Yesterday on the DC Metro (Washington’s subway) I listened as a rather loud man carried on about the problems in this world. Fairly typical fare for the ride home. Then he saw a man wearing yarmulke skullcap who was just sitting there apparently doing work. The noisy man asked the man in the skullcap if he’d ever been in some middle eastern city and the seated man answered no, but that he’d been near there and he looked up expecting to chat about that area of the world a bit. But the noisy man suddenly yelled, “This man is an Israelite! He is an enemy. And I am a Muslim! So call your police! Do you think I am afraid?” I think that’s what he said. I heard the threat and I heard him say he wasn’t afraid of the police. I was in shock.

Fortunately the doors opened and the noisy man’s friends pushed him off the car. It was also my stop. And as I walked by the man in the skullcap I tried to apologize for what had happened, but the strangest thing happened. My mouth was moving but no words were coming out. I met his eyes and he smiled very weakly and sighed and nodded at me and then I was out the door.

Somehow this scenerio—a Muslim verbally attacking a Jew and then an atheist trying to say I’m sorry—just felt so surreal. Maybe it mirrored the kind of thing that is played out on a larger scale every day although we could have changed the players around and thrown in a Christian for good measure. Maybe it was seeing that kind of anger over religion up close that took me aback.

I fear for us if getting home isn’t safe, if the anger of religion is seeping into our day to day lives. This isn’t what I expect or believe is correct. I want Humanists to work with religious groups but I don’t want to see more of that behavior.

I’m also certainly not characterizing all Muslims; it was pretty clear this guy had some behavior issues. But I have been preached at on buses by men carrying bibles who made children cry. Another time I and several others felt the need to apologize to a Jewish man when a zealot sat next to him and preached loudly for an hour-long ride because he loved the chosen people and felt honored to reach out to God’s chosen lost ones.

I’ve always believed that freedom of speech covered all this aggravation and I just tried to filter it out. But I’m not so sure anymore. When does it cross the line? Is singling out a Jewish person to preach the good news to any less onerous than threating him? The former may be viewed as being loving, but doesn’t the “lovee” get any say in the matter? If you’re driving someone half insane by trying to get them to be like you or by castigating them in public haven’t we gone past the First Amendment? As Humanists, do we have to go all the way with free speech?

Doonesbury appears to have, at least temporarily, finished with the story arc of young Dana Perino, the White House press secretary struggling to find the voice of Bush. In the last frame, speaking about not caring what Al Gore wears to the awards ceremonies for the Nobel prize because this president isn’t into “the awards scene,” she appears to have found something of the essence of Bush.

Well, what plays for the comics also plays in real life. At an October 24th press briefing, Perino was asked to respond to her statement that there are health benefits to climate change.

MS. PERINO: Sure. In some cases, there are—look, this is an issue where I’m sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals. There are also concerns that it would increase tropical diseases and that’s—again, I’m not an expert in that, I’m going to let Julie Gerberding testify in regards to that, but there are many studies about this that you can look into.

Not since Reagan explained that trees cause more pollution than automobiles have we had so impressive a use of the power of spin. It merely remains to be seen if the public rolls over for this one or if we stand up and say “Oh, puh-lease” or something perhaps more politically challenging.

OK, in trying to determine why I haven’t found the time to write on a weekly basis, it came to my attention that I am traveling out-of-town about 25 times a year. (When I’m in town, I’m preparing lobby materials or engaging in lobbying activities.) So I thought I’d write today about some of the wonderful experiences I enjoy by spending a couple of weekends a month visiting groups outside the beltway.

When individuals offer home hospitality, it saves the Secular Coalition for America the cost of a motel, but it also affords me the opportunity to get to know some of the individuals who participate in freethought groups throughout the United States. I’ve enjoyed being hosted by artists, writers, architects, parents, and pet-owners. I have spent time in homes which had the wonderful bonus of original art on so many walls, that the visit felt like being treated to an evening at a museum. I can say from experience, artistic talent is definitely not lacking in nontheists. Nor is there a want for great writers, crafts-people, or loving families among us.

I also get a “real-life” feel for a number of different cities around the United States. This is more intriguing to me than just being a tourist, and affords me the opportunity to add to my “list of cities I might want to retire to in eleven years.” Yes, I savor the couple of weekends a month I spend at home in DC. But there is much to be said for meeting the wonderful nontheists who are living and thriving throughout the United States.

