Recently in Religion Category

Catholic Church leadership seems to be stepping up its role in actively oppressing women and queer people. First came the Vatican's appeal to Anglicans who do not want women or openly gay people as priests. Then the United States Council of Catholic Bishops used their influence to build support for the Stupak amendment. Now the Catholic Archdiosese of Washington is threatening to abandon its social services work over a proposed same sex marriage law.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

The Archdiosese is making a clear statement: it considers keeping rights from same sex couples more important than the needs of this city's most vulnerable. Their willingness to use the lives and health of 68,000 people in need as pawns in their fight for the right to discriminate is unconscionable. D.C. needs more social services, not less. I hope the Archdiosese can put aside the politics of hate for a moment to recognize what I would think they would consider a moral obligation to do vital life saving work.

"Join us! We're not really into powerful women or gay people, either!"

The New York Times reports on an unusual move by Vatican officials to try to lure Anglicans into the Catholic Church:

In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with their church's acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.

Anglicans would be able "to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony," Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

The Vatican is trying to capitalize on fear of teh gays and teh womens within the Anglican Church. There are plenty of Catholics struggling against patriarchy within their own faith community, but now the Vatican is basically saying they're the church for Christians who only want supposedly straight cis men in positions of power. And they're saying bigotry trumps almost everything that's divided the two churches since the Reformation. It's a pretty disgusting recruitment strategy.

Egypt's most powerful Muslim cleric, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, has announced an impending religious edict against the wearing of full, face-covering, headscarves, or niqab. He apparently announced that full-face veiling was a custom independent from Islam, and seeks to ban it from schools of Al Azhar University.

From AP:

A security official also told The Associated Press that police have standing verbal orders to bar girls covered from head to toe from entering al-Azhar's institutions, including middle and high schools, as well as the dormitories of several universities in Cairo.

Saturday, a handful of women protested the ban outside the university, and despite such backlash, it appears Tantawi will not be "dismissed."

Unfortunately, his announcement came after he visited a local school, witnessed schoolgirls wearing the niqab, requested that one girl take hers off, and was surprised when she didn't, saying "Niqab has nothing to do with Islam...I know about religion better than you and your parents." Inappropriate!

The challenge now facing Egypt is that of deciding next steps. Some doubt the ban will be enforced, like a ban on full-face veils for nurses declared but not implemented last year. Just last month, Egypt's Mufti encouraged women to wear pants. Additionally, judicial precedence in Egypt does not favor a ban on the niqab:

A researcher wearing the niqab prevented from using the library at the American University in Cairo in 2001 took her case to the Egypt's supreme court and eventually won. The court ruled a total ban on the niqab to be unconstitutional.

Additionally, these young women students will be denied government-subsidized housing and food as a result of their classification as "extremists." The Egyptian government seems to be demonstrating a blatant disregard for recruitment and retention of women students, creating one more social obstacle for women in their journey to education. Thanks for making it that much harder for women to stay in school.

(BBC has this helpful guide on the types of head-covering scarves for Muslim women.)

Related:
Sarkozy Supports Burqa Ban
Muslim Women Can Keep Veils On

Feminist backlash: Better than spinach!

Via Wendy Norris at RH Reality Check, we find out that the Christian conservative think tank Family Research Council wants dudes to be more manly. Apparently, the way men become more manly is by fighting back against feminism.

According to the seminar description on "The New Masculinity," Pat Fagan, senior fellow and director of FRC's Center for Family and Religion, will discuss how "feminism has wreaked havoc on marriage, women, children and men. It is time to redress the disorder it has wrought and that must start with getting the principles and ideals for a new 'masculinism' right."

What always strikes me as odd about conservative discussions of masculinity is how closely they're tied with feminism and a fear of all things 'woman'. As if the only way to be a "man" is to not be a woman. This oppositional definition of masculinity not only seems to give men a pretty short shrift, but also just furthers misogyny. (It reminds me a lot of Stephen Ducat's great book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity and its discussion of femiphobia.)

Seriously, why is it that conservative masculinity is completely dependent on misogyny and keeping women in their supposed place? How many purity balls, dates with Dad and anti-feminism diatribes does one need before you feel like a "man"?

A new study shows that states that skew towards more conservative religious beliefs tend to have higher rates of teenage girls giving birth. (Shocking, I know.)

Researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh says,"We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

Now, obviously studies like these have the whole correlation/causation issue going on - but from the work I did write The Purity Myth, this study makes sense to me.

If you grow up in an area where you're taught that sex is bad and contraception is evil (and that it can kill you), when you do have pre-marital sex - as 95% of Americans will - you're much less likely to protect yourself. Not only because you've been taught that condoms cause cancer and other such ridiculousness, but also because you may think that if sex happens in the heat of the moment - and you didn't plan for it like a bad, slutty girl - you're not as tainted.

Well this is horrible:

One in every 33 women who attend worship services regularly has been the target of sexual advances by a religious leader, a survey released Wednesday says.

The study, by Baylor University researchers, found that the problem is so pervasive that it almost certainly involves a wide range of denominations, religious traditions and leaders.

"It certainly is prevalent, and clearly the problem is more than simply a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers," said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor's School of Social Work, who co-authored the study.

The piece has a story of a young woman who was sexually assaulted by her pastor at her Evangelical Lutheran Church - when seeking spiritual guidance, he told her that having sex with him was ordained by God. Even after years of therapy, she still has a hard time walking into a Church.

Sadly only a couple of states have laws in place around this, including Texas, which defines clergy sexual behavior as sexual assault if the leader "causes the other person to submit or participate by exploiting the other person's emotional dependency on the clergyman in the clergyman's professional character as spiritual adviser."

This just depresses me. I've never been religious so I'd really like to hear from some readers' of faith thoughts on this. Any experiences, thoughts?

ht/ to Hugo.

I'm in Colorado for a family wedding, so I've been hanging out with the bride-to-be, my amazing cousin. We have a really amazing relationship, in part because we are able to be so close despite a lot of ideological and spiritual differences. She's conservative, in most senses, very committed to Christianity, and focused on marriage as an essential institution. I am, as many of you know, politically progressive, still figuring out my spiritual beliefs (does kindness count as a spiritual belief?), and have a very complex relationship to marriage.

In any case, I went to church with her last Sunday and it was a really interesting experience for me. First and foremost, I was pleasantly surprised by how her pastor--a young-ish, very charismatic guy who uses words like "off the hook" and "freak out"--talked about gender roles. He told a long, funny story about cleaning his house--demonstrating that domesticity is no longer the sphere of the womenfolk in his mind. But even more interesting to me, he talked at length about this notion of women "having" their husbands and husbands "having" their wives. Hetero-normativity aside, what resonated for me was that this preacher, and this church, had begun to talk about marriage as an equal partnership.

The language is interesting--"to have." Of course, as a feminist, it immediately makes me think about the long history of marriage as basically a property transaction from father to husband. The language turns people into objects, capable of being possessed or owned. But another part of me thinks the language is sort of beautiful. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age (I turn 30 soon people), but there also seems to be something sort of comforting about mutually possessing one another, as if the equality of it cancels out the objectification. In this light, "having" your partner means being responsible for them, empathizing with them, taking on the world beside them. I can definitely get down with that interpretation.

And here's the other thing that really struck me--this Christian church in the middle of the Colorado mountains may be one of the only places that the men in the pews actually feel free to express emotions. I saw a lot of very visible feelings from the cowboys, dads, and skier dudes in the crowd. The ugly side of that, of course, is when this opportunity for emotion gets parlayed into Promise Keepers and other misogynistic organizations, but in this case, it seemed like these guys were really reflecting on their lives, their integrity, their roles in their families etc.

So there you have it. We hate on religion a lot here at Feministing, and in feminism in general--and for good God damn reason sometimes--but I also think it's important for us to recognize the ways in which religion might actually support egalitarianism in some ways.

Check out Katha Pollit's piece about UN press officer and general badass Lubna Hussein, who is standing up against the sexist Sudanese government. Hussein was one of the 13 women charged under Sudan's Article 152 Criminal Code, prohibiting "indecent" dress, on July 3rd. Their crime? Um, pants. 10 of the 13 women accepted a plea bargain, but not Hussein. Pollit reports:

Lubna Hussein and two others insisted on going to trial-- even though losing in court will mean forty lashes and a much bigger fine. In fact, Hussein resigned her UN post so as not to have immunity -- she wants to win this battle on principle, not a technicality, and have the dress-code law abolished. 'I will take my case to the upper court, even to the constitutional court,' she told The Guardian . 'And if they find me guilty, I am ready to receive not only 40 lashes, I am ready for 40,000 lashes. If all women must be flogged for what they wear, I am ready to be flogged 40,000 times.'

Support Hussein and her crew here.

Oh dear.

Talk about hypocrisy. A Catholic bank in Germany was revealed by newspaper reporting to have invested money in the stock of American birth control maker Wyeth, despite the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of birth control.

Der Spiegel newspaper discovered the bank had invested 580,000 euros (£495,310, $826,674) in British arms company BAE Systems.

It also invested 160,000 euros in American birth control pill maker Wyeth and 870,000 euros in tobacco companies.

The bank apologised for behaviour "not in keeping with ethical standards".

Let's tell women not to use it, but make money when they buy it. Nice one.

Former President Jimmy Carter has announced that he is leaving the Southern Baptist Church after sixty years because of its treatment of girls and women.

[It was an] unavoidable decision when the convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women's equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

Read Carter's full statement here. (By the way, I'm just shocked that I haven't seen any media coverage of this.)

Via BlogHer.

UPDATE: Apparently Carter leaving the church is old news, but he issued a position paper this week on the subject, severing all ties. Thanks!

This is sort of insane. As Texas develops new curriculum standards for social studies textbooks, a couple of specially picked "experts" to advise them during the process are trying to omit civil rights leaders who they believe are "given too much attention":

"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" - as in the current standards - "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure. (Emphasis mine)

And of course they couldn't leave out feminist figure Anne Hutchinson. Marshall contended in his report, "She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble." When he says "making trouble," he means, you know, advocating for equality, religious freedom and other kinds of meddling those broads tend to do.

How does one become qualified to be an "expert" in making decisions about Texas education curricula anyway? Be a Christian minister or the former chairman of the Texas Republican party. Those are some expert historians you've got there!

Damn straight! On Wednesday, an appeals court ruled that despite two Washington pharmacists' lawsuit saying that their religious beliefs should allow them to refuse to stock and provide emergency contraception to their customers, personal convictions doesn't trump a patient's right to timely medication.

This decision is huge as it could affect policy across the Western U.S. regarding the "right to conscience" nonsense that has been gaining momentum over the past few years, particularly with the help of Bush implementing the anti-choice HHS regulations before he left office (which we're still waiting for Obama to rescind like he intended). But this ruling creates a precedent for future cases around the issue.

While the pharmacists won a temporary injunction by the U.S. District Court in Seattle under their claim that they should be protected under the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wasn't having it. They lifted the injunction, saying that a person's religious beliefs "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability":

"Any refusal to dispense -- regardless of whether it is motivated by religion, morals, conscience, ethics, discriminatory prejudices, or personal distaste for a patient -- violates the rules."

Booya.

President Nicolas Sarkozy says that burqas are "not welcome" in France, and supports a ban on women wearing the burqa in public.

[He] said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement -- I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

Banning the burqa doesn't further women's rights - it limits them. Now, obviously there's a difference in Islamic women's dress from the hijab to the burqa - but legally banning any of them erases all agency from Muslim women. (I'm especially wary of Sarkozy's comments and this potential ban given that France banned headscarves from public schools in 2004.)

If you're interested in hearing Muslim women talking about the hijab, here are a couple of interesting vids.

UPDATE: Jill has more.

Related posts: Only citizenship for some: France denies citizenship to Muslim woman
Malaysian women speak out on hijab

Check out this interesting guest post by Dr. Ana Nogales, a health and human rights advocate, on the power of women's stories, as understood through her own mother. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.

My mother never told me her whole story. She relayed pieces of it here and there, but I could tell that her pain was much greater than her measured words revealed. After marrying my father in a quasi-arranged marriage just before World War II, the two of them left Poland for South America. My mother never saw her parents again. She talked about the love she had for her father but said almost nothing about her mother. I gathered from the little she told me that her mother, my grandmother, was neglected as a child and never had a voice in her family. In our family, my mother had a voice but most of the time it was a voice of negativity. I believe that the reason for this was that my mother was never able to overcome her family's tragedy.

It was only in the last few months of her life that my mom was able to speak from her heart. She spoke of how it was in her family when she was growing up--that girls and women knew their place and couldn't deviate from that--and how the attitudes of her elders were passed on to her. She also opened up about my Jewish family's ordeal in Poland and how painful it had been for her to leave her family behind. I had known the outlines of her story but not her feelings about all that had happened. It was so important for me to finally receive the missing pieces of that story, because it was part of my own history as well.

Today, sadly, there are too many women whose voices are silenced due to discrimination and violence against women. Sometimes we keep our stories to ourselves because we don't want to burden our children with the pain of the past. But such silence doesn't allow the younger generation to learn from what their elders went through--and to strive to create change. This is why it is so crucial for grandmothers and mothers to reach out to the younger generations and share their stories, however painful they may be, so that our personal and cultural histories are not lost. And it is equally important for younger women to keep asking their mothers and grandmothers to relay the stories of their lives. As we engage in this process of intergenerational dialogue, we can begin to connect to each other at the soul level--and work together toward the goal of women's empowerment.

Bio after the jump.

Check out the books: Poems from the Women's Movement by Honor Moore and The Little Book of Meaning by Laura Berman Fortgang.

Approximate transcript after the jump.

Check out this awesome ongoing blog dialogue between Letha Dawson Scanzoni, 72, and Kimberly B. George, 27--thus the snazzy name of the blog, 72-27. They are both self-identified Christian feminists and discuss everything from labor division in the home to violence in Pakistan to chickens. Don't miss it. A long excerpt from super smart Kimberley:

I wanted to begin this letter by letting you know that I have been thinking a great deal about that first article you linked in your last post (the BBC article that talked about women reportedly confessing the sin of pride more than men). It so happened that when I got your letter I was reading Feminist Theory and Christian Theology by Serene Jones. (Dr. Jones used to be a professor at Yale Divinity School, and now she is at Union Theological Seminary.) Her book gave me a news lens for seeing some of the important issues in Reformed theology, particularly the weighty idea of "pride equals sin" within that tradition.

Jones explains that Calvin, similar to many preachers today, focused on pride as being one of the most damaging aspects of the human condition. Pride was a brazen, over-inflation of self that offended God, or so Calvin and others have said. It was the essence of sin and to be avoided at all cost for a healthy spiritual life.

Dr. Jones questions where women--and other marginalized people--fit in this tradition. It is one thing for the most powerful people in society to promote these ideas around pride: perhaps Calvin's deepest struggle really was this grandiosity of self that he describes. Certainly, many of the preachers I have listened to seem to struggle with pride a great deal, so it makes sense to me that they would define sin in terms of over-inflation of self.

And yet these preachers and theologians are often white heterosexual men with tremendous spiritual authority who are at the top of the power structures in society. Of course they struggle with pride. They are simply reading the Bible and writing their theology out of their lived experience. They are being honest with what they know-- they just are not seeing from the vantage points of those not sharing their pedestal. Perhaps they have no idea of the "view from below" or have no sense of what it means to hold the kind of power that they have. (Indeed, they might even deny that a power structure exists, so far are they from understanding marginalization)

So, what happens when all those messages about the sin of "pride" are communicated from a position of power to those who are disempowered and marginalized? What happens when the promoters of this theology are in an entirely different position of status and voice than those "below" them?

This blogs represents just the kind of dialogue that I hope will be happening in person at the upcoming Omega Institute conference next fall, Women & Power: Connecting Across the Generations. Don't forget to get those scholarships in.

Full bios for Letha and Kimberley after the jump.

Remember that thoroughly researched and eye-opening book I reviewed a few weeks ago called Quiverfull? Well, despite the fact that author Kathryn Joyce wrote an exhaustively detailed and accurate portrayal, free of the kind of snark that so often seeps into subculture journalism, she is being attacked by right wing fear-mongers. Doug Phillips, the director of Vision Forum Ministries, awards Kathryn with, I kid you not, "the 2009 Vulgaria Child Catcher of the Year Award." The explanation:

The first mission of the book is to warn the radical left about America's real threat -- pregnant mothers who quote Psalm 127 and submit to their husbands. The second mission is to paint certain ministries and Christian parents as intolerant racists with a penchant for spousal abuse, and other even more unconscionable crimes (Message to Barack Hussein Obama: "Fearless Leader -- forget, the fundamentalists in Iraq; these prolific Christians are the real bad guys!") The idea here is to throw blood into the water and whoop the press sharks into a feeding frenzy.

