I always hated the phrase “Jesus is the reason for the season” though I couldn’t put my finger on just why until I got out of Catholicism. My parents were firm believers in the War on Christmas (which, as Jon Stewart once said, “Seems to start earlier every year”), a sentiment that seems to me [...]

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I was at an Italian restaurant with some friends recently when we started talking to some locals (the place had shut down, so it was just us all and the owners; we were all playing guitar, piano, and dancing—Europe is awesome!). One had a stone that looked almost like turquoise. When I asked about it, [...]

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This is how our president defined our country yesterday. Explicitly denying that it was a “Christian nation” and explicitly stating that this fact is one of our “great strengths”. It’s nice to be reminded of this—and by someone so high in the administration! It is vogue for politicians to exclaim “God bless America!” Whether or [...]

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Texas is reviewing its science standards, specifically with the desire to remove them altogether. Skepchick has a great discussion of exactly what this means, but here’s the short version: Texas and California’s choices for scientific textbooks drives the availability of textbooks nationwide because of their massive marketshare the Texas State Board of Education (TSBE) has [...]

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Late to the party on this one, I know, sorry. It turns out that conservative (read: religious) states have the highest porn rates in the country. Probably because they’re not allowed to have deviant (read: fun) sex at home. Meanwhile, people living in enlightened areas of the country have other outlets for their sexual urges, [...]

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This is another lecture that was put on at my school, this time by the ACLU, in response to Prop 8. The California Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about the Constitutionality of Prop 8 a week from tomorrow. In preparation for that, the local ACLU chapter invited to gay people who grew up in [...]

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I told a professor here (who was running a forum on the Question of God) that my religious background is ex-Catholic but that I am an active blogger in the ex-Mormon part of the Bloggernacle; that my husband is humanist, my father-in-law is Buddhist, and my mother-in-law is First Nations/Pagan. I got an awesome look [...]

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And watch this vid. An MoF favorite singer and an MoF favorite cause: Regina Spektor and No On H8. Do this before V day and enjoy your partnership on Valentine’s Day guilt-free (and full of hope). Let’s dedicate this Valentine’s Day to love.

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It’s Blog for Choice Day and I encourage everyone to visit the blogroll of bloggers taking part and to visit their blogs, if only for this one post. Also, feel free to revisit my posts from ’07 and ’08. This year’s topic is “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new [...]

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I’m catching up on local news (read: blogs) while my cousin is in town (trying not to be too antisocial by spending all my free time blogging) and enjoyed particularly this most recent post at Daylight Atheism: No Holy Ground, a rational look at the conflict in the so-called “Holy Land” and how it is [...]

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