I’m liking Elizabeth Smart. She endured an incredibly horrible kidnapping situation with daily rape and abuse and has survived with grace, the good old fashioned social kind of grace, not the religious BS. She recently spoke against abstinence only education.

Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from Utah who made headlines around the world after she was kidnapped as a teen and held captive for nine months, is speaking out against abstinence-only education.

We atheists knew this but it’s encouraging when a devoutly religious person gets it.

She drew from her own experience while speaking at a recent forum on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University and said she understood why some kidnapping victims might not run away from their captors after being raped. Smart, 25, said that after her own rape she “felt so dirty and so filthy.”

It’s time to stop blaming victims for not fighting back.

Smart said she grew up in a Mormon family and was taught through abstinence-only education that a person whose virginity was lost before marriage was considered worthless. She spoke to the crowd about a school teacher who urged students against premarital sex and compared women who had sex before their wedding nights to chewing gum.

Smart just became a feminist! No, she finally learned how to acknowledge herself as a woman with rights and dignities.

“I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

This kind of education is revolting and should be made illegal.Do not teach that women are impure or ruined for life if they have sex before marriage. This kind of sex-ed is psychoterrorism.

Smart’s remarks come as some Republican lawmakers, including in Arkansas, Texas and North Dakota, are pushing legislation that would defund comprehensive sex-ed programs for at-risk teens.

Write your friends in these states and tell them to call their legislature. Hell, write them yourself.

In 2002, Smart—then 14-years-old—was abducted at knifepoint from her bedroom in Salt Lake City. She was held captive and raped but was found alive nine months later. Her kidnapper, Brian David Mitchell, was sentenced to life behind bars.

Sometimes I wonder why we let these people live. I have always been against capital punishment but I wonder if it isn’t some relic of religion where we value punitive but “merciful” justice over restorative justice. Do life terms really ensure preservation of appreciation towards life? Sometimes I really would just like to get rid of the bastard–life is too dignified for them.

Smart, who got married last year, has since started the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, which helps promote awareness about abduction.

I might have to call her grrrrl. It is amazing that she recovered well enough to have any relation with a man. Too many people don’t recover to normalcy or takes years. Taking her anger on the road as advocacy is brilliant. Now if she would just get the connection to patriarchal religion and, oh hell, I’ll take any positive change especially under such situations.

After hearing the incredible Amanda Marcotte at the Women in Secularism conference I bought her book and am enjoying the hell out of it. “It’s a Jungle Out There. The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.” The title should have “…Woman’s Survival Guide” instead of “…Feminist…”  Read it. There are several great entries on sex education and the horrors of abstinence only versions. I bought a half dozen books but hers was the one I read first. There are some amazing liberal writers out there.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

I woke up this morning thinking about grief in emergency situations.

With so much trauma in the news there are several disturbing aspects. We as atheist humanists need grieving tools. Some people react badly seeking revenge, people jump to conclusions so they can act, and others pack a suitcase and provide physical aid. It’s good and right to help but often we help in the wrong way–save me from those wanting to help me! Yeah, working with humans is difficult.

Not being a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, or MD I have few credentials for how to counsel grief–I did take EMT, First Aid, First Aid Instructor training, and Rescue, Survival–OK I lied but most of this is physical support. I do know how I wish to be treated and have talked to others about it. I have been trained with how to deal with people in emergency situations but it’s usually help is on the way and don’t touch that person unless you’re trained or needing to avoid imminent peril.

A great danger is to insist to a person that doesn’t seem to be grieving enough that they should and to please you they may well begin grieving. This has been a huge issue in recalled memory incidences where people who hadn’t even been harmed “remembered” they had when they were cued. Likewise, telling someone to get over it is not helpful and may convolute some of their emotional temperance. It may take years, if ever, to get over it.