I recently read Frank Rich’s October 14 Op-ed, “The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us” in the New York Times and Gordon Marino’s October 22 Huffington Post blog in response. Both made very powerful points about torture and our response to torture in America.

Rich’s point is that we in America have reached the point that if we aren’t vocally and perhaps actively against torture we are implicitly sanctioning it. From Rich’s Op Ed piece:

We [as Americans] are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin. The longer we stand idly by…the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.

It’s a thought that Humanists might want to consider. The longer we wait to demand change the more complicit we become in this administration’s crimes. Further, as Marino points out, we must be aware of our reasons for being against acts of not just torture, but war crimes of all sorts. It is easy to argue pragmatically about the unreliability of torture, but that leaves our humanity behind. Or do we accept that there are certain times that the needs of the many justify the torture of a few? I don’t believe that we as Humanists can justify it that way. As Morino says in his blog:

Those of us who would swear off the kinds of practices that we have been subcontracting to other nations have to separate the moral from the practical arguments. We have to maintain that there are some practices, like slavery, that are unconditionally wrong and never under any circumstances permissible. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the premise for this position and clearly instructs us that there are limits to what one human being can do to another without losing his or her humanity.

You should have seen the U.S. senator’s eyes widen when I told him that there was a national atheist conference with 550 participants and a waiting list of 600 in DC last month (Atheist Alliance International). I’m often asked on lobby visits, “How many people do you represent?” During my first two years as director of the Secular Coalition for America, there has been an incredible increase in numbers of nontheists throughout the United States who affiliate with organized groups.

The American Humanist Association and other SCA member organizations have seen tremendous growth in just the past couple of years. 2008′s international conference in Washington, DC, June 6-8, should be tremendous. The SCA’s second lobby day, dubbed Secular Activists Voices to Educate Day (SAVED), to be held on June 9, 2008, should be just as effective as our first (held in conjunction with the AAI conference) but larger. The first SAVED event brought a small, but highly motivated and influential group of citizen lobbyists into Congress. We are still using the contacts made through those visits in our lobbying.

So, when it comes to clout in Congress, and in society … yes, size does matter. And the active and “out” status of affiliated nontheists does matter.

I started reading this at Think Progress. On October 15, 2007, President Bush appointed Susan Orr to oversee federal family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) saying she was “highly qualified.” Before serving with HHS Orr has made some rather telling remarks.

In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. “We’re quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease,” said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council. Orr also wrote an article for Family Research Council Called “Real Women Stay Married”. In it she claimed that women should “think about focusing our eyes, not upon ourselves, but upon the families we form through marriage.” She has declared herself against taxpayers supporting birth control and in a 2000 Weekly Standard article Orr spoke out against requiring health insurance plans to cover contraceptives. “It’s not about choice. It’s not about health care. It’s about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death.”

Remember, Orr’s HHS role is not just symbolic. She will oversee a $283 million program, a $30 million program that encourages abstinence among teenagers, and HHS’s Office of Population Affairs, which funds birth control, pregnancy tests, counseling, and screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.

According to the Carpetbagger ReportOrr will have “extensive power to shape the kinds of information disseminated to millions of women, and will be able to develop new guidelines for clinics, set priorities, and determine how scarce dollars get spent.” The last thing we need is a family planning office headed by someone opposed to family planning. It doesn’t even make sense. Giving someone a job based on their political views is wrong, but seeking their religious views is just as wrong and is clearly doing damage to our country. This type of cronyism needs to end. No more litmus tests other than the right job skills for the job.

Thanks to Ned from the local atheist meet up I saw an article that asserts Atheism’s moral philosophy not consistent with Baylor’s mission, or so says Dr. Roger Olson, a professor of theology in George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

Here is his message in a nut shell:

Christians should be the last people to persecute anyone—including atheists. But that doesn’t mean Christians have to accommodate atheism as they tolerate and love atheists.

So far, at least, atheists haven’t demonstrated their concern for others in any organized way.

Except when the AHA and other atheist organizations collected donations from atheists to support disaster relief after the Tsunami struck and after Hurrican Katrina. Nor do we organize to email or write our congressional representatives against laws we disagree with especially laws that take civil liberties away from us and our fellow citizens. There is Camp Quest for secular kids and we also have Humanist Celebrants who provide Humanist, nonreligious, and interreligious weddings, memorials, baby naming, and other life-cycle ceremonies. I think atheists have done as good a job as any group at working to protect their fellow citizens in an organized way.