None of this should surprise us, because Beacon Press, Joyce's publisher, is well-known as a purveyor of ultra-radical, pro-homosexual, feminist, anti-Christian propaganda, including such books as: The Female Man; Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions; and Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality as well as other titles too vile to name.

I say congrats on Kathryn for such a powerful and, in my opinion, respectful book, and congrats to Beacon, specifically editor Amy Caldwell, for being brave enough to publish ground breaking investigative journalism. It's sad that leaders like Doug Phillips can't acknowledge the quality of a book like Quiverfull and use it as the catalyst for a dialogue among those in his community and outside of it. Until we can speak respectfully (which is what I truly believe Kathryn was trying to do) across religious lines, we will never find common ground.

Last year I attended Burning Man and wrote a piece about my experiences with what I considered the culture of unapologetic appropriation at Burning Man in the name of freedom and art. This post started a huge flame-war, both here at Feministing, along with Burning Man message boards across the country. I knew I had hit a nerve but this latest incident between the Burning Man community and the indigenous community in the Bay Area sheds more light on the point I was trying to get at.

via East Bay Express.

There was supposed to be a "private" Burner party last Saturday night at the Bordello in Oakland, complete with three hundred guests, twenty DJs spinning thumping techno and bass, dancers, a fashion show, micro-massages, raw food, an absinthe bar, and coconuts. Instead, the event ended in tears.

More than fifty Bay Area Native American rights activists converged on the historic East Oakland property at 9:30 p.m. to ensure the shutdown of popular Burning Man group Visionary Village's "Go Native!" party. The fired-up Hopis, Kiowas and other tribal members spent more than four hours lecturing the handful of white, college-class Burners about cultural sensitivity until some of them simply broke down crying. The emotional crescendo capped a month-long saga that started with a tone-deaf dance party flyer, led to an Internet flame war and a public excoriation of Visionary Village's young, neo-hippy leaders before real tribal elders in the East Bay demanded a cancellation of the event.

"Go Native?" Wow, just wow.

Thanks to Legba for the heads up!

Obama has made his final appointments to his controversial council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Sarah Posner summarizes what that means for reproductive rights:

With his council appointments now complete, Obama has given far more seats on his council to religious leaders who are anti-choice than to ones who are openly pro-choice, even though the majority of Americans favor legal abortion. There are only two pro-choicers, and they're both Jewish. Reproductive-health advocates suggested several pro-choice Christians to the White House as worthy additions to the council. By not giving them seats, though, the administration shows that it is too afraid to challenge anti-choice evangelicals by putting their pro-choice brothers and sisters at the same table.

Frances Kissling also points out that the appointments aren't just predominantly anti-choice -- they're also mostly men. Five of the council members recently signed on to a letter asking Obama not to overturn the Bush administration's HHS policy allowing health care providers to deny services (such as contraception) based on their personal beliefs. (Planned Parenthood has a letter you can sign asking Obama to follow through and get rid of the policy!)

I agree with folks who argue that religious groups can be providers of essential services without proselytizing or stepping on the rights of others. But Bush's legacy is strong. He primarily used "Faith-Based Initiatives" as a way to pander to his base politically -- not to actually provide more services to more people in need. And he supported many of these faith-based groups' decisions to only hire people of their religion or to maintain discriminatory policies toward LGBTQ people. Obama's actions are looking all too familiar.

Gotta love The Onion.

h/t to Kuj

Literally.

I know Ann already linked to this story in the WFR, but I thought it deserved a full post.

Two ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers have altered a photo of Israel's new cabinet, removing two female ministers.

Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver were grouped with the rest of the 30-member cabinet for their inaugural photo.

But Yated Neeman newspaper digitally changed the picture by replacing them with two men. The Shaa Tova newspaper blacked the women out.

See the pics above: The one on top is the original, the second is the one that was altered. Women in politics are often made invisible, but this shit is ridiculous.

A small sect of followers from the Westboro Baptist Church protested in Washington DC yesterday in front of the White House. They are famous for protesting at funerals (like of the recent plane crash victims) and other incendiary acts all framed around the empending apocalypse. The team from Campus Progress went to the protest and talked to protesters and counter-protesters.

There are a bunch of videos from the protests that you can check out here, but I thought this one, with one of the counter protesters was particularly interesting. It tackles the issue of whether or not it's even worth it to engage with these types of extremists.

What do you all think? Is it worth it to engage?

To add to the humor (that's not really that funny), it turns out that folks in Italy are not taking well to the Pope's allegation that condoms have led to an increase of AIDS in Africa. In response they have organized to send the Pope condoms (1 per person) via 60,000 people. Sounds like the Pink Chaddi campaign.

Pam has more. I wonder if anyone at the Vatican will respond.

Ok, so I know the Vatican's actual policies on contraception and safe sex are far from hilarious, but I had a good laugh at this today:

Thanks for the link, Phoebe.

Model daughters of the patriarchy movement, the Botkin girls express a hatred of feminism that is pure, and they hate it in a variety of flavors most feminists wouldn't recognize as their cause. To the Botkins, all bad women--from the seductress hoping to "subdue masculinity" with her womanly wiles and charms to vain pageant queens to career women to even conservative Christian wives who aren't fervent enough about spiritual war--are feministic, seeking to 'weaken and dominate men.'

Reading Kathryn Joyce's exhaustively researched and fascinating new book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, sometimes feels like a science fiction experience. The Christian patriarchy movement is aimed at raising dutiful daughters and obedient wives who will populate the world with strong Christian stock. They make spreadsheets of their future spawn and, like big brother himself, try to manipulate women into feelings like there is profound power in relinquishing all autonomy, opinion, and agency. The most dearly held ideology of this small but growing group of Americans is not necessarily godliness, but severely traditional gender roles. As such, feminism is the enemy.

Joyce is a young feminist schooled in an old-school journalistic style: report, report, report. She enters this world with absolute dedication to getting as much material as possible. She's not an inflamer or a polemicist, but a dispassionate observer, an information-gatherer, a witness. As such, if you're looking for some snark (ala Jessica V.) or some poetry then you'll be disappointed. Joyce is writing a book that is meant to wow you with its comprehensive breadth and depth, not its rhetorical flourishes or narrative personality. It's quite refreshing actually, if not sometimes a bit overwhelming.

What's most exciting to me is that Joyce is breaking truly new ground here. Much has been written about evangelic Christianity or cultish religious subcultures. It's a fascinating and important subject. But Joyce has entered a different sort of landscape, one that is uncharted and completely critical to our understanding of how far we've come, and how far we've got to go if we are going to bring ALL women (and men) along. She's uncovered a horrifying and very real trend in contemporary America. Next time someone asks you, "Is feminism really so necessary anymore?" just hand them Joyce's book and say "Read up, my friend."

Check out this riveting NPR story on the subject as well.

Thanks to Laura for the heads up.

Nine women, most well into their 90s, are having their Bat MItzvah ceremonies in Cleveland, Ohio. The NYT reports:

The women grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression, when bar mitzvah ceremonies for boys were weekly affairs but Jewish girls came of age without notice or fanfare.

A bat mitzvah was rare in the United States until the 1950s and '60s, said an associate rabbi at Menorah Park, Howard Kutner. Since then, many adult women have decided to make up for what they were denied as children, but most who do so are in their 50s and 60s, Rabbi Kutner said. A septuagenarian is rare and a nonagenarian nearly unheard of, he said, but only those in or near their 90s showed up when he offered bat mitzvah instruction to Menorah Park women of any age...

A self-described "feminist all my life," Evelyn Bonder, 90, said she "always thought girls should have the chance to participate" in something that Conservative, Orthodox and Reform congregations embraced in stages.

Love that. These women prove that it's never too late to have the experiences, recognition, and learning--religious or otherwise--that you crave.

I've decided that the obituary section is my favorite new place to read about unexpected feminist legacies. Of course I wish I learned about these women sooner, but I'm grateful to discover them even while simultaneously "losing" them.

Such was the case this weekend when I ran across the obituary of theologian and disability rights activist Nancy Eiesland. An excerpt:

By the time the theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland was 13 years old, she had had 11 operations for the congenital bone defect in her hips and realized pain was her lot in life. So why did she say she hoped that when she went to heaven she would still be disabled?

The reason, which seems clear enough to many disabled people, was that her identity and character were formed by the mental, physical and societal challenges of her disability. She felt that without her disability, she would "be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God."

Eiesland argued that God was actually disabled in her 1994 book, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability--a point of view which unsurprisingly created a lot of controversy among traditionalists, but also a lot of excited discussion among disability rights and radical theological communities. In addition, Eiesland consulted with the United Nations for ten years, helping develop its Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities (enacted last year).

File this under: WTF.

Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent's fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he will begin a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

There were thousands of demonstrators this past Thursday outside of California's Supreme Court as justices weighed in on whether voters' decision to re-ban same-sex marriage in the state last November was a denial of fundamental rights or whether it's in the people's power to amend the state constitution.

But Prop 8 isn't the only issue facing LGBT communities. Ongoing battles across the nation continue for LGBT rights -- hate crime recognition, adoption rights, immigration and asylum rights, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," to name a few. Kim Ford has been an LGBT rights activist for more than 15 years, has worked extensively with community groups of color in New York City, and knows first-hand the myriad of everyday issues LGBT communities face. Here's Kim...

Check out this fascinating essay from the latest issue of Mother Jones on the Christian patriarchy movement. And excerpt:

...the movement offers a "separate but equal" division of duties and authority. Men, the embodiment of Christ, are the breadwinners and spiritual leaders in worship, decision making, finances, and sex. Women, representing the church, are encouragers, "completers," and helpmeets, bound to transform the culture by example and to sacrifice in God's honor.

Reaching this austere conviction via shared women's study is a process that oddly parallels the protofeminist consciousness-raising groups of the '60s and '70s, in which women recognized their common complaints as part of a larger pattern of oppression. Gloria Steinem called those groups "the primary way women discover that we are not crazy, the system is." But the Titus 2 message is precisely the opposite: The Lord's system is righteous, ungrateful feelings are sins to be surmounted, and feminist rebellion is a cultural scourge to be eradicated. The radical leap taken by Titus 2 women is unconditional surrender--an army of Phyllis Schlaflys, fighting for their own subordination based on the promise that the meek shall inherit the Earth. "It is a revolution that will take place on our knees," writes author and Peace's contemporary Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Whoa. I've already ordered Kathryn Joyce's new book, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement from Beacon Press and plan on reviewing it soon!

If you're in New York, you can see Joyce read from her book at Bluestockings on March 10 and at the Flying Saucer (along with Michelle Goldberg and Jennifer Baumgardner) on March 31. Check out our events calendar for more details.

There really are no words for this kind of case.

A community poster already covered the uproar by the Brazilian Roman Catholic Church of the abortion of a 9-year old girl who was raped by her stepfather. This is despite the fact that abortion is legal in Brazil in cases of rape and when the woman's life is in danger, which both applies to this girl (as she not only weighs just 80 pounds but was pregnant with twins):

The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going ahead but the procedure was carried out on Wednesday.

Now a Church spokesman says all those involved, including the child's mother and the doctors, are to be excommunicated.

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil's TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would not apply to the child because of her age, but would affect all those who ensured the abortion was carried out.

How merciful of them.

Samhita and zp27 on the community blog have mentioned this, but I really appreciated what Hussein Rashid had to say at Religion Dispatches,

Last week, Muzzammil Hassan apparently beheaded his wife, Aasiya Zubair. Although the reasons for this heinous act currently remain unclear, there was a history of domestic violence.

God rest her soul.

Mr. Hassan was co-founder, with his wife, of Bridges TV, a station dedicated to improving the image of Muslims in the US. His work was well-known and admired, and the case has shocked American Muslims. Although their private life was private, it was assumed that a couple who lived and worked together for eight years did not have more than average amount of spousal disagreement.

Fatemeh at Muslimah Media Watch has more links related to Aasiya Hassan's murder, but because more details have yet to emerge, Fatemeh is holding off on weighing in. (It's not clear that this was an honor killing, although some media outlets have defined it that way.) Here, I'll defer to Hussein Rashid again, who continues,

I cannot fathom the anger, the rage that would result in a beheading. According to my TV, crimes of passion tend to be the most violent, but a beheading is just such a foreign concept, in any context, that it is inconceivable. Yet it happened. I believed that it would be described as an expression of innate Muslim values, as though only Muslims are capable of such a crime. Although there is no monopoly on violence, there is a discourse that projects violence as being only a Muslim trait. A typical Orientalist fantasy that holds that the "Other" is inherently violent no matter what the reality may be. Thankfully, aside from some of the fringe sites, the media has been responsible in reporting this as a case of domestic violence.

Horrible things are done to women every day, every minute, everywhere, by all kinds of people. It's not as though we are not aware of it violence against women in the Muslim community. We are and we are trying to do something about it. But a moment like this shows how immediate the need is. The reality is that every community suffers from forms of domestic violence. It's not about religion; it's about power and control. We don't know why Aasiya Zubair was slaughtered. We do know that in difficult economic times, men tend to act out more, in an attempt to exercise control. We are seeing an increase in domestic violence issues, and this case is one of a larger pattern, that has nothing to do with religion.

Read the rest here.

Also, you can join the Facebook group In Memory of Aasiya Zubair: A Pledge to End Domestic Violence.

Good and bad news regarding LGBT rights and religion came out of Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend. A milestone was achieved in the Presbyterian church as leaders ratified a proposal to reverse their denomination's ban on gay pastors and elders in the area. While the ban stood for several decades, the civil debate ended this weekend with a 133-124 vote. Amen.

In the meantime, Pam's House Blend gives us a rundown of a new initiative that Charlotte and Raleigh Roman Catholic dioceses are launching called a "Courage ministry" to "'help' gay and lesbians pray away same-sex attractions." Pam's contention is right on that the News and Observer piece on the Courage ministry is completely warped and, if anything, supportive of its efforts. Read more.

And in Michigan, the folks who aren't prayin' away their gay are apparently forcing their "radical gay agenda" on Christians, according to a new video called "Silencing Christians" that was thankfully just rejected by a Michigan TV station. (After the Human Rights Campaign stepped.) They even go as far to imply that Christians are the ones who are victims of violence for merely "sharing the gospel." Check it out, but prepare to seethe.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter AndyLC, it looks like HRC were not the ones who were truly responsible for the pulling of the program but GLAAD and other Michigan activists.

You know...sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. (Not to mention an infinite number of jokes.)

Apparently the Passion for Christ Movement has a bunch of these "ex" shirts, and this is just the latest. Here's the thing - you don't want to masturbate because you feel it goes against your beliefs? All good. But there's no need to shame others, and telling folks that doing something completely natural, safe and personal is sinful...well it's just wrong.

Not to mention, the shame that some people may feel after what one article calls "an illegal orgasm," (something the Passion for Christ members talk about a lot) isn't a sign that masturbation is wrong. It's an indicator that you haven't been told the truth about sexuality:

Two things I've come to know about masturbation is this:

1. It brings shame, and...
2. It is addictive

Most people who have engaged in masturbation know that the culmination of this sexual act ends in shame. I don't have to share with you the thousands of emails of the admittance of this shame because you know all too well since you have experienced it yourself. Curled up in a fetal position, crying, because your bed is even more empty and you're lonelier than you did before you violated yourself.

See, this shit just isn't right. We need to stop teaching young people that their bodies are shameful and that any pleasure they get from it is immoral. Seriously, I wish I could gift wrap Betty Dodson and send her to the person who wrote this.

Thanks to Natalie for the link.

From NPR: "Pastor Carnell Borden is changing the minds of conservative Christians about a topic usually kept behind closed doors. He says sex is good and God said so."

This is rich.

The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Saturday.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

Your pee! It's killing the trees! Not to mention sperm. As if the fear of female sexuality wasn't obvious enough - best to mention that contraception is a total boner killer. Lovely.

This is upsetting. Yesterday, nine Muslims, including three children, were escorted off a plane after two passengers overhead them talking about airport security:

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother's wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

"My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, 'Wow, the jets are right next to my window.' I think they were remarking about safety."

