January 31, 2010 Forum: How to Improve Your Relationship With Anyone - by Dr Michael R Edelstein

Dr Michael R Edelstein will discuss how to improve your relationship with anyone. Dr Edelstein has an in-person and telephone therapy practice in San Francisco. He is the author of Three Minute Therapy, a self-help book for overcoming common emotional and behavioral problems, for which he has been awarded Author of the Year. The book was a Quality Paperback Book Club/Book-of-the-Month Club Selection, a Behavioral Sciences Book Service Book Club Selection, and an Albert Ellis Institute Selection. In his practice, Dr Edelstein specializes in the treatment of anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and addictions, and is one of the few practitioners of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in the Bay Area. His website is www.ThreeMinuteTherapy.com .

To see the video of this forum, click here.

Watering-down of Protection for Gay People ’shames’ Parliament

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has condemned votes in the House of Lords last night, January 25, which removed the requirement for discrimination against gay people by religious organisations to be “proportionate.” The government’s definition of the roles that would be affected was also voted down, after strong lobbying by religious organisations including Church of England bishops within the House of Lords.

Andrew Copson, the BHA’s new chief executive, commented, “Everyone else is required to treat gay people without discrimination. What the Christian churches fought for and won were special exemptions from that law so that they can treat lesbian and gay people unkindly, unfairly, and discriminate against them. The House of Lords has shamed itself by conspiring in this sort of immorality. We regret it and we hope that those fair-minded parliamentarians and those Christians who have campaigned against this exemption are given a fairer hearing in the future stages of the Bill and that this disgraceful injustice is reversed.”

Responding specifically to the argument of the Archbishop of York that the ability to discriminate against lesbian and gay people was a matter of “religious freedom”, Copson continued: “Britain has always been a country with more freedom of thought and religion than most but it is a terrible thing to claim that this should mean that laws that apply to everyone else and which are designed to protect vulnerable people should contain within themselves special provisions so that religious people who don’t wish to, do not have to obey them. Our concern should be with the people denied jobs and a livelihood in their chosen profession by the discrimination against them, rather than with securing the right of those who discriminate against them to carry on doing so.”

Naomi Phillips, BHA Head of Public Affairs, added, “The BHA has been working with supportive parliamentarians on many issues around the Equality Bill, which gives excessive privileges to religious groups to discriminate against not only gay and lesbian people but against the non-religious and those of other religions.”

The Lords votes mean that British law may now be in conflict with European legislation, meaning that the most probable effect of the amendments will be expensive and time-consuming litigation to untangle the mess the amendments have created.

Source: IHEU

British Humanists Want Bishops Out of Parliament

The British Humanist Association (BHA) is calling for the removal of the automatic right of Church of England bishops to sit in Parliament. The call has come in advance of an event being held this evening, Jan. 27, 2010, by Labour Humanists which asks, “Should the bishops be evicted from the House of Lords?” The event, chaired by David Aaronovitch and including speakers Polly Toynbee and The Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester, has attracted a capacity audience, indicating a renewed public interest in this issue.

Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive, made the point that the BHA’s call also comes in light of new experience over the last few days that has once again highlighted the negative effects of the Bishops’ privileges on British society.

He said, “We have only this week seen the damage that can be done by having this undemocratic and discriminatory privilege in our Parliamentary system. It was the votes of the Bishops that swung yesterday’s vote on employment rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people when working for religious employers. Not only have they painted such equality legislation as an attack on religious freedom, which it is not, but they have created a position where British law may now be in conflict with European legislation, and demonstrated enormous self-interest rather than any attachment to the common good or the public interest.

“The presence of Church of England Bishops in the House of Lords as of right entrenches a privileged position for one particular branch of one particular religion that cannot be justified in today’s society, which is not only multi-faith but increasingly non-religious.”

The BHA has pledged to work with parliamentarians to seek to address the removal of Bishops in the current Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill.

Source: IHEU

Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status Quo, Dies at 87 - by Mark Feeney

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. “When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”

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Thank You, Howard Zinn - by Matthew Rothschild

Thank You, Howard Zinn, for being there during the civil rights movement, for teaching at Spelman, for walking the picket lines, and for inspiring such students as Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman.

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Howard Zinn: The Historian Who Made History - by Dave Zirin

Howard Zinn, my hero, teacher, and friend died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history.

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January 24, 2010 Forum: Margaret Sanger - by Meg Bowman

To see a dramatic reading on “COURAGEOUS MARGARET SANGER” from Meg’s book “Courageous Women”, click here.

Humanist chaplains head to the UK

Do atheists need humanist chaplains if they have a crisis? It seems the demand is growing for non-religious chaplaincy services, but whether we can afford them is another matter

To read more, click here.

Re: Peace and Social Justice are Worth Fighting for - by Armineh Noravian

I find the article by Jende Huang in the HNN (1/13/10) shocking, to put it mildly, for many reasons.

His claim that Afghanistan and Iraq were “liberated” goes to the heart of his delusion that he is standing up for “solidarity with the oppressed” and seeking “the spread of Enlightenment values.”

The U.S. invasion of Iraq, to rid the country of one Saddam Hussein and his two sons (a total of three people), has been the cause of over one million Iraqi deaths (AFP 2008 ). The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has left countless dead and maimed. Is this what Huang means by liberation? Where do these deaths of innocent people fit in the context of the Enlightenment values and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that Huang is talking about?

Huang can’t get beyond the simplistic right/left dichotomy. It’s as if there is nothing in the middle. This goes along with his simplistic war/peace dichotomy and his UDHR/cultural relativist dichotomy.

People like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mohandas Gandhi, who move mountains through peaceful means, should be a great example for Huang to learn from. But then perhaps he sees them as people on the left, who advocated peace, and who were cultural relativists?

He talks about liberating the young women in Afghanistan from the Taliban. I wonder if he knows that the women in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Somalia, and many other countries are being treated as badly as the women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. He talks about Saddam Hussein’s abuses. I wonder if he knows that there are many other countries in that region with dictators propped up by the United States who abuse their citizens. I wonder if he thinks we should also attack these countries to “liberate” their women and their citizens. This is the male-chauvinistic, self-righteous, and colonialist attitude of the 21st century advocates of “fundamentalist love” that comes through a machine gun or a bomb. It’s an oxymoronic way of thinking about liberation through killing people on humanitarian grounds.

He asks “Does my desire to see the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq make me an adherent of militarism and a lover of war?” In my opinion, it does. Also, I may be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like Huang is writing this article while dodging bombs and bullets in Iraq or Afghanistan.

As an American and a person who has her roots in the Middle East, I am disturbed to see real human beings (mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, husbands, and wives) killed in countries of this region funded by our tax dollars, cheered on by the likes of Huang, under the guise of defending human rights. I think this is nothing but an example of how humans can lack compassion, empathy, and justify just about anything in a shameless self-righteous rant.

In the Humanist Manifesto III, it says, “Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.” Clearly humanism and peace are synonymous. How could one be a humanist and advocate militarism and war?

Rifles used by U.S. troops include Bible verse inscriptions

Combat rifle sights used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan carry references to Bible verses, stoking concerns about whether the inscriptions break a government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops.

To read the entire article, click here.