Conservatives have whined where are the atheists during catastrophe? Frankly, I am not trained (well, I have been but I am projecting generalization) and that is why I am happy to pay for therapists, counselors, and rescue professionals. For me to show up as a bumbling idiot, or worse thinking I have the answer gets in the way of effective remediation. Yes, if I am there I will help in any emergency as best I can but no I am not going to follow emergencies, offer untrained support, and then attribute the charity to my religion or more accurately my humanism. Too many untrained religious emergency counselors have done more harm than good because they think a few phrases from the bible will help people get over it. Yet, in an emergency there is no choice but to help. Doing one’s best means not assuming they need one’s personal interpretation of godliness or not–it’s not a time to advertise, witness, proselytize, evangelize, or even declare–keep your damned churchy or atheist T-shirts at home.

As a philosopher I can say there is a paucity of critical thinking going on in our current states of trauma. Don’t blame an ideology until you can show it incited the action in the individual–this isn’t politics but a real world incident needing specific resolution. Don’t blame or credit anyone or any god(s) without tangible, legal, evidence–castigations corrupt justice. Don’t let anger rule your thoughts to action–anger increases intensity and scope of bias. All this sounds well and good but doesn’t help the affective aspects of the situation. So I get it when you don’t follow this but try.

We are all different but I know how I wish to be treated when I am grieving. Perhaps you have a catastrophe plan for support you can discuss with your family and friends. Someday maybe we can have better public education on mutual support, led by experts and not church members or random writers like myself. So if you see Jim Newman battered, beaten, or busted up:

Get me to a safe place. Other than the ABC of triage, which may not matter to you unless you have been trained, get me to a safe place–do get training. If I ramble and it is obviously something not necessary say “we can worry about that later”

Be there. Just having someone near by helps me. I may be numb, I may be in shock but if someone is nearby I don’t feel alone and I feel like I can ask for help. If I want to be alone go away but watch out for me. If you have to help another go do it.

Don’t assess what I need in my head space. Let me express it. Be comforting. Be positive. Be reassuring. Don’t lie or pander. Don’t tell me my dead friend is going to be with god, has gone to a better place, or doesn’t have to pay taxes anymore. Don’t tell me I will live unless you are pretty sure of it. If indeed I am going to die I want to use those last moments to think about that. That’s me. If another wants to be lied to, fine. Now, is not the time to get picky.

Offer me water, a place to rest, or if I have no wounds to my abdomen maybe something to eat if I ask for it–but then don’t be alarmed if I then refuse it. Don’t be surprised if I cry, shriek, throw-up, pee, want to fight, or go silent.

Don’t expect me to be rational or stupid. If I am angry and say stupid things don’t try to reason with me. Yet, if I say “we should kill all X” you would then say “we don’t know who did it or why” but very gently. You cannot reason anger of the moment with reason but you can assert that perhaps that isn’t the best thought. If I get more pissed let it go. You want to guide not push or I will include you in the enemy list. Don’t tell me “we’ll get the bastards.”

Finally, please don’t ever use the phrase from Nietzsche that what doesn’t kill me makes me strong because most assuredly it could cripple me for life.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

The Pope says he falls asleep during prayer, disses Banks, and says theology isn’t the point. This is great news! We can expect some wonderful things now, right? Hey, he’s kissing babies!

First if prayer is so boring we can stop praying and do some social good. Two, if banks and capitalism is as bad as it is he can endorse Marx and other market regulations that decrease the greatest disparity of wealth in western history. Three, if theology isn’t important he can deconstruct the Vatican, agree the bible is mythology, and endorse the UN’s declaration of human rights as supreme.

He’s just a regular guy. Like the King who wishes he were the pauper. Bullshit. He loves the poor but did he support liberation theology? Will he support the many priests that have died fighting oppression? He has the choice to change his digs at the Vatican. Must be nice to have a choice. A poor person wouldn’t give up nice digs. They’d want to experience them as they don’t have the choice. I went to the Marriott for the first tie and I was pretty excited to be there. Probably my first and last time–might as well grab the expensive shampoo too.