AirTran is defending its decision, saying that they strictly followed federal rules. Spokesperson Tad Hutcheson said, "At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them . . . Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."

"It just so happened." The fact of the matter is that if "these people" weren't of Muslim faith and appearance, this wouldn't have happened.

UPDATE: AirTran's made a recent statement saying they were not notified that the passengers were cleared to rebook a flight, even though passenger Inayet Sahin said that was not the case: "The FBI agents actually cleared our names . . .They went on our behalf and spoke to the airlines and said, 'There is no suspicious activity here. They are clear. Please let them get on a flight so they can go on their vacation,' and they still refused." Hm.

Meet Matthew Chancey, the epitome of "manliness," says an Old Spice-sponsored contest.

Religious Dispatches has a piece on how an this contest created by web zine The Art of Manliness included a finalist who is a part of a movement that doesn't believe women should vote. And that finalist ended up being the winner of the Man of the Year Award.

Chancey was chosen with nine other finalists that the contest claims "epitomize the manliness that used to exist before the arrival of metrosexual pretty boys." But apparently this "manliness that used to exist" regresses all the way back to when women didn't have the vote. A member of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, a homophobic, anti-choice, anti-contraception group. In short, Chancey, his wife and nominator Doug Phillips is, according to author Kathryn Joyce,

"the staunchest promoters of the Quiverfull conviction and the patriarchy lifestyle, both of which hold that Christian couples should have as many children as God gives them, forgoing any form of family planning, as both a demonstration of their obedience and trust in God and as a militant method of demographic battle with nonbelievers."

Yes, Quiverfull, the movement that believes women's bodies aren't their own, but in fact sacrificial wombs used to build God's army.

Chancey's wife Jennifer is actually the founder of the website Ladies Against Feminism, as well as, according the the article, "a popular speaker on matters of wifely submission and 'faithful' daughterhood (namely, eschewing college to stay under a father's protection until marriage)." She's also spoken publicly about her opposition to women voting, which is a general belief of Christian Reconstructionists - that women shouldn't vote or hold public office.

Back to the subject at hand - Matthew Chancey won $2,000 and some Old Spice products. Is that a big deal? Not really. But the fact that this person was approved as a finalist by Old Spice and voted winner by nearly 10,000 people as an icon of manliness to follow, is what is disturbing here. If this isn't a sign we need to seriously reevaluate notions of masculinity in this country, I don't know what is.

I was so moved when I heard my friend Jessica Alpert's NPR story on a tragic crime committed against the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament in Waterville, Maine. Basically, the small order or nuns was terrorized by a man who had been part of their community but had a mental breakdown. Two of them were killed and two were severely injured. The nuns saw to it that the perpetrator got put in a mental health facility, but they also did a ceremony in which they washed the feet of his relatives as a symbol of their forgiveness. Listen to the story for all the beautiful details and the moving tenor of the women's voices.

The story is, in part, so powerful because at a time when religion so often gets twisted for alienating and even violent purposes, these ancient nuns in this tiny town are committed to interpreting their Christianity in the spirit of love. They don't forget the wrong that has been done to them, but they forgive on a deep, demonstrative level.

I guess I feel like it's such a prescient story for our times because so much wrong has been done, so many lives shattered by government policy and corporate greed, and it's time to change things and, perhaps, even forgive. Holding hate for George Bush is a colossal waste of time and energy. I say, bring him to justice, as these nuns did, but don't let the hate fester in your own heart.

Obama has chosen Rick Warren, the right-wing Christian author and pastor of Saddleback Church, to given the invocation at his inauguration in January.

Dr. Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," will deliver the invocation. He will be followed by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, who sang "Someday We'll All Be Free" and "Respect" at a concert for Bill Clinton in 1993, but not at the inaugural ceremony.

What?! Surely Obama could have found a non-bigoted religious leader to give the invocation. Warren, despite being considered a nicer-and-friendlier "new evangelical," equates same-sex marriage with incest, says Christians who work for social justice are basically Marxists, and is staunchly anti-choice. (He recently told Steven Waldman of Beliefnet that he believes he is obligated to lobby the president to end abortion rights, but not to stop the use of torture.)

So many pro-choicers, gay activists, and progressive Christians worked their asses off to elect Obama, which makes Obama's decision to give Warren a platform at the inauguration a real fuck-you. I can't even handle the irony that Warren's appearance will be immediately followed by Aretha singing "Respect" and "Someday We'll All Be Free."

At first glance, the True Woman conference doesn't seem anti-feminist. It's main promotional video has a sisterly kind of vibe - it's all about loving God and living a good life. The trailer above about the conference hints at anti-feminism, but it gives a nod to "career women" and is magnanimous enough to show a woman wearing a stethoscope. (Never mind the implicit notion that only some women are "true" women, that's about to be the least of our concern.)

But their post-conference press outreach reveals a more insidious message: If you love God, you have to hate feminism.

A group of conservative Christian women is seeking 100,000 signatures on a "True Woman Manifesto" aimed at sparking a counter-revolution to the feminist movement of the 1960s.

Introduced at a gathering of more than 6,000 women in early October, the document calls not for equal rights, but instead proclaims that men and women are created to reflect God's image in "complementary and distinct ways."

That includes the idea that women are called "to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church."

The press release intrigued me, so I checked out their website and some of the panels. Perhaps the most telling was one talk, "You've Come a Long Way, Baby!", given by Mary Kassian.

The short version: Patriarchy is fabulous, feminism is unnatural.

Kassian is particularly fond of romanticizing the imaginary perfect world of Leave it to Beaver, suggesting that life back in the 1950s (before darned feminism came around) actually was like the show.

Once married, a woman could normally count on her husband to financially support her and the children...

Pornography and rape and homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual addiction, sexually transmitted diseases were uncommon and rarely encountered.

I don't know about your families, but back in the day my married Nana was working her tail off to support her kids because my grandfather's salary wasn't enough. And rape most certainly existed, though maybe it wasn't called that.

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."
-James Baldwin

Former New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard

This is just peachy. Via Pam, we find that a South Carolina priest is telling his parish that folks won't be receiving communion if they voted for Obama:

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil."

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

"Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president," Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein. (Emphasis mine)

This news comes just a few days after U.S. bishops met to discuss the new President-elect's support for choice. It's nice to know that at least others are saying Newman's statement is extreme. Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats, responded:

"He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. ... Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words."

Earlier this week, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops urged his fellow clergy to push President-elect Obama on his support of choice, in which the following day, 300 bishops held their annual meeting to discuss Obama's position on reproductive rights and other issues concerning the new administration.

With the Pope's threats of excommunication to pro-choice politicians, you have to wonder what will come out of this meeting. But Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards reminds the bishops in a Huffington Post piece today that not only did exit polls find that 54 percent of Catholic voters had voted for Obama-Biden, but that Catholic Americans are actually pretty damn supportive of reproductive health rights. A snippet:

Catholic voters are more likely to support comprehensive sex education in schools (78 percent) than the general public (76 percent). And 86 percent of Catholics favor launching a major effort to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by both increasing the availability of contraception for low-income women and by providing teens with comprehensive sex education.

Put simply, Catholic voters, just like the rest of America, want government to focus on solving problems for American families, such as increasing access to affordable health care and helping children stay healthy and safe and not become parents before they are ready.

Additionally, a Planned Parenthood poll found that Catholic voters' second largest concern on abortion and family planning was that "government was too quick to interfere with people's personal lives and private decisions."

Indeed. Read the whole piece here.

Olbermann calls out support for Prop 8 and it is damn good. Watch it.

Full transcript here.

New York City blog Gothamist reports that on election night, a teenager was beaten with bats in Staten Island:

17-year-old Ali Kamara, a black Muslim, was walking home on Staten Island Tuesday night after it was announced that Barack Obama was elected president when he was brutally assaulted by four white men. Kamara tells the Daily News: "I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating." Luckily, Kamara was able to break away and hide until the thugs left; his mother, who moved with Ali to Staten Island from Liberia in 2000, showed the News a bloody towel she used to staunch his wounds.

The NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the attack as a bias crime.

Ethar at Muslimah Media Watch calls out "shame cartoons" that target Muslim women.

The Associated Press reports that in Israel's Orthodox Jewish community, there are groups of extremists out to "stamp out behavior they consider unchaste."

They hurl stones at women for such "sins" as wearing a red blouse, and attack stores selling devices that can access the Internet.

In recent weeks, self-styled "modesty patrols" have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her for allegedly consorting with men.

Terrifying. One 38 year-old man defended the actions of the "patrols," saying that "these breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community...If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it."

Thanks to Krystel for the link.

For those of you who might be celebrating the Jewish New Year right now, L'Shana Tova!

Today is the second day of the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, which marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year and a time of repentance, celebration and reflection. These are considered the Jewish High Holy Days, the most important religious days of the year. Rosh Hashanah begins a ten day period which is concluded with Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and asking for forgiveness for the new year.

Also, the apples and honey photo is because it's a tradition during this holiday to eat apples and honey to ensure that you have a sweet New Year.

Update: Cecelia reminded me that Ramadan, a Muslim month long festival and fast, also ended this week. The last day was September 30th, when Muslim's celebrate Eid ul-Fitr. Try this website for more information about Ramadan customs and traditions.

I just saw this new documentary, A Jihad for Love.

Fourteen centuries after the revelation of the holy Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islam today is the world's second largest and fastest growing religion. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma travels the many worlds of this dynamic faith discovering the stories of its most unlikely storytellers: lesbian and gay Muslims.

Filmed over 5 1/2 years, in 12 countries and 9 languages, "A Jihad for Love" comes from the heart of Islam. Looking beyond a hostile and war-torn present, this film seeks to reclaim the Islamic concept of a greater Jihad, which can mean 'an inner struggle' or 'to strive in the path of God'. In doing so the film and its remarkable subjects move beyond the narrow concept of 'Jihad' as holy war.

It was a really interesting film, heavy subject matter but well executed. It made me realize how much I have to learn about Middle Eastern culture and Islam. It also provoked thoughts about queer activism in the United States and how our concepts "being out" are really specific to our society in many ways. How open people in the US can be about their sexuality (which of course varies widely) isn't necessarily the standard that can be used to judge other countries and communities. Religious and cultural context is really important and shapes how gay and lesbian people see their own identities and desires for their lives.

You should check it out if it's playing in your city.

In an effort to continue the dialogue idea Jessica and I started recently (also, Michfest belated update to come later today) I wanted to respond to this post about the church signage.

First, I've been thinking about writing an (un)feminist guilty pleasures post about the Katy Perry song for some time now. Honestly I was almost too embarrassed about how much I liked the song, but after seeing this, I can't avoid it.

You can see the video here on youtube, the embedding has been shut off.

Obviously the church signage is absurd. Not really much debating there. What is debatable is his comment that the music video is so suggestive it borders on pornography. Now, it's true that there are many scantily-clad women in lingerie (male slumber party fantasy anyone?) in the video, but there was surprisingly little objectionable behavior. I mean, she never even kisses a girl in the damn thing! And then, to top it all off (if her lyrics weren't bad enough "it's not what good girls do, not how they should behave") the video ends by making it seem like it was all a dream.

So Pastor David, I think there about a million other music videos out there with more suggestive behavior. And, do you really likethink kissing a girl in your dream is worthy of an eternity in hell? Actually, don't answer that.

And to Katy Perry, come on! I really want to like your upbeat, pop like song, but you're killing me. Don't capitalize on the idea of kissing women and then lame out like that. Oh, and have you all heard her other song, Ur so gay?!?

A church sign in Blacklick, Ohio is causing some controversy. Gee, wonder why?

The message refers to the chart-topping song by pop artist Katy Perry "I Kissed A Girl."

Pastor David Allison said he didn't put up the sign to draw attention to the church.

"We didn't intend to get into all this, but it's become a bigger thing," Allison said.

He was just very concerned about the implications of the song for teenagers and what he called a music video so suggestive it borders on pornography.

"If anyone's seen the video and understands how lewd and suggestive the video is for this song, that is not something young people should go toward," Allison said.

He thought the message would be a loving way to remind teenagers that the Bible denounces homosexuality, NBC 4's Mikaela Hunt reported.

After all, what's not "loving" about suggesting that a same-sex kiss will result in eternal hellfire?

Kim Welter, of Equality Ohio said of the sign: "It was a little jaw-dropping. But it happens and we want people to know there are more than 300 welcoming and affirming churches across Ohio."

Hanaa Rifaey doesn't sleep much. I'll let her explain why. But the next time you find yourself pissed at another policy done wrong, know that Hanaa is on it. And you can be, too. Even if it's a small step, it'll add up.

Here's Hanaa...

Yeah, charming indeed.

Thanks to Angi for the link.

Last week, the Vatican said that is appropriately following Christian tradition by excluding females from the priesthood, and issued a new warning that women who participate in ordinations will be excommunicated. Lovely.

Aisha Taylor, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, had this to say about the Vatican's statement:

The Women's Ordination Conference is outraged by yesterday's Vatican decree, which reminds Catholic women once again of the animosity they face from the hierarchy, despite being the backbone of most Catholic parishes throughout the world.

Out of fear of the growing numbers of ordained women and the overwhelming support they are receiving, the Vatican is trying to preserve what little power they have left by attempting to extinguish the widespread call for women's equality in the church. It will not work. In the face of one closed door after another, Catholic women will continue to make a way when there is none.

We reject the notion of excommunication. In our efforts to ordain women into an inclusive and accountable Roman Catholic Church, we see it as contrary to the gospel itself to excommunicate people who are doing good works and responding to injustice and the needs of their communities. While the hierarchy prattles on about excommunication, Catholic women are working for justice and making a positive difference in the world.

Snap!

The New York Times has caught on to the daddy-knows-best-for-your-hymen horror shows that are purity balls.

The first two hours of the gala passed like any somewhat awkward night out with parents, the men doing nearly all the talking and the girls struggling to cut their chicken.

But after dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.�

The gesture signaled that the fathers would guard their daughters from what evangelicals consider a profoundly corrosive “hook-up culture.� The evening, which alternated between homemade Christian rituals and giddy dancing, was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.

Good times! I guess if your dad is going to be pledging ownership over your body, you might as well get some "giddy dancing" in! There's also a creepy slide show to boot.

Picture from The New York Times.

When you thought Western culture couldn't be more patronizing towards women from Muslim nations, their victimization and "powerlessness" might as well come with some infantalization to top it off:

Saudi Arabian women have fewer rights than infants in the West, a report released today claims.

The important thing about this condescension is that their lack of rights are compared to the West, specifically liberated Western babies. (Whatever that means.)

The (not-so) funny thing about the headline is that the report by Human Rights Watch doesn't seem to mention anything about Saudi women having fewer rights that Western children. Could they have covered the fact that some women have to gain permission from their sons to travel? Or that Saudi authorities treat adult women like legal minors? This is a blatant misrepresentation of research that addresses some serious issues.

At the same time, Zoheir al-Harithi, spokesman for Saudi's Human Rights Commission, says that the report didn't focus on productive efforts to improve the situation as well as confused tradition with state policy. "We agree with some points and we are working on that as a commission for the government, but we don't agree with the generalisation."

You can download the full report, Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia, here.

A reader who is a teacher in Malaysia sent us this video, and I thought it was really interesting. And refreshing. It's nice to hear different viewpoints about wearing hijab from women who actually are, you know, Muslim. (So often, we only hear from non-Muslim folks speaking on behalf of women about how oppressive it is, without listening to Muslim women's voices.) The only thing I'm unsure of is whether or not the women are actors or if this was more a documentary-style vid. Either way, I think it's pretty compelling.

Over at The Nation, Kathryn Joyce (the brilliant writer who broke the Quiverfull story) has an amazing article on "pro-family" conservatives who have started a movement on why Europe needs to create more white babies. For reals. It's a racism-xenophobia-sexism clusterfuck. (With some religious extremism thrown in for good measure.) So, yeah, a fun read!

Especially in sports, out of all things. Come on now, little ladies!

A Kansas Roman Catholic high school banned a female referee from officiating a boy's basketball game because as a woman, and shouldn't be put in an authority position over the boys. Yes, really.

The good thing is that Official Michelle Campbell has support behind this ridiculousness; her fellow male ref walked out with her in protest when the school told her to leave, and the Activities Association is considering banning the school itself from playing in games.

