Camels With Hammers

Archive for the ‘Civil Rights’ Category

Virginia’s Aggressively Theocratic Governor

Have you gotten up to speed yet on Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s theocratic governor who is being touted as a serious contender to be the GOP Vice Presidential nominee? If not, Rachel Maddow’s report is eye opening, troubling, and must-see: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Your Thoughts?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Vetoes Gay Marriage Bill

Infuriating: Gov. Chris Christie has followed through on his promise to reject a bill allowing same-sex marriage in New Jersey by quickly vetoing the measure Friday.   “I am adhering to what I’ve said since this bill was first introduced — an issue of this magnitude and importance, which requires a constitutional amendment, should be [...]

Virginia Expected To Allow Religious Adoption Agencies To Discriminate Against Gays

More special, unconstitutional, protections of religious conscience bigotry, to the exclusion of equal protection: On Friday, the Virginia Senate passed SB 349, which gives private adoption agencies the power to deny the placement of children with same-sex couples on religious grounds. Known as the ‘conscience clause’ bill, the bill allows adoption agencies to deny same-sex couples the [...]

Are You One of the Millions Who Support Ellen?

The “One Million Moms” (who actually only had around 40,000 Facebook likes) tried to get Ellen Degeneres fired as a JC Penney spokesperson on account of her being gay. A counter Facebook page looking to garner an actual 1,000,000 supporters for Ellen started fishing for likes and has received over 100,000 in a hurry. If you happen [...]

“Gay Marriage Doesn’t Threaten Our Marriage”

Friend of Camels With Hammers George Waye has passed on to me information about a photo campaign by Heterosexuals for Same Sex Equality. Preferably by Valentine’s Day they’d like to get a bunch of heterosexual couples to pose with signs that read “Gay Marriage Doesn’t Threaten Our Marriage”. Here are the founders of the group, [...]

Ellen Responds To The “Million Moms”

This organization doesn’t think I should be the spokesperson because I’m gay. For those of you who are just tuning in for the first time, it’s true. I’m gay. I hope you were sitting down. I hate to break it to you this way. I usually don’t talk about stuff like this on my show [...]

“What Are The Limits of Church Authority In the Public Sphere?”

This is part 2 of a debate with Roman Catholic theology graduate student named Mary. In part 1, we introduced and began to debate the topic of whether or not universities, hospitals, and social agencies run by the Catholic Church should be exempted from laws requiring employers to provide their employees health insurance that covers [...]

10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Against Bans on Shari’a Law

Andrew Cohen highlights and explains key sections of a ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (which you can read in full here) that considers attempts to outlaw all  use of international law in legal judgments in the United States and which places special emphasis on outlawing considerations of Shari’a law as any [...]

Openly Bisexual and Non-theist Woman (Who Rejected Parents’ Mormonism) Runs For U.S. Congress

Kyrsten Sinema is a Democrat from Phoenix who has resigned her seat in the Arizona state senate to run for the state’s new 9th Congressional District. She is a bisexual with a history of advocacy for gay rights. She is also a non-theist of some variety who openly participated in a 2010 event marking the creation [...]

Christian Children: The True Victims of the War on Christmas

This is so well done: War On Christmas PSA Your Thoughts?

Is Occupy Wall Street “Doing It Rong”?

Crommunist argues no, challenging the historical validity of oft-heard memes how successful protest movements are “supposed to” work: “The Occupy people don’t have a plan! All successful protest movements have clear goals and plans that are defined before the protest starts!” I suppose the second statement there is pure implication from the first. The truth, [...]

Is The Use of Pepper Spray Torture?

Yesterday digby discussed various cases of the use of pepper spray to argue that it is obviously torture. Is it torture? If it is torture but in some cases it could foreseeably prevent an altercation with greater likelihood of long term physical damage could it be justified nonetheless?  Is it only unjustified when applied to non-violent [...]