Those poor poor. Let’s help them. If he wanted to help the poor he’d eliminate the largest historical impediments to eliminating poverty in the world: ensoulment and personhood.  He’d endorse birth control, abortion, and say god is without gender and Jesus didn’t have a dick or a vagina and really, women can give mass and those ancestral misogynist bastards in the testaments are no longer relevant except as a negative lesson.

‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” So said the Brazilian archbishopDom Hélder Câmara. His adage exposes one of the great fissures in the Catholic church, and the emptiness of the new pope’s claim to be on the side of the poor…

He now maintains that he “would like a church that is poor and is for the poor”. But does this mean giving food to the poor, or does it mean also asking why they are poor? The dictatorships of Latin America waged a war against the poor, which continued in many places after those governments collapsed. Different factions of the Catholic church took opposing sides in this war. Whatever the stated intentions of those who attacked and suppressed liberation theology, in practical terms they were the allies of tyrants, land grabbers, debt slavers and death squads. For all his ostentatious humility, Pope Francis was on the wrong side.

If theology isn’t important, he’d stop quoting the bible, deciding which passages are right for today and which aren’t. I want to see an annotated and redlined bible. Oh hell, let’s just get rid of it, it’s too confusing. Let’s just admit Jesus was babbling in parables and we need the straight talk of which he says he is so fond.

He’s just fooling us. Pretending to be a regular guy. How is he going to compete now with the evangelical’s prosperity gospel, his biggest competitor in the world? How is saying “we should love the poor” going to compete with “you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams?”

I can’t wait to see this play itself out.

Jim Newman, bright and well

www.frontiersofreason.com

I just got a full on crazy rant.  I searched the web and learned that I was not the first – how sad.

If you had any doubt that religion destroyed the mind… read on….

www.vaticancatholic.com I hereby declare- you to be – - an unlawful obstructionist. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. I repeat- to immediately disperse. I order all your activity to immediately cease. I repeat-to immediately cease. It is not in accord with the ordinances of Canon Law. Due to your catalytic tendency of disseminating objectives adverse to Christendom – you are therefore ordered to discontinue your illegal profession. Failure to do so will result in proactive, responsive, and co-active measures. I judge, adjudge, adjudicate, deem, determine and declare your thoughts, words, actions, public or secret, and omissions, biological and spiritual property, subject to the Jurisdiction of the Unfathomable, Infinite, and Ineffable Excellence of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Further, your humanist anachronism, obscurantism, absurdum, intent, mission, and schemes, are henceforth proscribed and condemned. You may be arrested and or subject to other police action. It has so been declared: It is declared that all non-Catholic government exists in a state of inauthenticity. It is thenceforth declared that all modern constitutional states lack canonical legitimacy. It has therefore been thenceforth declared that their existence is an offense to the Divine Majesty and a crime against humanity. The aforesaid Freemasonic corporations are hereby declared anachronical to true human progress. It is decided in order for modern constitutional states to gain authenticity they must recognize the Supreme Jurisdiction of the Papacy and all Papal Dogmas. As a failure to do so will only inflame the Catholic against such blasphemous tyrannical backwards regimes. Lord God is due to make Visitation to such blighted and noxious governments and tyrannies. He will Visit the iniquities upon the infidels and the Anti-Church bigots. Terror will overtake the faces of the unwashed masses. These exquisite bigots against the Papacy will know that the Lord God Himself has done it. The infidel are richly fattened for such Visitation. It is hereby determined. ‘Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra’. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Libertarianism (and the constitution) are simply tyrannical failures and instruments that lead to false flag attacks and government-run pedophilia through their Manual (and Visual) Body-Cavity Searches of Juvenile Hall youth. A Catholic Monarchy simply is the answer to today’s varied and many problems. There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com

Any thoughts?  Comments?

If you are around Saint Louis May 20th, please join me at Schlafly Bottleworks 6:00 PM.

My talk will be “Breaking The Cycle”!