The school is operated under the Society of St. Pius X, which has the following under their "FAQs":

'Feminism refuses the true nature of woman, confuses the natural and supernatural relations between the sexes and embarks upon a deviant path at the end of which the suicide of thought and the death of womanhood is inevitable,' Father Leo Boyle answered.

On whether a wife should be submissive to her husband: 'Husbands will consequently take responsibility and leadership, even when they feel inadequate, and wives will take delight in denying their own will and obeying their husbands,' Father Peter R. Scott answered.

Hmmm...suicide of thoughts or denying of will - I vote for deviancy!

I was so moved by the New York Times profile of Turkish lawyer, Fatma Benli. At just 34-years-old, she is the leader of the fight for Muslim womens' right to wear their scarves in public places, especially at school. She told the Times:

I could tell you about domestic violence, about honor killings, about the parts of the criminal code that discriminate against women. But we can’t move on to those issues. The head scarf is where we are stuck.

What do you get when you combine the "lazily sensual harem woman reclining on a couch" stereotype with the "cowed housewife bullied by her religion and the men in her life" stereotype? Veil fetish art. Zeynab at Muslimah Media Watch breaks it all down.

And in a follow-up post, Zeynab writes about the art of Makan Emadi, and how it deals with issues of concealment and exposure of Muslim women's bodies. Is it a powerful critique of both Eastern and Western sexism? Or is it just perpetuating the worst Eastern and Western sexist stereotypes? She has some interesting thoughts.

Now this is what I call some activism:

A group of female protesters locked in a land dispute with the Greek Orthodox Church defied a 1,000-year-old ban and entered the all-male Mount Athos monastic sanctuary in northern Greece, a police official said Wednesday.

A police spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity that the small group of nearby villagers, including at least six women, climbed over a fence Tuesday and briefly entered the self-governing peninsula, where women are strictly forbidden.

Awesome. While the rally was concerning certain land claims, it's still no doubt a great statement. In the past, single female visitors were said to have entered the grounds disguised as men. But not today.

"Pope Benedict Says Pharmacists Have Right To Conscientiously Object To Fill Emergency Contraception"

B-dog is at it again! It's no huge surprise that our anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-woman and yes, even anti-rock Pope would also be anti-birth control.

Pope Benedict XVI assured pharmacists at the 25th International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists on Monday that they should object to filling prescriptions for emergency contraception, as well as give moral "advice" to those seeking EC. You know, because it's their business and all.

but, I have always thought nuns were really cool, to be honest. I mean something appeals to me about a simple life away from the consumer marketing of mainstream culture and the woes of relationships with men. But the whole, anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-gay, dogmatism kinda makes it a bad choice for anything other than sociological study on how religions make some people act crazy.

But this story does stick out to me, because it transcends some of the awful, bad, terrible communications strategy/PR of the Catholic church and gives us a sense of something real.

The real geekery of a nun.

Her cell phone has a custom ring tone. She frequents the Internet's most popular social networking sites. She gets jittery when she can't check her e-mail or post on her blog. She communicates with her family mostly by AOL instant messenger. And she's a 50-year-old nun.

Sister Anne Flanagan has been a Daughter of St. Paul for almost 30 years, and lives with five other nuns in a convent upstairs from a Catholic bookstore near Chicago's Magnificent Mile. She teaches Bible study classes, edits Catholic books and magazines and roams the Internet looking for cool technology, although, she wryly notes, "a vow of poverty tends to limit one's access."

A nun excited about Wired. C'mon, that is pretty cute. The interview is worth a read, she talks about online prayer and mobilizing environmentalism through religion.

Via.

O'Reilly appeared on Good Morning America yesterday to talk about his new book on the youth of today. I am scared that O'Reilly actually was near young people. But I remember teachers like him, the ones that did it to really set these kids straight. They sucked.

But now he has a book out about young people and how to control them and how they act in school. I wouldn't normally pay attention this, but this got me. O'Reilly claims that wearing a burqa/hijab/veil, is an imposition of religion onto OTHER people. Huh?

O'Reilly and host Diane Sawyer are in agreement that today's youth are unacceptably dressed. Indicators of this include the flaunting of low-hanging pants and burqas. Burqas, O'Reilly says, are an imposition of one's religion on others. He alludes to such an expression of religion as a path to "chaos in the classroom" and an acceptable loss at the discretion of school administration.

Oh, I see, low hanging pants AND burqas. So too much exposure, bad-too little exposure, bad. No wonder kids are so confused and angry these days. All they get are mixed messages. And what do these two fashion choices have in common? It is probably young brown kids wearing them, so of course they shouldn't be wearing them to school. My god, how did they even let them IN the school?

And you have to love the hypocrisy. First he chides the school district for firing a teacher to have the students pray and then demands that wearing a burqa in school creates chaos. Obviously for him, it is only an imposition of religion if it is not one that he adheres to.

(Oh and he hates on Colbert, so boo to him. AND, what is up with Diane Sawyer all, "thanks for saying I am pretty?" Barf.)

via Raw Story.

Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania had prevention messages being aired for just two days on WDUQ 90.5 FM, the flagship NPR affiliate in Pittsburgh, before they pulled the plug on the underwriting messages because it was "not aligned with" the "Catholic identity" of the station's license holder, Duquesne University.

If you live in Pennsylvania and thing this is a load of crap like we do, then take action.

Here's some good news to get you revved up for the weekend.

Roman Catholic bishops in Connecticut have agreed to let hospital personnel give emergency contraception to all rape victims, reversing their decision days before a new state law requires it.

Okay, so they were forced to comply. Whatevs. At least women in Connecticut can rest a little easier. But here's an interesting tidbit. Apparently, state church officials wanted to mandate an ovulation test for women seeking emergency contraception before they would dispense it. The idea being if a woman was ovulating there was a better chance of conception having taken place--and then they wouldn't give her EC.

And people have the nerve to argue that anti-choice shit isn't about controlling women's bodies?

So in response to the woman in Nebraska who is rightfully suing for the ban of the word "rape" at a rape trial, State Senator Ernie Chambers has said that he is suing god to show how frivolous lawsuits can be.

Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is “Omnipresent�.

In the lawsuit Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant (“Come out, come out, wherever you are�) has been unable to do so.�

The suit also requests that the court given the “peculiar circumstances� of this case waive personal service. It says being Omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action.

The lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.�

It says God has caused, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.�

The suit also says God has caused, “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.�

Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant “will laugh� when calamity comes.

Chambers asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment. He says as an alternative, he wants the judge to set a date for a hearing as “expeditiously� as possible and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.

via AP.

I pasted the whole thing, because it is just so weird. It is also extremely disappointing as Ernie Chambers is a well known civil rights activist and according to an interview in Mother Jones last year, "he’s been named the “angriest black man in Nebraska,� the “defender of the downtrodden,� and the “maverick of Omaha.� And it's hard to deny that Chambers lives up to such colorful titles." How can someone with such a reputation think in anyway that banning the word "rape" at a rape trial is justified, let alone something to parody?

That really is disappointing. Thoughts?

Thanks to Azliza for the link.

I've gotten a TON of emails about this crazy-creepy website, Marry Our Daughter. And while the site has been outed as a hoax site, I think it's worth mentioning. Because there's something severely fucked up about the idea that women are in such a bad place that a site like this seemed like it could be real.

After all, with things like purity balls and abstinence-only education teaching young women that their only value is as future wives--something like this site doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Luckily, the actual purpose of Marry Our Daughter is to bring attention to a somewhat related issue:

Contacted through MarryOurDaughter this morning, [site creator John] Ordover quickly conceded the page was a parody aimed at drawing attention to inconsistencies in state marriage laws. States consider it a crime for adults to have sex with minors, but they allow kids as young as 12 to get married with parental and sometime judicial permission.

Ordover is also a co-creator of the super controversial "Technical Virgin" website that Melanie Martinez was fired over.

So I'm actually kind of pleased about this--assuming that the issue gets some attention. In fact, I wrote about this in my book (shameless plug alert). People are up in arms about teenagers (well, teenage girls) having sex, but only if they're not married. Best example ever: the 13-year old in Nebraska whose parents married her off to the 21 year-old man who got her pregnant. You know, so she'd still be "pure."

UPDATE: Amanda has more. And it's disturbing.

A pastor in Australia who recently pled guilty to raping two of his teenage daughters said he only did it in order to teach them how to be good wives:

The man told the court the sex was not about fulfilling his desires but about teaching his daughters how to behave for their husbands when they eventually married, as dictated in scripture.

Just a thought--how far off is this from Purity Balls?

After all, it's all about fathers owning their daughters' sexuality and preparing them to be "good wives." And while incest isn't explicit in the purity ball madness, it sure is implied. Thoughts?

(via Spare Room, thanks to Lindsay for the link.)

What if your wife, even after graduating the prestigious homemaking course at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a degree in ladylike submission, still won't behave? Uber-conservative Christian patriarchs everywhere now have a solution!

Give her a good spanking. For how to incorporate this into your marriage, see the "Christian Domestic Discipline" site. Unlike the Baptists for Brownback campaign Jen wrote about awhile ago, this site appears to be legit. Not a parody.

A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is one that is set up according to Biblical standards; that is, the husband is the authority in the household. The wife is submissive to her husband as is fit in the Lord and her husband loves her as himself. He has the ultimate authority in his household, but it is tempered with the knowledge that he must answer to God for his actions and decisions. He has the authority to spank his wife for punishment, but in real CDD marriages this is taken very seriously and usually happens only rarely. CDD is so much more than just spanking. It is the husband loving the wife enough to guide and teach her, and the wife loving the husband enough to follow his leadership. A Christian marriage embodies true romance and a Christian man a true hero.

This is billed as completely consensual, with it made clear that "the husband has authority to spank the wife. The wife does not have authority to spank her husband." The site was created by wife-spankers who were sick of stumbling upon porn when they searched for other like-minded folks online. Lest you become confused that the CDD site is a BDSM site with a Christian spin, they're sure to reiterate that this is about adhering to Biblical gender roles -- not about sexual pleasure. Unless you get off on asserting your patriarchy by slapping your property wife. Not an unheard-of phenomenon, as the site acknowledges:

Though we recognize by its very nature this subject can be erotic, we will keep this website as clean and wholesome as possible. However, we will not seek to deny the erotic nature of some CDD marriages as we believe it is a natural consequence of following God's plan. After all, He created eroticism to be enjoyed inside a Christian marriage.

But what if sometimes your wife doesn't want to be spanked? Well, let's not use an inconvenient phrase like "domestic violence" or "spousal abuse." Nah, "non-consensual CDD" would be more appropriate, really. And the site basically says that it's a man's god-given right to hit his wife, even if those pesky laws against domestic violence get in the way.

Non-consensual CDD:

Though we believe the Bible gives a husband the authority to use spanking as one tool in enforcing his authority in the home with or without his wife's permission, in today's world we recognize the legality that mandates that all CDD must be consensual. Therefore we will do not condone nonconsensual CDD as a rule.

How progressive of them!

Lynn at Broadsheet delved into the blogs linked on the site, which are just so sad. One blogger, a woman named Debbie, has decided having her husband hit her is a cheap and effective weight-loss strategy. She recounts being beaten for accidentally leaving the stove burner on, and writes, "I felt my stomach drop when I saw my husband bring out a heavy belt." She continues,

I am not abused nor capable of being abused. I imagine that if one of you raging feminist find yourself beaten by a man you had better hope Leah or I (or someone of like mind) comes along to beat the stuffing out of him for you. I know I'm capable and from reading I sort of believe Leah is as well. My submission is quite voluntary.

I'm not saying all wife-spanking is analogous to domestic abuse. The blogs and the site make clear that this is a lifestyle chosen (how freely chosen is another question...) by women themselves. One writes on the site, "We practice CDD-lite in our home as it is a concept that I have brought to my husband and one that he is still getting comfortable with."

Of course, that's less disturbing than "non-consensual CDD," but still thoroughly depressing. As Lynn writes, "violence at home -- 'consensual' or otherwise -- is by no means unique to these particular fundamentalists; abusers and victims can find plenty of justification for their actions without distorting Scripture." And I agree with her that seeing it put in such plain terms on this site and in these blogs is really, really troubling.

On a much, much lighter note, the site also features a store... which sells crotchless pantaloons. (Picture below the fold.)

"Because of my degree in homemaking, I can read this recipe book!"

The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is offering a new and exciting academic program: homemaking!

Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducing a new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls biblical family and gender roles.

It will offer a bachelor of arts in humanities degree with a 23-hour concentration in homemaking. The program is only open to women.

Of course it is. Coursework for the program includes nutrition and meal preparation, textile design and classes on "the value of a child" and the "biblical model for the home and family."

Seminary President Paige Patterson says "We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family...If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed."

I always thought nations were destroyed by war, famine or disease. Little did I know it was actually women taking classes in anything other than ironing that determines the demise of a country.

By the way, Patterson is known in Southern Baptist circles for issuing a statement saying that women shouldn't be pastors and that they should "graciously submit" to their husbands. (How one "graciously submits" is another question. Would I smile and thank him for the great honor of doing his laundry?)

Earlier this year, a former professor filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the school and Patterson--she says she was fired from her tenure-track position because she was a woman. Perhaps she didn't graciously submit. Silly girl. In fact, Patterson's wife is the only woman faculty member in Southwestern's theology school. Shocking.

Though, of course, this isn't just about Patterson. Plenty of folks at the school are behind the move to instill traditional gender roles in their students. Terri Stovall, dean of women's programs at Southwestern, said "Whether a woman works outside or strictly in the home, her first priority is her family and home...We just really want to step up and provide some of these skills." Yeah, way to step up. I'm sure women graduates will look back on their years at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and be ever-so-grateful that they spent half of their college education learning how to knit booties.

Thanks to Marquel for the link!

Nope, this isn't about a revival of the early 90s Whoopie Goldberg hit movie, this is about what Bust Magazine is reporting this month is a new trend of young, feminist minded women choosing to become nuns.

Bust reports that young women are being drawn into the nun's life, something that even in Whoopie's movie is characterized by sheltered little old ladies with grey hair. At a time when criticisms against the Catholic church are at a high, with recent priest sexual abuse scandals and harsh reactions to the archaic stance the Vatican is taking against modern day issues like homosexuality and birth control, it's surprising to think that young women may be choosing to become part of this hierarchy.

The article points to the internet as evidence of the rising visibility of nuns, and gives it at least partial credit for recruitment into the life as well. They mention a number of nun-authored blogs which deal directly with many of the difficult issues of convent life--celibacy, for example. And, just in case you're curious, priests are blogging too.

The women interviewed for the Bust piece use the language of feminism--and frame their decisions to enter the convent within the language of choice:

Society tells women that you have to get married. But I'm open to the possibility of falling in love with a religious community or a man.

Further explaining the feminist context of these convents:

...Women's gifts are encouraged--whether it be to play music, teach, learn languages, or write. Convents demonstrate the positive side of a gender-segregated education. Women's religious life is a very strong feminist social construct.

Like Matt, I don't get the joke.

...at least in the minds of most people who are actually getting married. Amanda has a great post up about how fewer and fewer couples see marriage and babies as inextricable.

Of course, this has got to be deeply upsetting to fundamentalist Catholics. I spent the past weekend at a very traditional Catholic wedding in my hometown Iowa. Now, I've definitely been to Catholic weddings before, but not since I was a kid. And what really stood out to me about hearing the Catholic vows this time around is how procreation-focused they are. The Church makes the couple swear that they want to have lotsa babies. It's a promise right up there with "''til death do us part." The priest asks,

Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?

This is, it turns out, part of the underpinning of the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception. Want to get married but don't want to become a babymaking machine? Well, tough, you're in violation of your wedding vows.

I find the whole thing pretty appalling. And speaking of, check out the (two-piece! I shit you not) bridesmaid's dress I was sporting this weekend... (Below the fold.)

Apparently a senior church of England bishop has made an official announcement that a onslaught of floods which has been causing damage across the UK isn't a an overabundance of precipitation resulting in shitty weather, but actually the wrath of the almighty smiting the nation for being too gay-friendly. I should have known!

As the Nerve headline says, "What If Gay Sex Could Actually Cause it to 'Rain Men'?"

A 25-foot high inflatable blue elephant, of course!

This "elephant in the pew" was presented by a Christian campaign that aims to confront the "porn problem" that exists within Christian churches and homes. The National Porn Sunday Elephant (yes, there is a National Porn Sunday and it's October 7th) is going on a 20-city tour to spread the word about how pornograhy corrupts families. Because, um, that's what elephants do?

