You've been thrown out of better places than this!

According to available information, the situation is this:
In Brazil, a nine year old girl is sexually abused by her step-father (note: he hasn't been convicted, so I hereby make the obligatory genuflection towards Our Lady of the Presumption of Innocence) and becomes pregnant (with twins!). When her mother finds out, she seeks an abortion for her daughter, which the medical system is willing to grant, given both the rape and the fact that she's still too young to safely carry even one child to term, let alone twins (thus managing to hit not one, but two exceptions to Brazil's general ban on abortion).

And the Catholic Church, displaying the matchless Love of Jesus, tried to prevent it.

Fortunately for this poor kid, her doctors went ahead and did the abortion anyway.

So the local Archbishop excommunicated them. And the girl's mother. There's no word on whether the anathema also applies to the evil bastard who's responsible for the whole mess in the first place.

BTW, the Brazilian Catholic Church seems to be on a roll these days: just last week, they suspended a priest from his duties, for his advocacay of gay rights, and the use of condoms as a public health measure.

But back to the excommunications: the girl is off the hook, as she's too young to be held accountable. However, I can't help thinking that as she grows up, she will remember what her Church did for her in the darkest hour of her young life, and react appropriately. As for her mother and the medical personnel: I also can't help thinking they're better off being on the outside of this insane institution.

Mirror, Mirror

Among the newly-installed President Obama's first acts has been to lift the ban on US foreign-aid funding for groups that facilitate abortion. This was quite predictable,as it follows a pattern of recent history going back to Reagan, of Republican presidents imposing the ban, and their Democratic successors lifting it. Also predictable was reaction from Certain Quarters -- like the Vatican, as represented by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life:

....the arrogance of someone who believes they are right....

What is important is to know how to listen, without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death. If this is one of the first acts of President Obama, then with all due respect it seems to me that we are heading toward disappointment even more quickly than we thought

The irony of a dogmatic church complaining about someone else's "arrogance" and "ideological visions"....needs no further comment from me. And as for "life and death": this is the same Church whose bizarre views on sex and reproduction have almost certainly worsened the AIDS crisis in Latin America and Africa.

I think we should take up a collection to buy a bunch of mirrors, to be installed in the Vatican. They really need them over there.

In support of PZ's right to be impolite and insulting

With regards to this news story, and this response on Pharyngula:

It may be a fine distinction, but I do not see PZ's impoliteness and insults as directed at the Catholic faithful who believe that God is present in the communion wafers, however much PZ would disagree and consider them to be naive and/or deluded and/or misguided. Rather he is (verbally, of course) attacking those who think it is appropriate, or even understandable, to respond to blasphemy and sacrilege with physical force and death threats.


Here is a letter I sent to the President of UMM:

Dear Dr. Bruininks,

I firmly believe that, in addition to transmitting knowledge on various topics, one of the important roles of a university is to encourage students to think critically and question their own and their world's basic assumptions. I think that Professor P.Z.Myers does an excellent job in all of these areas, and is a credit to UMM.

Recently, I have seen blog posts by Dr Myers in which he has encouraged desecration of Catholic religious symbols. Bill Donohue has stated that "It is hard to think of anything more vile...". While the comments and proposed actions by P.Z. Myers may be insulting and impolite, surely there are many things in this world far viler than denigrating symbols and beliefs.

I hope you will disregard the demands from the Catholic League for the removal or other discipline of Professor Myers, and support his right to voice his opinions, however controversial they might be.

Noted in the News: Religion, Gender and Sexuality

A lot of religions seem to have major hangups about women and gays. A bunch of stuff about both issues (enough to get a blog post out of) all swam into my personal universe on the same day. So here it is.

First, from Iran: Islamically correct bicycles for women -- velocipedes with partial cabins so good Muslim men can't be tempted into paroxysms of lust by the sight of (burka-clad!) female legs pumping those pedals. Geez, guys: take a cold shower or something. Riding a bike wearing an oversized robe must be hard enough already. [Hat tip to Ooblog]

Next, from Pakistan: Shumail Raj and his wife Shahzina Tariq have been jailed for three years. Their crime? Shumail is trans-gendered (female-to-male), and despite the fact that he has had sex-change surgery, he's not man enough to satisfy the Pakistani legal system, which considers same-sex marriage "un-Islamic". They were deemed to have lied about Shumail's gender, and accordingly were convicted of perjury. (Perhaps not surprisingly, it was her family who laid the complaint -- talk about the In-Laws From Hell!)

But it's not only Islam that is letting its hangups hang out today. Gay Teletubbies aren't just for Jerry Falwell any more. Ewa Sowinska, the Polish government official responsible for children's rights, has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the pre-school TV show is corrupting its audience by promoting homosexuality. This move is consistent with a recent pattern of homophobic policies by the government of this deeply Catholic country. Back in March, Minister of Education Roman Giertych introduced a bill to ban "homosexual propaganda" in Polish schools. The children! Please think of the children! Giertych is head of the League of Polish Families party. Why is it, anywhere in the world, it seems that any political party with "Family" in its name, it's invariably a synonym for "Reactionary Bigots Party"?

One country over, an attempted gay rights parade in Moscow was broken up yesterday, first by Russian Orthodox and nationalist thugs who beat up the marchers -- and then by the police who arrested the beating victims and allowed their assailants to walk away (among those detained were Members of European Parliament). Unfortunately, this is hardly surprising in a city whose mayor has described homosexuality as "Satanic". Encouragingly, the mayors of London, Paris and Rome have written to Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov deploring the violence.

But there's always a counter-current to the forces of oppression. Yesterday in Toronto, a dissident Catholic group called Womenpriests ordained five women (and a married man). The ordinations were carried out by Bishop Patricia Fresen. It hardly needs mentioning that the RC Church recognizes neither Fresen's status as bishop, nor any ordinations performed by her. I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing. On the one hand, as my Christian phase recedes ever further into the past, I find internal church disputes over arbitrary claims regarding fictional matters increasingly irrelevant and uninteresting (especially in a denomination I never belonged to anyway). But on the other hand, given the institution exists, I think it would be a good thing if women could participate in an equal basis in the mythology of their choice.