proponent or sponsor of this bill seems to be from a homophobic, misogynistic control freak branch of Christianity (take your pick, there are a lot of denominations to chose from).

Some of the states that are listed as having personhood legislative action happening also happen to have fairly restrictive gay and/or unmarried adoption and fostering laws, creating yet another hurdle for queer parents to build families on their terms.  What I’ve not seen addressed in the varied responses to these personhood amendments is how this will effect people using assisted reproduction technologies (IVF, IUI, ICXY, etc), surrogacy and building non-traditional families. 

I’d like to think that this overlapping of undermining abortion and reproductive rights with marginalizing of the ability to choose parenthood is something that is a unhappy accident.  I’d truly like to think they’re not smart enough to have come up with this purposefully.  But I’m afraid that’s probably not the case.  Because this is very much about control – the same people that can’t seem to stay the fuck out of my womb also seem to have a need to control who gets to become a parent, if they are worthy, and when they get to do so.  Women are relegated to pre-pregnant or pregnant status, little more than walking wombs, and anyone who doesn’t fit into the heteronormative ideals of family (one man, one woman and their bio kids that God has graced them with) is SOL. 

So here’s to knowing where the hell your sex cells are, and here’s to hoping these personhood bills are a load that the state’s congresses won’t swallow.

*I’ve helpfully compiled a listing of the crazy out there for some of the individual states that have these lovely amendments in the works.  These include the actual link to the “activist” website.  I dislike giving them traffic, but I do want everyone to see just how serious they are about this:

California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia  Michigan; essentially type in personhood and your state name.

Sometimes people ask me why, when arguing religion, I invariably raise the issue of my sexual orientation (and in fact my sexual identity as a whole). A Christian man once asked me this, telling me that the Bible has very little to say on the subject of sex at all, and much more on justice and love.

Well, I’ve read the Bible, and although I can see what he means to an extent – the Bible as written has less to say about sex than most of the fan-club would have you believe – its representations of justice and love are at best absent and at worst twisted. But I take his point, if you take Christianity purely as the religion derived from reading the Bible, sexual orientation should not be even close to the first order of business.

So, the question remains; why? Why must I raise my own issues when tackling theirs?

Perhaps the answer is this: because they do it. Whenever legal or social issues regarding GLBT rights arise, it is from a religious standpoint that they rear their ugly heads to fight it. In the UK ‘civil unions’ (our patronizing, crowd pleasing, ‘throw the dog a bone’ version of gay marriage) cannot be carried out in Church. The Sexual Orientation Regulations in the 2006 Equality Act was hard fought against by Christian churches, horrified that they might be legally required to provide services to us – as if we were like anybody else – in their shops, their cafes, their hotels… the unbearable thought that they may have to, with clammy, shaking fingers, hand over the keys to a double room to a couple of ‘those people’, well, it just didn’t bear thinking about! And when you get them started on adoption rights, or sex education, or anything involving their precious, impressionable children… you know that shit’s gonna get personal – and fast.

My truth is a little more simple than that, and a little more close to home. When it comes to sexual minority vs. religious minority, I know too damned well whose rights are protected – and they ain’t mine. When I was still in school (in an area with a significant Muslim minority) this point was proven to me time and time again. If a Muslim child – or rather, the child of Muslim parents – was offended or disgusted by overhearing me referencing my sexual orientation in passing, it was I who was hauled up to my head of year in disgrace. However, if I took offense to being spat on, screamed at, hit, kicked, punched and ridiculed, that was a whole different story. It was my own fault for being stupid, or rash, or ‘culturally insensitive’. The teachers would tell me I should have kept it to myself – this intrinsic part of me I didn’t choose – to respect the views others selected for themselves through their religion.

Because finally, that’s what it comes down to. The matter of choice. They chose their side, we didn’t choose ours. In a war of their making, the majority vs. the minority, they can walk away at any time they please. They are fighting tooth and claw for what they want – at the expense of what we need.

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