Brazilian supermodel Gisele speaks out against the Catholic church and their stance on premarital sex, contraception and abortion. I am not really into the supermodel thing--like wow who cares, feminists say this shit all the time--but I guess we can't deny the influence super models have on young women world-wide.

Bundchen tells the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, "Today no one is a virgin when they get married ... show me someone who's a virgin."

Referring to pregnant women, Bundchen says they should be given the right to choose whether or not they have the child.

She says, "If she thinks she doesn't have the money or the emotional condition to raise a child, why should she give birth?"

"It's ridiculous to ban contraceptives - you only have to think of the diseases that are transmitted without them. I think it should be compulsory to use a contraceptive."

"How is it possible to not want people to use condoms and also not have abortions? It's impossible, I'm sorry."

Brazil is very much influenced by the Catholic church and women can only get abortions if it is a risk to their health or they are raped (which is more than Brownbeck would allow, eek). I only hope more and more celebrities speak out, because maybe people will listen to them more or something. I don't know.

via WENN.

An organist for a Catholic church was fired for selling sex toys, saying that her side job was not "consistent with Church teachings."

Linette Servais, 50, played the organ and sung with the choir for 35 years. Much of her work as choir director and organist was done without pay. When her parish priest asked to meet with her, she thought it was to say thank you.

Instead, she was told to quit her sales job with company known as Pure Romance or she would lose her position in the church.

Pure Romance in Loveland, Ohio, is a $60 million per year business that sells spa products and sex toys at homes parties attended by women. It has 15,000 consultants like Servais.

She said her decision was not hard: She began working with Pure Romance after a brain tumor and treatment left her sexually dysfunctional. The job allows her to help other women who have similar problems.

But who cares about brain tumor patients who have the audacity to want sexual pleasure?

Servais said that she "feel[s] that Pure Romance is my ministry." the good news is that many choir members have quit in support of her, and some gather at her home on Thursdays to sing hymns.

Speaking of sex toys, don't forget about this fantastic video on the sex toy ban in Texas that features Molly Ivins!

A perfume priding itself as “The World’s First Spiritual Perfume," apparently takes the scents from the Bible and puts them in a bottle of the oh-so-holy “Virtue.� Because spending the $80 per bottle will make you a true Christian woman!

Additionally, Kentucky has finally opened their $27 million Creation Museum, in which the story of the Bible can apparently be defended by science. Check out Salon's tour of the museum, where they found one room dedicated to condemning abortion and homosexuality. (Aw, a whole room dedicated to us 'lil ole heathens? You shouldn’t have!)

So if you had to, which one would you spend your money on? I would normally say I'd be interested in going to the museum but the pictures in the Salon article scare me a little.

Sweet.

A number of Evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic groups are brawling with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson for praising the Supreme Court's Federal Abortion Ban. Some are even accusing Dobson and other anti-choice leaders of building a "pro-life industry" of misleading information and "relentless fundraising."

Dobson has been declaring the ban a victory while other anti-choice groups are saying it's more of a disappointment, claiming it serves merely as a "manual" of late-term abortions and condones them "as long as you follow its guidelines." A group even released a letter in a full-page ad to Dobson saying that he's giving inaccurate information to other anti-choicers and should be called out for it. In response, Focus on the Family's Vice President Tom Minnery commented that they celebrated the ban "because we, and most pro-lifers, are sophisticated enough to know we're not going to win a total victory all at once. We're going to win piece by piece."

Oh, so you're the sophisticated pro-lifers, huh? Where does that leave the rest of y'all? You're just going to let them call you classless like that? Fight! Fight! Fight!

Between the fact that a quarter of a billion dollars has been raised towards the ban and Dobson's perpetual shmoozing with SCOTUS judges makes it apparent that the "true" pro-life agenda may not necessarily be Dobson's priority anymore (or never was, for that matter). And it's not like this is anything new for right-wing politics, but the difference now is that the anti-choice masses are catching on; some say it could be the biggest split in the anti-choice movement in over a decade. And we like this.

Health activists in sub-Saharan Africa are seeing that attempts at stopping FGM based on women's rights isn't working, so they are turning to the Quran, to find evidence that it is not a religious necessity.

Abdi, who speaks about female genital mutilation on behalf of the US-based Population Council, said invoking Islam penetrates years of cultural indoctrination.

"Women don't have to torture themselves.

Islam does not require them to do it," said Abdi, who underwent the procedure when she was 6 and was a college student by the time she realised it was not necessary from a religious viewpoint.

With age-old cultural roots, female genital mutilation is practised today in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt and other parts of the Arab world such as Yemen and Oman.

In the rest of the Islamic world - the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Asia - it's nearly non-existent.

I am sure part of the problem is that Muslim ideas and Western feminist ideas tend to run in opposition to one another. The feminist movement, as it is understood world-wide, is considered to be Western and white. It seems almost logical that local leaders would reject the terms of women's rights if they are based on a Western model of "women's liberation."

However, the health risks of FGM are real and cannot be ignored internationally. But it is important to listen to these activists on their own terms.

Late last year, the top cleric in Egypt - where the practice is pervasive and many believe it is required by Islam - spoke out against it, saying circumcision was not mentioned in the Quran, the Muslim holy book, or in the Sunna, the sayings and deeds of Muhammad - the two main sources of Islamic practice.

"In Islam, circumcision is for men only," Mohammed Sayed Tantawi said.

"From a religious point of view, I don't find anything that says that circumcision is a must" for women.

Laws against female genital mutilation exist in many of the regions where it is practised, but poor enforcement and lack of publicity can hinder the laws, human rights groups and women activists say.

Feel free to list other info on this topic in comments.

via Namibian.

While I was trying to find a quote on Wikipedia (don't ask, I'm obsessive), I stumbled upon this page for Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris. She was the first woman ever ordained as a bishop in the United States Episcopal Church. And, she's been a close friend of my family for as long as I can remember. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good bio of her. They talk about her road to election as a bishop in 1989. I haven't seen her for a long time, but when I think about the women that inspire me, she's on the list. One of the things I love is that while I can't relate to her deeply held religious beliefs, she has (like I try to) always fought for the rights of women in her world. Sadly, of course, the Episcopal Church hasn't gotten past the fighting that occurred when she was ordained. In fact, things have gotten much worse.

I also found this great copy of a sermon she gave on the 25th anniversary of the first ordination of women in the priesthood in the Episcopal church. (Incidentally, the sermon was delivered at the church where I was baptized, which didn't turn out so well, but it's still a great place) Check it out, the whole thing is awesome.

Now I want to try to speak a little truth here tonight. And I am going to be brief and, as often accused, I am going to be blunt. I do, however, have to choose my words very carefully in that I not only tend to be quoted, I frequently tend to get misquoted. I don't mind the former, in context - it's the latter that ticks me off.

To begin with, last year's decennial gathering of apostolic eagles - which included its share of turkeys - the Lambeth Conference, brought a defining melding of these two questions.

Despite the development of a critical mass of ordained women, including eleven bishops, at Lambeth we were left wondering what had happened to the dream of a kinder, gentler church. The conference resolution concerning ordination of women and its odious amendment - authored by two women bishops in concert with some conservative male bishops - totally ignored any positive impact the church has experienced through ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate over the past 25 years. It was a stunning denigration of the more than 6000 women in Orders from Utah to Uganda, to say nothing of those who have yet to respond to God's call. Rather, having tasted blood with the much amended resolution on human sexuality, the princes of the church moved in for the kill on the people they really hold in low esteem - WOMEN.

What a gift it was to have someone like her in my life. She's just one of the many people from my childhood that lead me to the feminism. And now that I'm thinking about it I feel like I need to look her up for a talk.

P.S. Writing this without cursing was tough, but I figured I owe it to Barbara. Not that she would really mind. I remember the smoking, drinking and trips to Atlantic City.

Pope Benedict issued a warning to Catholic politicians, saying that they risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive communion if they are pro-choice.

It was the first time that the Pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him on a trip to Brazil, dealt in depth with a controversial topic that has come up in many countries, including the United States, Mexico, and Italy.

The Pope's comment comes after Mexican Church leaders' threats to excommunicate legislators who voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.

Reuters reports that Muslim women in France are beginning to have vaginal reconstructive surgery to reattach their hymen so that when they get married, their past sexual experiences will remain private.

While this is obviously upsetting, I fear the trend will be used as a means to push the xenophobic agenda that has been, to a large extent, controlling Muslim women's lives in Europe for quite some time now. Called now by some "the two 'V's' -- veils and virginity," I wouldn't be surprised if there is a proposed ban for the procedure. (They already banned headscarves from schools in 2004.) But what would that actually do? A serious backlash could occur for women who would be seeking the surgery; it could very well just oppress them more.

Am I saying hymenoplasty is a good thing for Muslim women? Not at all, but to prohibit women from doing something personal with their bodies to avoid potential shame due to their religion while women in our own Western culture willingly have been seeking hymenoplasties because "it's so hot" and want "designer vaginas" would just further exemplify how Muslim women are consistently victimized by Western cultures for entirely different purposes than "liberating them."

But who knows, maybe France won't be willing to give up their own designer vaginas.

According to sharia laws in some place men can take up to four wives. So what happens when a woman decided that she is going to take on four wives herself? They have to go into hiding because if caught they are either stoned to death or canned.

Kano's Hisbah board, which uses volunteers to enforce Islamic law, told the BBC that the women's marriage was "unacceptable".

The BBC's Bala Ibrahim in Kano says Aunty Maiduguri and her four "wives" are thought to have gone into hiding the day after they married.

All five women, who are believed to be film actresses in the local home-video industry, were born Muslims, otherwise they would not be covered by Sharia law.

Home-video industry? That sounds totally shady.

When men take more than one wife, that is some type of hyper-masculinized heterosexuality (even though in some way those women are married to each other, they are not given as many legitimate rights as men, but it is not your typical heteronormative relationship). But when women do it, they are constructed as run-away lesbians and have to go into hiding. I am scared for them.

via BBC.

Currently in Brazil women can only get abortions if there are complications to the pregnancy or if they were raped. Cultural relativism to the side, I am not OK with this. Brazil's abortion laws are dictated by a very stringent following of the Catholic church.

The new Minister of Health, Jose Gomes Temporao, feels that the debate should be moved from a religious and moral one, to one of public health.

Mr Temporao says that around 200,000 women are treated for complications following abortions every year, the vast majority of them believed to have taken place in illegal clinics involving a high degree of risk for the women.

An opinion poll released at the weekend suggests 65% of Brazilians are against changing the existing law.

Mr Temporao says that result is not surprising as he believes the question has always been debated in a superficial way.

He told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo he wants Brazil to treat the discussion as a matter of public health.

Backlash from the church is expected, but at least he is talking.

via BBC.

Less than a month after a young girl was kicked out of a soccer game in Quebec because of her refusal to remove her hijab, the province has recently announced that Muslim women who are wearing niqabs, a form of veil that covers their face, will not be allowed to vote in today’s elections.

Quebec’s elections chief Marcel Blanchet originally allowed voters to wear their face covering if they signed a sworn statement and showed identification when at the polls, but reversed his decision on Friday, stating that it was "necessary to avoid disruptions� on election day.

These “disruptions� were among threatening calls and emails Blanchet had received leading him to get bodyguards, including some residents’ claims that they would show up at the polls with masks on in protest.

It’s just infuriating that at the first sign of opposition (and by a bunch of xenophobes, no less), Blanchet not only backs down but changes the language in the electoral laws to make the ruling permanent. Could it get much worse?

Zuzu at Feministe has more.

Whatevs, Bill. We were so on this before you were.

Conservative Baptist leader Albert Mohler wants to test for homosexuality in utero. "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?" he asked on his blog.

And he's not just saying this knowledge could be used to keep your gay-positive young 'uns away from Tinky Winky and Sponge Bob in an attempt to stave off the inevitable. Nope, he's after a medical "cure" for homosexuality -- a shot or a patch to ensure your baby is hetero-fabulous. Mohler writes hopefully, "In other words, finding a biological causation for homosexuality may also lead to the discovery of a "cure" for the same phenomenon." (This is exactly why everyone was up in arms about the gay-sheep research.)

As Jenny writes, "But isn’t one of the big beefs these wingnuts have with homosexuality the fact that it’s supposedly so unnatural? If the fetuses are already gay in the womb, wouldn’t that tend to support the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait?"

Right. Which is part of the reason Mohler's comments have riled some in the straight-to-Jesus movement. But other conservative religious types are simply lovin' it. Take it from Catholic priest Joseph Fessio (who is provost at Ave Maria University, the whacked-out Catholic college built by Domino's pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan):

"Same-sex activity is considered disordered," Fessio said. "If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science."

Ugh. There are so many contradictions in pro-life/anti-gay conservative rhetoric already that I fully expect the movement to endorse in utero treatments of fetuses found with the "gay gene," and at the same time decry other medical procedures that supposedly meddle with God's will. They're all about the "wonderful advancement of science" when it helps them persecute gay people.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Christian comedian Keith Deltano has been performing at a number of high schools in Loudon County, Virginia this year with the intent of pushing abstinence-only education through comedy. How does he do this, do you ask? By dangling a cinderblock over a male students' crotch to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of condoms against HIV.

Because what's funnier than a brick possibly dropping on your dick?? Hahaha!! Heh.

Via Nerve.

UPDATE: Check out Deltano in action after the jump.

The Canadian International Football Association has supported a decision made at a Quebec match in which an 11-year old Muslim girl was removed for wearing her hijab.

The reason behind the ban was that according to national rules, a player is restricted to just a shirt or jersey, shorts, socks and kicks. How a hijab (specifically a headscarf) actually interferes in a match is unbeknownst to me.

The team forfeit in protest after the girl was dismissed from the game, and understandably. Prohibit an 11-year old from playing a sport for her hijab? Just fucked up.

This is insane. Boltgirl finds this interesting tidbit in a recent NPR segment about the evangelical vote.

Buried in the middle of this, almost as a non-sequitur, was a snippet from a woman named Tammy Bennett, described as decked from head to toe in silver. I'm not going to bother dissecting Ms. Bennett's call for protecting the sanctity of marriage; that was predictable given the context of the story. My attention was piqued much more by the tiny biographical blurb provided:

Bennett is the founder of Makeover Ministries, which she describes as "inspiring women to look good from the inside out and to be supermodels for Christ. And it's based on Proverbs: 'just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.'"

Supermodels for Christ. Supermodels. For Christ.

Gotsta look hot for the lord.

Apparently Bennett has written a book, Looking Good from the Inside Out, where she tells girls that "beauty is a choice and it all begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ." And eyeshadow. Sigh.

Pic from Random Good Stuff.

A whole bunch of Islamic female students have been protesting the destruction of a series of illegally possessed mosques.

Several hundred female students from an Islamic seminary in the center of Islamabad have been holed up for the last month inside a public library, in an unprecedented protest that poses a dilemma for President Pervez Musharraf's government.

The young women's ostensible demand is the rebuilding of half a dozen mosques in the capital that the government tore down because they were constructed on illegally seized land. Dozens more are under demolition orders.

As the article mentions, the Western world is breathing down Musharraf's neck to see to it that he is cracking down on radicals.

But I am more interested in the role that women are playing in the move towards more fundamental forms of Islam. Not only are these women integral to building a nation, vision and future that is vastly different from Western democracy, they are willing to die for it. From our perspective it may seem that these women are fighting for their own oppression, to live under strict Muslim rule.

But the reality is they are fighting (alongside or sometimes without men) for what they believe in. Is this a moment of feminist empowerment?

via LA Times.

This is just fucked:

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked 'severe beating.'

Make sure to read Shear’s account of the incident; it’s pretty intense.

The folks at One More Soul prove why sex and contraception is bad through a handy "Roots of the Problem" poster. Click here for a larger image (pdf).

Aw, and sluts are weeds. How sweet.

The way certain evangelical Christians process masculinity is endlessly fascinating. Seems to me that they usually invoke masculinity in an attempt to restore the "proper gender roles" those awful feminists have tried to do away with.

At what he hopes will be the first of many such conferences, in a warehouse-turned-nightclub in downtown Nashville, [GodMan Brad] Stine asks the men: "Are you ready to grab your sword and say, 'OK, family, I'm going to lead you?' " He also distributes a list of a real man's rules for his woman. No. 1: "Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down."

Stine's wife, Desiree, says she supports manly leadership; it seems to her the natural and God-ordained order of things. As she puts it: "When the rubber hits the bat, I want to know my husband will protect me."