I only hope we continue to move in the same spirit of cooperation that we have been moving lately because then the nation will be even more aware of the moral and dignified character of their atheist neighbors. Perhaps at that point we can hope to overcome some of the fear that Dr. Olsen so obviously feels towards us and that many others seem to share. I look forward to a day that we don’t need to drag our good works out to prove our morality but I can testify with the best of them if that is what we need to do.

Europe has issued a resolution against an “evil American phenomenon”. It’s not pornography or violence in our Hollywood movies. Nor does it have to do with abortion or stem cells. On October 4, 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution titled “The dangers of creationism in education.” The resolution includes twenty points but I think point 11 and 15 are the most important and elegant expressions of the reason why Humanists and others join in the fight to keep evolution taught in our schools:

11. Evolution is not simply a matter of the evolution of humans and of populations. Denying it could have serious consequences for the development of our societies. Advances in medical research with the aim of effectively combating infectious diseases such as AIDS are impossible if every principle of evolution is denied. One cannot be fully aware of the risks involved in the significant decline in biodiversity and climate change if the mechanisms of evolution are not understood.

15.The teaching of all phenomena concerning evolution as a fundamental scientific theory is therefore crucial to the future of our societies and our democracies. For that reason it must occupy a central position in the curriculum, and especially in the science syllabus, as long as, like any other theory, it is able to stand up to thorough scientific scrutiny. Evolution is present everywhere, from medical overprescription of antibiotics that encourages the emergence of resistant bacteria to agricultural overuse of pesticides that causes insect mutations on which pesticides no longer have any effect.

Do Muslim doctors have the right to refuse treatment to an alcoholic or an individual with an STD?

Well, some Muslim medical students in Britain, due to their religious beliefs, are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases. Some are even going so far as to refuse treatment to a member of the opposite sex.

The article, posted on Times Online, reports:

The [General Medical Council] said it had received requests for guidance over whether students could “omit parts of the medical curriculum and yet still be allowed to graduate.” Professor Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC’s education committee, said: “Examples have included a refusal to see patients who are affected by diseases caused by alcohol or sexual activity, or a refusal to examine patients of a particular gender.”

He added that “prejudicing treatment on the grounds of patients’ gender or their responsibility for their condition would run counter to the most basic principles of ethical medical practice.”

When did we give doctors the ability to pick-and-choose their patients? If a doctor treats an alcoholic, is he condoning alcoholism? Of course not.

If Muslim doctors refuse to provide the same services to both men and women—and treat ALL diseases—then they should not become doctors. It disgusts me when doctors and pharmacists anywhere in the world deny men and women basic access to medical care due to their religious beliefs. We see it everywhere in the United States when pharmacists refuse to fill a woman’s birth control prescription. What will stop Muslim doctors from refusing patients who do not share a belief in Allah? When will it end?

Susan Jacoby reported in the Washington Post‘s “Secular Corner” that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is evicting three aging nuns. Tod Tamberg explained the decision to the LA times as follows:

The pain is being spread around. We’re losing our headquarters here, and none of the employees got a pay raise this year. This is just part of making it right with the victims, and we all have to share in the process even though none of us—the nuns, myself—harmed anybody. All of us as a church have to pay for the sins of a few people.

but Jacoby isn’t buying Tambergs arguments:

Ah, but the bishops and cardinal who worked at the archdiocesan headquarters on fashionable Wilshire Boulevard richly deserve to suffer pain, because they are the ones who covered up sexual abuse by priests for decades. Somehow, I doubt that these ecclesiastical poohbahs are being asked to leave their homes. One of the nuns being kicked out of her home is 69-year-old Sister Angela Escalera, a diabetic who uses a walker and has devoted her life to serving the poor.

A Washington Post story confirms that the bishop’s residence, worth about 2 million, is not up for sale while the sisters residence, estimated at maybe $98,000, is being sold.

Jacoby also brings up the issue of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which allows for a tax-free sale of the buildings. (See also “Did Congress Make Religion Immune to Prison Regs?”)

Jacoby’s point is well taken here. We are subsidizing the payoff of the clergy abuse scandal with tax breaks to the church. In this case the church is using the subsidy to throw nuns out of their homes. Now, yes the nuns can find other homes, but really is this what we want to subsidize? Is it moral? If this is representative of the values that the religious right says we atheists can’t have without God, well then thank goodness we don’t.