Homosexuality As Naturally Good Part 1: Laying Out Objections To Ethical Naturalism, Some On Behalf Of Gays

I intend to lay out the case for the ethical goodness of homosexuality for homosexual people in a way that is consistent with my funadmentally naturalistic ethical theory. Many philosophers, natural scientists, social scientists, and laypeople alike are averse about trying to base ethical judgments on appeals to nature. And there are a number of [...]

The Overdue End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVAgz6iyK6A&feature=player_embedded Commenting on this enormously popular, moving video of an Alabama soldier coming out to his father on the day that the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” finally went into effect, Andrew Sullivan analyzed, reminisced, and celebrated: This is gay America, ladies and gentlemen: the ordinariness, the humanity, the pain, the promise. And the [...]

The Moral Toll of Executions on the Consciences of Executioners

Allen Ault is the retired director of the Georgia Department of Corrections and former warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison which handled Troy Davis. Ault oversaw executions for the state of Georgia. He is now Eastern Kentucky University’s dean of “College of Justice and Society” and well-informed from an academic perspective about the [...]

Clerk In New York Refuses To Sign Marriage Licences For Gay Married Couples

Ledyard town clerk Rose Marie Belforti tacitly admits to imposing theocratic law on her constituents in blatant disregard for the actual laws she is tasked with enforcing: That all changed in August when Belforti sent a letter to the Ledyard town board two weeks after the Marriage Equality Act became law in New York, allowing [...]

Did Theocrats Swing Weiner’s District Republican?

Robbie George, the conservative Princeton Professor who opposes same-sex marriage, writes of an under-reported influence in Weiner’s Queens district (NY-9): In the run up to the election, a group of Orthodox rabbis, most from Brooklyn, but including others, notably Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and Rabbi Simcha Bunim Cohen, two nationally prominent Orthodox Jewish authorities, published a [...]

A Living Illustration of the Problem With Trying To Love The Gay Person But Hate Her Gayness

The AP reports: Barbara Von Aspern loves her daughter, “thinks the world” of the person her daughter intends to marry and believes the pair should have the same legal rights as anyone else. It pains her, but Von Aspern is going to skip their wedding. Her daughter, Von Aspern explains, is marrying another woman. “We [...]

Santorum’s Hypocrisy and Backwardness on Questions of Epistemic Authority

My thoughts:

The Executive Branch WILL Continue Enforcing DOMA, Just Will Not DEFEND It In Court

Get ready for the deceptive meme to come flying your way that the Obama administration is abnegating its responsibilities to enforce law by not enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act. The administration will continue to enforce the unconscionable law, it will only not defend it from legal challenges in court. Others, starting with the House [...]

How Would Apostates, Adulterers, And Thieves Fare In A Democratic Egypt?

Razib Kahn has a most disturbing chart: Kahn explains the above: On the x-axis you see the proportion who accept that adulterers should be stoned. On the y-axis you see the responses to amputation and apostasy. The red points are the proportion who agree with the death penalty for apostates, and the navy points those [...]

TOP Q: “Do Children Have Higher Moral Status Than Adults?”

In his book Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children’s Superiority, law professor James Dwyer argues that children are not merely equal to adults in moral status but actually have a higher moral status than adults.  Below is a brief video in which he sketches out the broad contours of his thought on moral [...]

Zach Wahls, Son Of Lesbians, Testifies To Iowa Legislature

Your Thoughts?

TOP Q: Where Are The Lines Between Peaceable Death Penalty Advocacy And Criminal Incitement?

Last week a heinous, conscience-shocking injustice occurred when the brave, openly gay, Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato (pictured above) was murdered shortly after a Ugandan newspaper featured him on the cover with the headline: “100 PIctures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak” and the words “Hang Them” next to it.  The AP photo of the newspaper [...]

Daily Hilarity: Cranky Puppet John McCain

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Let’s All Stand on John McCain’s Lawn www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook Your Thoughts?