And what about when your good Christian wife wants you to lift a finger around the house or take a active role in child-rearing? Turn to one of the GodMen hymns:

You're not a slave, break the chains...
We've had enough, "cowboy up"
In the power of Jesus' name.

Yikes. Though I do find the characterization of "Onward Christian Soldiers" as "very Barry Manilow" pretty hilarious.

Amanda has more. Also check out Jeff Sharlet's piece on Nerve about books for Christian men.

Evan covered this craziness earlier this month, but man do I love to watch it.

Well, if you ever wondered if your vagina had a divine purpose, wonder no more. Kathryn Joyce at The Nation has an amazing exposé on "Quiverfull mothers." And yes, it's as disturbing as it sounds.

They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship--"Father knows best"--and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the "Great Physician" and sole "Birth Controller," opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women's attempts to control their own bodies--the Lord's temple--are a seizure of divine power. (Emphasis added)

And if that sounds like a direct contradcition to feminist tenets, well, damn straight. That's exactly what the Quiverfull (ick, everytime I write it I shudder) movement is about.

"Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice," write the Hesses. Or, as Mary Pride, in another of the movement's founding texts, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, puts it, "My body is not my own." This rebuttal of the feminist health text Our Bodies, Ourselves is deliberate. Quiverfull women are more than mothers. They're domestic warriors in the battle against what they see as forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse, in that order.

Pride also says that feminism is a "system aimed at rejecting God's role for women." Well you know, if God's role for women means that my uterus is supposed to be a halfway house for transient fetuses, then damn straight I'm rejecting it. (I'm a good feminist!)

Interior minister Prince Nayef concluded in an interview that women may be given the right to vote, but will most likely be denied the right to drive.

"Women have the right to own a car or anything else. But driving a car in our desert regions, where distances are large between one district and another, would expose women's lives to danger, and this we cannot accept," he said.

Powerful religious scholars fear driving would encourage women to mix with men outside their family. The ban is enforced in cities and on main roads, where women rely on non-Saudi chauffeurs, but reports say it is sometimes flouted.

"We need to secure more important rights for Saudi women, such as the right to vote ... We will look into the possibility of women participating in next municipal elections," Prince Nayef said. Saudi Arabia last year held elections for half the seats in local councils after calls for political reform at home and abroad. Women were barred from voting or standing for office but officials have said they could take part in future polls.

"Need to look into the possiblity", doesn't sound very hopeful. Funny the state most closely aligned with the United States, is also one of the MOST fucked up. Prince Nayef's approval is needed to pass any of these laws. Now perhaps, it is dangerous is some places for women to be on the road, but I don't think keeping women off the road is going to solve that. Maybe asking Saudi women what rights they think are important might not hurt.

via Arab Times.

A local YMCA in Montreal, Canada had its windows frosted because the women working out were a distraction to the teenagers next door at a Hasidic Jewish synagogue.

Due to women excercising in the Y across the alley where the studying kids and teenagers “have a full view of sweaty, spandex-covered bodies, stretching and bouncing in all manner of ways.� So last February, the gym was paid to have the windows frosted.

"You can see people dressed in some ways that we don't believe in dressing and we don't believe in our kids dressing and we don't believe in them seeing people (dressed that way)," said Mayer Feig, director of the Jewish Orthodox Council for Community Relations.

But why would the gym have to make the alterations rather than the actual synagogue, who has the issue in the first place? YMCA member Renee Lavaillante wasn't too happy about the decision, and has started a petition with a friend to “let the sunshine in.� “Above all it's the principle, not to be hidden because we represent something bad." Lavaillante said.

The YMCA director Serge St-Andre, however, is supporting the synagogue in keeping the windows frosted, saying that there are many gym members that prefer the privacy as well.

Thoughts?

*Thanks to Raffia for the link.

After last month's hoopla in the UK over the suggestion of the firing of a Muslim teacher for wearing the veil, we find a judge in Pakistan seems to have similar sentiments. Chief Justice Tariq Pervaiz Khan has ordered women lawyers not to wear veils in the courtroom.

He stated, "You are professionals and should be dressed as required of lawyers. . . We (the judges) cannot identify veiled woman lawyers and suspect that veiled lawyers appear to seek adjournment of proceedings in other lawyers' cases."

Raees Anjum was the lawyer that Pervaiz ordered at a hearing to take off her veil. "I was embarrassed when the chief justice asked me not to wear veil in courtrooms," said Anjum. "I feel more confident in my hijab (veil)."

While Pakistan is a Muslim Republic and this is obviously not the same situation as the UK's veiling debate that's so politically charged as of late, how different are they really? When it comes down to the fact that a woman is being forced to remove the clothes that she (regardless of her religion) may simply feel safe in for the sake of "professionalism," are the situations really all that disparate?

Journalist Jeff Sharlet, who wrote a lengthy 2004 profile of Ted Haggard and New Life Church for Harper's Magazine, recently linked to an essay he wrote for Nerve in 2005 about the "man manuals" of the Christian Right... and themes of homosexuality in those books.

He makes some great observations about how fundamentalist Christian perspectives on gender have fueled the movement's obsession with gay men.

Women must submit to their husbands, but their husbands in turn must commit to "serving" their wives. The phrase that comes to mind is "separate but equal."

But with Christian womanhood restored and redeemed, a crucial character in the Christian conservative morality play has gone missing: the seductress. It is no longer acceptable to speak of loose women and harlots, since sexual promiscuity in a woman is the fault of the man who has failed to exercise his "headship" over her. It is his effeminacy, not hers, that is to blame. And who lures him into this spiritual castration? The gay man.

Shorter version? The Christian men's movement's obsession with homosexuality has fetishized it to the point where gay men are more seductive than whorish women. Whoa. Read the whole thing. It's really interesting, and not only in light of recent events.

(In case you've managed to miss out on some of the details... Ted Haggard, an extreme opponent of gay marriage and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned on Saturday over allegations of a sexual relationship with a male prostitute and meth use. Check out Pandagon for some more info and thoughts on the “homo hypocrite.� And here's a YouTube video of him preaching against homosexuality.)

On Friday, over four hundred people from around the world gathered in Barcelona for the 2nd International Conference on Islamic feminism.

The two-day conference covered a range of issues, including the “macho� interpretation of the Koran, polygamy, discriminatory family laws, domestic violence, and women’s leadership.

Check out an interview with the event director, Abdennur Prado, for more info on Islamic feminism, its goals as well as its challenges.

In light of all the recent, exaggerated and excessive discussion around "the veil," I noticed that the voices of women that choose to wear the veil (or not to wear it, or are forced to wear it, etc.) were not present. So I was happy when my lovely roomie forwarded this BBC piece to me which consists of four women sharing their own experiences.

A student from Syria says,

I chose to wear the veil or the niqab [a full face covering] as an act of worship. As a Muslim I believe that women should not only wear the hijab [head covering] but the veil too. I don't care what those who don't find my arguments convincing think. I believe that wearing the veil is God's will. I don't trust men, and women should protect themselves.

A teacher from Baghdad tells us,

This is what is happening in Iraq where the wearing of the hijab is a recent development. The hijab is being forced upon women at gunpoint. Women have no choice but to comply. Personally, I feel restricted when I wear it. I feel as if my personality is taken away. I feel I have to wear it, but if I had the chance, I wouldn't because I have faith that God knows what is truly in my heart.

I think their words speak for themselves. There is no uniform experience and to reduce women to the "veiled" subject ignores individual experiences, feelings and actions.

via BBC.

Phil Woolas, the UK Minister for Local Government and Community Cohesion, has requested that a 24 year-old teacher, Aishah Azmi, should be fired because she wears a veil while teaching class.

This is immediately following the recent controversy that caused some hoopla when former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and others said Muslim women who wore full veils portrayed a "visible statement of difference and separation" and essentially are a problem.

Woolas says that wearing a veil while teaching makes it impossible for her to do her job and even accused the act of sex discrimination:

"By insisting that she will wear the veil if men are there, she's saying; 'I'll work with women, not men'. That's sexual discrimination. No headteacher could agree to that."

Give me a break. The veil is a pretty complex issue, but to fire a teacher for wearing one is ridiculous. Azmi has said that the students “never complained� about it and that there are no communication barriers, so what could possibly be the problem?

This is yet another no-win situation that women have to endure in the workplace: if you wear too little, you’re fired; if you wear too much, you’re fired. I also think it’s wrong to punish this woman for simply doing her job while following her beliefs at the same time. (That may remind you of extremist pharmacists who may claim to be doing the same, but the distinction between the two is clear: Azmi’s action is not impinging her work or negatively affecting the people she serves.) And yes, the veil is “a visible statement of difference,� but why does that have to be a bad thing?

Thoughts?

I had wanted to write about this, but Jill at Feministe beat me to it. The New York Times discusses the revival of Islamic teachings in the secular state of Syria predominantly led by women. Naturally, this is a complicated issue between the growth of religious conservatism and clear empowerment of women through learning, reading and spreading the teachings. Do we have a handful of empowered young women or a serious *threat* to secularism?

Jill says,

Emracing religion is one thing; the regressive religious politics that we’ve seen sprouting up from Idaho to Istanbul are troubling, whether their Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or whatever else. Religious conservatism is certainly nothing new, but it does seem to be taking hold in countries that were previously more moderate. And it seems directly related to U.S. foreign policy — as we invade Muslim countries, and set our sights on others, Muslims in the Middle East feel threatened. When we position all Muslims as the enemy, we aid in establishing a collective religious identity that trumps nationalism.

The issue no one wants to talk about. How is US foreign policy DIRECTLY linked to the growth of Islamic conservatism in countries vulnerable to US invasion imperial overthrow? Plus I am pretty sick of Islam being discussed as a threat period and especially a threat to nationalism, as if nationalism is some picnic to women's rights or international foreign policy.

via NYT.

From U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris:

"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

Genius.

No, she didn’t get pregnant out of wedlock or volunteer for a pro-choice organization. All that Sunday school teacher Mary Lambert did was be a woman. Off with her head!

The First Baptist Church fired Lambert--who had taught at the church for 54 years--in a letter saying that the church had recently adopted an interpretation that bans women from teaching men.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city's day-to-day operations is a woman.

"I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to" outside of the church, LaBouf wrote Saturday.

So long as she is “silent� of course. WTFuck?

Hir books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us and My Gender Workbook are taught in more than 120 colleges and universities around the world. Ze has performed hir work live on college campuses, theaters, and performance spaces across the United States and in Canada, the UK, Germany and Austria. And renowned author, playwright, performance artist, and gender activist, Kate Bornstein is at it again. This time with a new book just released last month for youth titled Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws. Bornstein’s alternatives range from “#2: Take a deep breath and touch yourself� to “#22: Moisturize!� to “#79: Take drugs� to “#81: Starve yourself.�

I caught up with Kate during hir busy tour of the book. Here’s Kate…

The Guardian had a story today on a resort in Italy that has closed off a section of their beach for women only to respect sharia law.

Due to a number of requests from Muslim tourists, the Council of Riccione on the Adriatic riviera altered its bylaws to allow a section of the beach to be closed off so Muslim women could enjoy the sun without violating sharia law by “displaying their bodies� to male beach-goers.

While this effort was made purely for tourism, in response to the increase in Riccione visitors from the Arabian peninsula, what would this type of change be in a non-tourist area: a gesture of pluralism or merely catering to a patriarchal culture? At the same time, it may be problematic to attempt to label such a murky issue.

Regardless, a good thing did come out of this: Muslim women are now able to get their beach-on when they couldn’t before.

Thoughts?

A 39 year-old polygamist from Arizona (one of seven that are on trial for plural marriages to minors) was sentenced to 45 days in jail for having sex with his 16 year-old “bride.�

Fischer has stated regarding his trial, “I can say for my life and my family that there’s no one that’s been pressured into doing anything they didn’t want to do. . . Every single person is happy. There’s no pain.�

Easy for you to say. And this now sets precedent for the six other sentences to come.

Twelve women are participating in a forbidden ceremony today where they will be ordained as priests as deacons; the ceremony won’t be recognized (duh) by the Catholic church.

Similar ceremonies conducted by the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests have been held before in other countries, and most of the participants have been excommunicated. It's the first time the group is holding a ceremony in the U.S.

The Pittsburgh Diocese issued a statement saying the ordination would not be valid.

"This unfortunate ceremony will take place outside the Church and undermines the unity of the Church. Those attempting to confer Holy Orders have, by their own actions, removed themselves from the Church, as have those who present themselves for such an invalid ritual," according to the statement released by the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, a spokesman for the diocese.

So protesting against discrimination means excommunication?

These womenpriests are pretty hot shit though:

"We need to claim for women their equal right with men to be ordained. And we need to do this 'contra legem,' to break an unjust law and yet to remain firmly within the church," Patricia Fresen said last year at a Philadelphia conference on women in the church.

The church of England is demanding that traditionalists accept the ordination of women as bishops and priests.

In the first step towards women bishops, the General Synod voted yesterday to enforce a church law that upholds the ordination of all bishops, priests and deacons without exception.

Until now, an Act of Synod has protected Anglican Catholics who refuse to accept the ordination of women as valid and allowed them to declare their parishes “no-go zones� for women priests.

Traditionalists tend to be against women being ordained because they believe they will "taint" the church-hood (what is this the dark ages, keep your period blood away from this church!). You know because molesting young children is where real purity lies. Not that all priests are child molesters because they are not, but come on people!

Earlier this year bishops tried to draw up a plan that would have created havens for traditionalists, but their attempts collapsed in disarray. Yesterday the General Synod agreed in York to set up a new group to tackle the framing of the legislation for women bishops. The legislation will be voted on in about five years and will need a two-thirds majority to pass.

Members agreed that those against the ordination of women could still be considered “loyal Anglicans�, but declared that any new arrangements for traditionalists had to be “consistent with Canon A4�, the church law stating that all those ordained in the Church of England are “lawfully ordained� and must be accepted by all as “truly bishops, priests or deacons�.

Oh snap!

via Times Online.

I'm speechless. Luckily, Pandagon, Shakespeare's Sister and the Tennessee Guerilla Women aren't.

Sweet! I loves me a good fight.

Check out our buddy Evan Derkacz's coverage on Alternet about how the Vatican has warned Amnesty International to not drop their neutral stance on abortion and push for it as a human right, for doing it will "cut off their hands."

People scare me. (Especially nutty, religious ones.)

This is too cool:

Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori became the first woman elected to lead a church in the global Anglican Communion when she was picked Sunday to be the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

It was another groundbreaking and controversial move for a denomination that consecrated Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop just three years ago.

Jefferts Schori said she was "awed and honored and deeply privileged to be elected" and that she would "bend over backward to build relationships with people who disagree with me."

Which--from the looks of the article--are plenty of folks:

Gasps could be heard throughout the vast convention hall when Jefferts Schori's name was announced.

Rev. Canon Chris Sugden said that her election "shows that the Episcopal leadership is going to do what they want to do regardless of what it means to the rest of the communion." Rev. Eddie Blue of Maryland said, "I am shocked, dismayed and saddened by the choice." I’m dismayed and saddened that people could find the idea of a woman as a religious leader so distressing.

Well not really. But in a new document issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Vatican condemns contraception, abortion, vitro fertilization and same-sex marriage. Whew.

Obviously the document isn’t saying anything that we didn’t already know, but it did leave out the recent debate on whether the Church should condone condoms in an attempt to battle the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Interesting...

From Broadsheet we learn that towns that the Pope will be visiting this summer are planning on banning a number of unholy things--including alcohol, some desserts, and tampon commercials.

Because Catholics don’t have vaginas.

A message of love from the folks who brought you my favorite abstinence shirt.

Who knew Satan was so political? I also love that this is in quotes. Did someone from ChristianShirts.net get an exclusive Dark Lord interview?

Using the release of The Da Vinci Code movie as a hook, a new website on women, feminism and faith has just launched: HerCode.

“Jesus taught us that all people are equal in God’s eyes, but religious institutions are not living up to their full potential because women are not considered equal partners,� said Helen LaKelly Hunt, author of Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance. She is also the founding director of FaithandFeminism.org, a site dedicated to bridging the values of faith and feminism, which houses the HerCode.org project.

HerCode asks women to share their stories about faith and spirituality. Check out the one after the jump from Lisa Witter, then go share your story. (My short version--I have Italian-Buddhist parents. Nuff said.)

When it comes to Catholic school teachers and kids, you’re damned if don’t and you’re damned if you do.

In the past, teachers have been fired for being pro-choice, for having kids out of wedlock (I suppose they should have had abortions?), and now a married teacher is being fired for having twins using in vitro fertilization.

After five years trying to conceive, Kelly and Eric Romenesko decided to try in vitro fertilization.

Their twins, Alexandria and Allison, were born last year. It was a joyous event in the couple's life.

"They're miracles. They're precious," Kelly Romenesko said.

The couple were not prepared for what came next. When Kelly, a teacher at two Catholic schools in Wisconsin, told her bosses she had gotten pregnant through in vitro, they handed her a pink slip.

"I was in tears," she said. "I remember asking, 'Is this the only reason why I'm being fired?' They stated, 'Yes.'"

Lovely. And why is in vitro so sinful? Joseph Capizzi of the Culture of Life Foundation says that unless you have sex, no kids for you: "It's not so much that it's artificial that's the problem, instead it's removing the sexual act and procreative act from the context of marriage."

Since the firing, the Romeneskos have stopped practicing Catholicism.

“Yo my sister, yo my brother!
When they ask you, you check ‘other’
You don’t fit in, you’re in between
You push their buttons Boo
You’re just like me

Ahha, This is Womyn’s Music baby
Ahha, It’s a good thing!�

Just in case you didn’t hear Nedra’s “Ahha (It’s a Good Thing)� on Showtime’s “The L word� last season, here are some of her in-your-face lyrics. There’s definitely more where that came from. Nedra’s all about staying true, and her lyrics definitely don’t sway from the truth. From “Prozac (So Fun Living…) to “Any Way You Need Her,� Nedra keeps it socially conscious and butchy sensual.

I caught up with Nedra that morning in April, when it was snowing in NYC. And did some follow-up emails throughout the month. She does freelance web design work when she’s not on the road. And this July…girl is turning 40.

“Just not cracking yet,� she said. Here’s Nedra…

I'm a couple days late on this one...

Even at the Vatican, not all sacred beliefs are absolute: Thou shalt not kill, but war can be just. Now, behind the quiet walls, a clash is shaping up involving two poles of near certainty: the church's long-held ban on condoms and its advocacy of human life.

The issue is AIDS. Church officials recently confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI had requested a report on whether it might be acceptable for Catholics to use condoms in one narrow circumstance: to protect life inside a marriage when one partner is infected with H.I.V. or is sick with AIDS.

I mean, I guess it's a start (though I doubt it will happen). But I suppose if you're unmarried, you don't deserve the chance to protect yourself.

Jill at Feministe has more.

Not a big shocker there.

"If you're addicted to alcohol, and if a faith program is able to get you off alcohol," Bush said at the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives yesterday. "We ought to say Hallelujah and thanks at the federal level."

If you don’t believe in god, however, you’re pretty much fucked. (By the federal government, at least.)

Now, I'm not a hater of all faith-based organizations, but the amount of time and money that's obviously being put into them (and mostly the shitty ones) by the goverment is a wee questionable. (Like, what do you mean there's a separation of Church and State??)

Federal money going to faith-based organizations has increased 7 percent in the past year, adding up to $2.5 billion, and Bush will be making sure that number grows. Additionally:

“A federal court recently ruled that religious groups collecting federal money have a right to their own hiring practices, such as limiting employment to members of their religion.

Bush recently signed into a law a bill enabling private groups supported under the $17 billion Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to hire as they choose through 2010. The law also extends that ‘charitable choice’ hiring authority to private programs operating under Bush's new Marriage and Fatherhood Program.”

You know, the type of program that demonizes single mothers, encourages married mothers on welfare to stay with their abusive husbands (because hey, it’ll feed the kids) and essentially leaves same-sex and other “nontraditional” parents jack shit.

Now let’s say a prayer for all of the homosexual and single, pregnant deviants of the world.

It looks like The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts got their wish, except in the wrong state. Yesterday, Catholics For A Free Choice released a study disclosing that New York Catholic hospitals routinely reject women -- including rape victims -- access to emergency contraception. Lovely!

The Catholics For A Free Choice (CFFC) is a fantastic women’s health care and advocacy group based in D.C. Their study also found that hospitals in New York, California, Washington and South Carolina said EC isn't available 35% of the time.

As for the local study in New York, only 7% percent of staff said available for all women, and 20% admitted to avoiding the calls, hanging up on callers, and sometimes even scolding them.

CFFC president Frances Kissling stated:

"The results were mixed at best, and devastating at worst. Women of many different religions seek emergency care at Catholic hospitals, in part, because of their reputation for compassionate, quality care. That the Catholic hospitals we surveyed would turn women away in their time of need ... is not only a violation of the law, it is a violation of their mission."

Dennis Poust, a spokesperson for The Catholic Conference of New York, said he was not aware of any rape victims who have come forward saying they were denied services. And check his comment:

“Until they do? I’m not going to take this seriously. They’re not a Catholic organization. Their mission is to undermine the Church.”

Wow. First of all, there have actually been five complaints over the past year regarding this in New York. Secondly, I’m sure the last thing on a rape victim's mind is taking up the Catholic Church.

Your hubby can sport a nice shirt to remind you. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Come on, ladies...submit! Please? We'll even knock down the price!

Props to Jake for the link.

I know I've written oh-so-many posts on Pope Benedict XVI and his ridiculously horrendous reputation concerning reproductive and LGBT rights, but I felt like I had to keep y'all updated on his (wrong)doings -- after all, he is the leader of the largest branch of Christianity in the world. Via CBC News:

Pope Benedict used an audience with local politicians on Thursday to reiterate the Catholic Church's objections to both abortion and gay marriage.

Benedict spoke of the need to help pregnant women and said medical officials should not prescribe any kind of pill that terminates a pregnancy.

Officials, he said, should ‘avoid introducing drugs that hide in some way the gravity of abortion, as a choice against life.’

As well, the Pope said the union of a man and a woman is not a ‘casual sociological construction’ and suggested that efforts to allow gay marriage ‘obscure the value and function of the legitimate family founded on matrimony.’

The Italian Bishop’s Conference has sparked the debate over abortion and the RU-486 pill, turning it into a campaign issue (the general elections are due in April) for the first time since 1981 when the church attempted to overturn the legalization of abortion.

The Pope’s reasoning behind his comments on the illegitimacy of gay marriage was simply that “there really is no social need.”

Nah, not at all.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, has filed a lawsuit to stop Illinois from requiring pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception.

Grrr.

The rule, imposed by Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this year, requires that pharmacies “must accept and fill prescriptions for contraceptives without delay.” Blagojevich also created a toll free number where women can report non-compliant pharmacies.

But the right-wing Christian organization is arguing that this violates pharmacists’ rights. (Women? Who are they?)

From the org’s website: Doctors, nurses and pharmacists should not be compelled to violate their conscience and participate in an abortion procedure.

Wow. I had no idea that women were looking for over-the-counter abortions! Please. (And don’t forget, a good number of these “conscience clause” pharmacists actually refused to fill prescriptions for birth control, not just emergency contraception.)

Scariest headline ever on Alito from Bloomberg News: Alito Would Likely Be Religion's Best Friend on U.S. High Court

Great. Say bye bye to the separation of Church and State.

But this is some fucked up shit. Reuters reports:

“A banned Islamist militant group blamed for a series of bombings in Bangladesh has threatened to kill women, including non-Muslims, if they do not wear the veil, a statement said.

The statement by the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen came hours after Thursday's suicide bomb attack in a northen town that killed at least eight people, the latest of a series of blasts blamed on militant groups in their campaign for an Islamic state.

‘Women will be killed if they are found to move around without wearing burqa (veil) from the first day of Jilhaj,’ the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen said in the statement sent to a Dhaka newspaper office.

Jilhaj refers to the Arabic month beginning early January.

‘Women, including non-Muslims, are hereby advised not to go out of home without burqa. Seclusion has been made compulsory for you,’ said the statement in Bangla language, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Friday.

The group, which wants the introduction of sharia laws in mainly-Muslim Bangladesh, also ordered women students at Dhaka University not to step out after sunset, prompting police to increase security around the campus.”

On the same day of the attack, it was announced that Turkey will soon be hosting a conference on women’s rights by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. We can only hope that the conference will find some potential solutions to this horrific situation.

We New Yorkers have a tendency to get all high and mighty over our state's supposed uber-progressiveness. And then reality slaps us with some nonsense like this:

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed an official complaint to the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a Queens teacher who says she was fired because she got pregnant out of wedlock.

St. Rose of Lima School terminated Michelle McCusker's contract last month, after she told school officials she was pregnant.

Despite the fact that McCusker was praised by the principal for her “high degree of professionalism,” the Brooklyn Diocese says that the teacher didn’t “follow the principles contained in the teachers' personnel handbook.” The book requires that teachers adhere to the Catholic faith by their words and actions. Translation: Unauthorized fucking will get you fired.

McCusker said at a press conference yesterday, “I also don't understand how a religion that prides itself on being forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I'm pregnant and choosing to have this baby.”

In response to Virginia’s laws banning same-sex marriages, a local pastor and his church’s governing council have decided to protest in a big way -- the church is no longer offering wedding services.

The Clarendon Presbyterian Church has long been a supporter of the ordination of women, people with AIDS and the rights of the disabled. Now Pastor David Ensign is in the process of renouncing his state authority to marry (straight) couples. In the meantime, he’s offering blessings to couples by having “celebration ceremonies” and counseling couples who support his protest. “We’re not seeking trouble,” says Ensign. “This is a statement of who we are.”

While many surrounding churches are obviously up in arms and more debate is anticipated, Wilson Gunn, the general executive of the Nation Capital Presbytery, says that it’s unlikely that the church will be punished by the national office.

“It’s within their rights to decide what they’re going to do and not going to do,” he said. “We’re in the Jesus business, not the marriage business.”

I love it.

While we’ve been tracking the intelligent design trial pretty closely since the bullshit began, I was happy to see that Pennsylvania voters have ousted all eight Republican members of the school board who set the intelligent design policy and replaced them with Democrats.

While the judge is still expected to make a decision on the case by January, it looks like the newly elected board members may change the policy by then. One winning candidate, Judy McIlvaine, stated, “We are all for it [intelligent design] being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class. It is not a science.”

Ex-school board member/sore loser David Napierskie told AP that the vote was not just about ideology. “Some people felt intelligent design shouldn’t taught and others were concerned about having tax money spent on the lawsuit.”

Either way, they’re all greedy, god-hating sinners. At least that’s what our buddy Pat Robertson seems to think.

Do you see something wrong with this picture? Via The Boston Globe:

“The highest court in the Methodist Church yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister in Philadelphia, and reinstated a Virginia pastor who had been suspended for denying congregation membership to a gay man.

The nine-member Judicial Council also voided a declaration by Methodists in the Pacific Northwest that there was a ‘difference of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation and practice.’ The court said the declaration was a ‘historical statement without prescriptive force’ and had no bearing on church laws.

The decisions amounted to a clean sweep for conservatives in the church who believe homosexual activity is a sin and want to enforce a Methodist rule against ‘self-avowed, practicing’ homosexuals in ordained ministry. They were the latest in a series of recent defeats for liberals in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination who have sought to be more welcoming toward gays and lesbians.”

Sigh. I don’t know how people can keep faith amidst all this bullshit. The minister, Rev. Irene ''Beth" Stroud, is even intending to continue her work at Philadelphia’s First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay minister, which means she’s not allowed to be present at communion and baptisms.

In the meantime, Rev. Edward Johnson of South Hill United Methodist Church in South Hill, Virginia was reinstated to his post just four months after he refused a man to join his congregation because the man didn’t believe his same-sex relationship was a sin.

Well, that killed my good mood.

Islamic feminists from around the globe came together this weekend in an effort to mobilize and liberate Muslim women in a new “gender jihad,” reports the Guardian.

"The meeting, which drew women from as far apart as Malaysia, Mali, Egypt and Iran, set itself the task of squaring Islam with feminism. That meant not just combating 14 centuries of sexism in the Muslim world, participants said, but also dealing with the animosity to Islam of many western or secular feminists. They insisted that many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Qur'an."

The "gender jihad" has been labeled as the recognition of and action against sexist and homophobic readings of Islamic texts, which has been greatly abused by predominantly male Muslim scholars over the past centuries.

Amina Wadud, an African-American theology professor, is playing a leading role in the movement. She created an uproar within the Muslim community not too long ago when she formed a mixed-sex congregation in New York. She has been dedicated to studying the Qur’an for the past two decades and decided to mobilize when she realized that “horrific things were being done in the name of religion.”

Progressives admit that the movement will be trying. Rachel Raza, a Pakistani Canadian who has also led mixed-sex prayers, says it plain and simple, “I already have a fatwa against me. I don’t want to be murdered on the street.”

Since I can't sleep, I am just going to keep posting on all these stomach turning articles I am coming across. The LA Archdiocese released their files on sexual abuse by folks in the clergy spanning over a decade of hidden abuse.

via Washington Post...

The summaries read like matter-of-fact résumés, numbing lists of parishes served and promotions received.

The archdiocese published the summaries on its Web site, http://www.la-archdiocese.org/ , at midnight Tuesday. They were compiled in connection with settlement negotiations over more than 560 sex abuse lawsuits, which could cost the archdiocese more than $500 million, according to lawyers on both sides.

At least they are starting to uncover these atrocities. It makes me sick to think how many kids have been victimized and their stories made invisible.

Last night I couldn't sleep either and I happened to catch a re-airing of Oprah (gasp, yes i do sometimes watch Oprah) and she was doing an episode on child molesters and rapists. She said a lot of amazing things about being victimized herself when she was nine and that it is her job that with her resources to find and try other offenders that run free. She also said that state by state by state, she would work to change the laws to become more stringent in these particular incidents.

While law after law is being proposed to restrict choice, victims of abuse are practically being overlooked by law making bodies, state and national.

I was happy to see that eight families have filed suit in response to the ridiculous intention of the school board from Dover, PA to introduce “intelligent design” to ninth-grade biology class. At the same time, I’m not happy about how intense this load-o’-crap dispute is getting.

The trial is being considered by some as one of the most significant evolution-linked legal battles in two decades.

The families' (and backed by the ACLU) argument is that its teaching in school violates the First Amendment clause specifying the separation of Church and State. Sounds pretty solid to me. On the other hand, the attorney defending the school board argues that “the case is about free inquiry, not about a religious agenda.”

By the way, the school board's attorney is Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center, which lists one of its core missions as “defending the religious freedom of Christians."

Supporters of “intelligent design” claim that there is a serious controversy in the scientific community concerning the theory versus evolution. Yet the National Academy of Sciences denies this fervently, admitting that while mainstream scientific arguments do occur concerning evolution's specifics, they still support its existence.

Meanwhile, the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education characterized the intelligent design book, “Of Pandas and People” as the beginning of the modern intelligent design movement.

I just don’t understand how a place of science, particularly pro-evolution, could legitimize this theory in any way. Let’s hope this trial ends on a more rational note.

The New York Times had a story yesterday on the popular doll that has replaced Barbies across the Middle East, and her name is Fulla.

She is the doll with “Muslim values,” as described by her creator, NewBoy Design Studio. While Fulla shares the same unrealistic body proportions as Barbie, she doesn’t share her wardrobe; while she has many fashionable clothes, she’s usually modestly dressed, covered with a black abaya and head scarf. She even has her own pink prayer rug!

Fulla won’t have a boyfriend like Barbie’s Ken, but the company is planning on making a Teacher Fulla and Doctor Fulla for young girls to look up to. While there have been many other dolls in the past that have worn the hijab, none have ever been as popular as Fulla. She was introduced in November of 2003 and has been the rave since.

Some Syrian women’s rights advocates criticize Fulla being a part of the “cultural shift” towards Islamic conservatism that’s extending across the Middle East. And apparently, this particular “cultural shift” doesn’t come cheap. In Damascus, a Fulla doll costs $16, while the average per capita income is about $100 per month. Yet it still sells.

I’ve come to the conclusion that all dolls are evil, one way or another. The Chucky movies were trying to tell us something, dammit!

Thoughts?

With Pope Benedict’s horrendous reputation, I couldn’t be too surprised about this. The Vatican released the news yesterday that homosexuals will soon be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests.

The new document has not yet been signed by Pope Benedict, but is expected to be within the next six weeks. It will apply to Roman Catholic churches worldwide. In the meantime, Vatican investigators are even being sent to 229 seminaries in the U.S. Whaa? First of all, who the fuck are Vatican investigators? The Pope is sending his “gaydar” specialists out to the field? Secondly, I’m really curious to know exactly what kind of “investigating” will be going on, and how many laws will be broken in the process.

The article also had to note how last spring, the new Pope talked of a need to “purify” the church after the past "sex scandals." Sexual abusers, homosexuals, they’re all the same, right?? Ugh.

While this news has been out for a good week now, I felt obligated to post on it considering its infuriating hilarity, if that makes sense.

Almost immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, a group called the Columbia Christians for Life declared that the disaster was god’s punishment for the nation’s tolerance of abortion. (And the fact that Louisiana had a whopping ten abortion clinics.) They even sent an email pointing out that the first satellite image of Katrina looked like a six week-old fetus:

"The image of the hurricane ... with its eye already ashore at 12:32 p.m. Monday, August 29, looks like a fetus (unborn human baby) facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation (approx. 6 weeks)...Even the orange color of the image is reminiscent of a commonly used pro-life picture of early prenatal development."

They're definitely on to something. A more recent statement was a wee more blunt, expressing their glee over the hurricane's vengeance:

"We can only give praise to God for sparing the lives of the innocent unborn who have been murdered by the tens of thousands in New Orleans and the rest of the state of Louisiana, year-after-year-after-year, despite prophetic warnings from men of God."

People scare me. Additionally, it didn’t take Bush long (actually, it did) to declare September 16 a national day of prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. That’s good, just slap a holiday with religious overtone on the calendar to appease the country’s devastation. That’ll ease our sin-filled souls. That and a huge orange fetus as god's new Angel of Death, as Amanda from Pandagon calls it. Sigh.

Reuters reports that an Italian religion teacher was fired after 14 years on the job. The offense? Dressing too sexy.

Caterina Bonci said Church authorities decided she was just too attractive and dressed too sexy to teach religion after 14 years on the job.

The Church says it sacked the 38-year-old blonde from the central Adriatic city of Fano because she is divorced.

It’s pretty shitty either way, if you ask me.

Check out this Salon article, “Why Women Matter,” where the author examines Iraq’s draft constitution and explains why women’s equal rights are essential for the success of a stable democracy.

The author points out that many basic fundamental rights are given to women in the draft, such as the right to vote, to run as political candidates, the right to pass citizenship on to their kids, and 25 percent of parliamentary seats have been set aside for women. Yet there are other parts of the draft where murky language leaves opportunities for oppression:

“For instance, freedom of expression, freedom of the media and freedom of association and peaceful protest are only guaranteed by the state if they do not ‘violate public order and morality.’ A parliament dominated by religious extremists could use this loophole to restrict actions, particularly those of women they deem immoral.

Another provision allows Iraqis to choose whether they will follow secular law or sharia law in family matters, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. What is not clear, however, is whether men will have the right to make that decision even if their wives and daughters disagree. The power of clerics on the courts is also unclear, especially with regard to their ability to push the adoption of Islamic law and negate the constitution's protections of religious freedom and the rights of women.”

We’ve posted in the past on Iraqi women’s fear of ambiguous language and implementation of Shariah law into the draft, which could leave women’s rights in jeopardy. Looks like this new draft isn’t too far off.

Former President Jimmy Carter spoke at a Bible study at the Baptist World Congress in England yesterday, where he said that the Southern Baptist Convention is led by men who want "to keep women in their place."

Carter also said that Southern Baptists and other churches misuse Scripture to deny women the chance to serve as ministers.

Interesting stuff…though I’d argue that discrimination against women isn’t unique to Southern Baptists.

As an update to our Sunday post on the San Jose State Roman Catholic women who have been planning on being ordained as priests, we find that the nine have (unofficially) been ordained as priests and deacons aboard a tour boat near Ottawa, Canada.

While seven women other women who were previously ordained in 2002 were later excommunicated, these women have no intention of changing their minds.

“I believe it’s valid even if it’s against the law of the Church, because it is an unjust law,” said Germany’s Regina Nicolosi, who was ordained as a deacon.

There has been no response from the Vatican as of yet.

This is pretty badass.

On Monday, Victoria Rue of Watsonville will drape herself in a white robe and take a controversial step as part of her journey to become a better spiritual leader. She'll also be performing a grave sin in the eyes of her church.

To the women's knowledge, they are the only group performing public ordinations of women. There are about 70 members who are in the ordination-preparation program. By Monday, 25 women will have become illicit deacons, priests or bishops.

What is the fallout of this going to look like?

St. John’s Reformed UCC in western Virginia was set on fire on Friday, just days after the United Church of Christ publicly expressed support towards same-sex marriage. Coincidence? I think not.

Homophobic graffiti covered the church (the fire was put out before serious damage), while two others were being set afire in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

“It saddens me that, for a few, disagreement has moved to acts of violence,” said UCC President Rev. John Thomas.

When religious leaders like Pope Benedict XVI say that homosexuality is a tendency towards “intrinsic moral evil,” should we really be surprised that violence ensues?

On a happier note, Spain’s first married gay couple commemorated their union o' love yesterday. At least one country has something to celebrate about.

Check out this interesting commentary on Chicago Sun-Times about the lack of attention paid by the Catholic church to the abuses against women.

Rape is a grievous sin, even spousal rape, especially spousal rape. Date rape is a mortal sin. Physical abuse of a spouse is a grievous sin. So is habitual verbal abuse. Incestuous abuse of daughters, sisters and nieces is a mortal sin. Sexual harassment in the workplace or anywhere else is a mortal sin. Vile sexual "locker room" conversation that demeans women is a serious sin. Job discrimination against women is a grave sin. Contempt for women is a serious sin. Treatment of women like they are sex objects is a serious sin. Sexual exploitation of women is a mortal sin. So too is the practice of the rich and famous of replacing a loyal, faithful wife with a new "trophy wife."

Is there a priest anywhere in the world who would argue publicly that any of these behaviors is not a mortal sin? A bishop? A cardinal? A pope? Then why is there so much silence about them? Surely they are not so naive as to think that such sins are infrequent. Read the survey data, talk to cops, consult with counselors of battered women, if you have any doubts.

What do you think?

Italian justice minister Roberto Castelli said recently that women wearing burkas should be "reported to the police and fined." Real nice.

Mr Castelli told a meeting in the northern town of Como: "No one may break the law."

He was referring to a decision by the local prefect to overturn fines imposed last year on an Italian convert to Islam from nearby Drezzo, who wears a burka. Two other women have been fined for wearing the garment elsewhere. Mr Castelli's remarks were condemned by leftwing parties. Marco Rizzo of the Communist party said they were "at the threshold of incitement to racial and religious hatred".

Ya think?

Texas governor Rick Perry signed anti-choice legislation yesterday in a "ceremony filled with religious references." Not surprising, considering Perry signed the bill in a frigging church school gymnasium! At least we know where Perry stands—there's no mistaking his disdain for choice:

"It has been a tragedy of unspeakable consequences that for decades activist courts denied many Texas parents their right to be involved in one of the most important decisions their young daughter could ever make—whether to end the life that was growing inside her," Perry told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered at the Calvary Christian Academy. "For too long, a blind eye has been turned to the rights of our most vulnerable human beings—that's the unborn in our society."

Sigh.

But just one atrocious bill wasn't quite enough for Perry. He also signed a resolution to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages: "A nurturing home with a loving mother and loving father is the best way to guide our children down the proper path."

Yes, you too can put your kids on the proper path of discrimination and hate! God wants you to!

Via Pandagon.

While we know that the new Pope is not the most ideal leader for Catholic women, the number of women in the ministry is at all all-time high, and they are not going away.

Newsday had an editorial by Angela Bonavoglia, author of the book, “Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading The Fight to Change the Church”, who discusses one of the Pope’s biggest challenges. As the Church has a steadily declining shortage of Catholic priests, more than 80 percent of the nearly 30,000 U.S. Catholics in lay paid parish ministry are women. This means that Benedict’s has got to get these ladies happy, and soon.

The fact of the matter is that women who work for the Church have their own issues, like low wages, little job security, sexual discrimination, and sexual exploitation by priests. And apparently, the Church has continuously ignored women’s rights, knowing what the consequences would be. “Parishes are closing by the score, testament to a hierarchy that prefers to see the church shrink rather than allow women in its sacramental ranks.”

So Bonavoglia calls for change from Pope Benedict, not only to erase the blatant gender inequality that exists in the Church, but to save the Church from, well, itself. I’m not Catholic, but knowing what I do about this dude, I wouldn’t hold my breathe.

W. David Hager has been outed today not only as the writer of a “minority report” that influenced the FDA’s decision not to give emergency contraception over-the-counter-status, but also as an abusive rapist. Yeah, I’m serious.

Hager, the controversial doctor who Bush appointed to the FDA’s Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs last year, was always known to be a religious misogynist. As a doctor he was known to give demeaning 'ethical lectures' before prescribing birth control to unmarried women and wrote a book recommending Scripture readings to treat PMS. (So you can imagine how pleased us pro-choicers were with his appointment to the advisory committee.)

The Nation’s recent article on Hager, Dr. Hager’s Family Values, reveals offenses much worse than diatribes on the bible and menstruation.

Linda Carruth Davis [Hager’s former wife of thirty-two years]...alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible."

Read the whole article; it details emotional, financial and sexual abuse that Hager subjected his wife to for years. It’s completely appalling.

In less horrifying (but still disturbing) news on Hager, both The Nation and The Washington Post report on the doctor/rapist’s role in keeping emergency contraception from going over-the-counter:

In his sermon at Asbury College last fall, Hager proudly recounted his role in the Plan B decision. "After two days of hearings," he said, "the committees voted to approve this over-the-counter sale by 23 to 4. I was asked to write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of the FDA.... Now the opinion I wrote was not from an evangelical Christian perspective.... But I argued it from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and He used it through this minority report to influence the decision."

I'm speechless.

Pandagon and Echidne also have the story.

According to a recent survey, about 93 percent of physicians—including 87.5 percent of Catholic physicians—said that they would prescribe birth control to any adult patient. (Let's leave the 'adult' problem alone for now.)

90 percent of the Catholic doctors in the study also said they supported the distribution of condoms in developing countries struggling with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Dr. Albert Thomas, a Catholic OB/GYN and director of family planning at Mount Sinai Medical Center said, "There is a moral obligation for all physicians to be informed about all of the different methods of contraception and to refer patients away in cases of personal bias." Word.

Now if only we could do something about those pharmacists...

Last Friday, Spain’s parliament accepted the right for same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, reports BBC News. Now the Senate just has to pass the bill, which is expected within weeks.

In addition to a previous post on the new socialist (and feminist) Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s efforts to create a domestic violence bill, he has since made strong efforts to remove the strong influence from the Church in Spain, and create a secular state.

Under the bill, Spanish Civil Law will include the statement: “Matrimony shall have the same requisites and effects regardless of whether the persons involved are of the same or different sex.” Woohoo!

While the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI has not been a happy fellow about this, Zapatero said:

“If the new Pope wants to say something about it, I'm prepared to respect whatever he says, he can count on my respect for him...One of the guarantees of democracy is the freedom of religion, freedom of opinion and freedom to carry out a political project with the citizens' vote.”

In the meantime, the Texas House of Representatives has just passed a bill that will ban same-sex couples from becoming foster parents. There is an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 children presently in the care of gay and lesbian foster parents in Texas. So what are they going to do, send in teams to rip these kids from their homes? I wouldn’t be surprised if they quarantined them as well. Sigh.

Check this article on Salon about this creepy new television show called Revelations. It seems to be aimed at religious audiences, touching on many recent themes from the media such as the Terry Schiavo case.

Some snippets...

Welcome to the latest nugget in a hailstorm of fundamentalist invective, from "The Passion of the Christ," to Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' bestselling "Left Behind" series, in which skeptics and agnostics are left to fight for their lives against the forces of the Antichrist (centered in Baghdad, led by the head of U.N.), while true believers are whisked away to the comfort and safety of heaven like the lucky winners on "The Apprentice," whisked off to shop for $600 Jimmy Choo sandals at Bergdorf Goodman. All of the divine signs point to the same conclusion: The rest of us, it seems, are headed to the boardroom.

But what better way for NBC to round up a full month of hand-wringing and candlelight vigils for Terri Schiavo and the pope, than by ushering in a miniseries sure to capitalize on the fear whipped up by these two deaths, not to mention more terrorist arrests, the tsunami disaster, the war in Iraq, you name it? "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," breathes Sister Josepha, and we believe her, because she looks like the Virgin Mary, except with cheekbones like Isabella Rossellini's. But is she talking about the latest tragedy in Baghdad, or the upcoming made-for-TV movie "Locusts"?

Has anyone seen the show?

We have more fun when the boys aren't around.

The new Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, is known for having quite a few very conservative opinions, not the least of which are his backwards opinions on women's roles. The new pope supports the belief that a woman's place in in the home, a stance that has always puzzled me. What do a bunch of celibate cardinals care if women have jobs? Do they stand against women's rights out of some sort of misguided male solidarity? A small detail in this story about the new pope cleared up some of these questions for me:

After the traditional burning of ballots and the pope's triumphant balcony appearance Tuesday, Benedict XVI invited the cardinals back to a hasty celebratory dinner. Caught off-guard, 20 nuns at the cardinals' Vatican residence improvised a repast of soup, beans, cold cuts, ice cream and Champagne.

Damn, I'd give up sex too if I had a cadre of nuns on hand to make lavish dinners, complete with Champagne, at a moment's notice, too.

From Echidne of the Snakes.

As most of you have heard by now, the new pope has been named -- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, or Pope Benedict XVI -- and is being considered the most conservative person that could have been chosen for the job. Lovely.

The successor has frequently been the voice of controversy in newly discussed issues of reform in the Catholic Church, such as priests being allowed to marry and women being ordained. You may remember the hoo-ha that resulted from his comments on how John Kerry shouldn't have been allowed to receive communion because he was pro-choice. No wonder Bush welcomed him happily to the papacy as “a man of great wisdom and knowledge.”

Ratzinger actually claims that abortion and euthanasia are “grave sins”, believes that rock is the “vehicle of anti-religion”, and once said homosexuality was a tendency towards “intrinsic moral evil.” He also dismissed the talk over pedophilia committed by Catholic priests as being a “planned campaign” against the Church. As far as feminists go, he once wrote a letter to bishops worldwide labeling us as "adversaries" to men. Great wisdom and knowledge, indeed.

He considers liberalism, atheism, agnosticism, relativism and Marxism all threats to the faith. He even criticized cardinals who have fought poverty through social action in the past because he believed it supported Marxist ideology.

Whew. Good luck, Roman Catholics of the world!

Check out The Nation's article, "The Vatican's Enforcer", for more of a descriptive history on Ratzinger. Thanks to Big Slutty for the link.

The fabulous Liz from Blondesense brought my attention to this story about a Virgin Mary sighting in Chicago. As solid a message to the cardinals as ever there was that God wants some more cunt-respect from the next Pope, don't you think?

Like Liz, I will let the audience draw their own conclusions about how the shape of Mary and the more straightforward ancient pagan representations of the goddess resemble each other.

While cardinals deliberate over a new pope, it looks like a group of nuns and other Catholic women in Chicago have launched a protest about the role of women within the Catholic Church.

The women stood outside of the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago this morning to urge those electing a new pope to include women in the decision-making process.

“We have to tell the cardinals this: We no longer want a secret, sexist selection process,” said Sister Donna Quinn of the Coalition of American Nuns. Many of the protesters there said that this message is also directed towards the new pope-to-be.

After the morning mass at Holy Name, the women set off some small smoke bombs (pink smoke, I must add) as a symbol of their movement.

Protesting? Smoke bombs?? It looks like we’ve got some feminist nuns on our hands. Fucking awesome.

The NY Times has a wonderful expose on Ma'yan, a Jewish feminist organization that holds annual women's seders in New York. Ma'yan's mission is to serve as a catalyst for change and a resource for women working for change within the Jewish community.

Sadly, Ma'yan announced that this is their last year running the feminist seder. The director of Ma'yan, Eve Landau, explains that: "Our goal is to be a catalyst. We can give it up because it has become mainstream, because girls don't think there's something terribly unusual about a women's seder and because now a Miriam's Cup is part of what they see on their seder table at home." Any thoughts on this?

To learn more, check out The Women's Haggadah.