Keep it calm, I thought. Out loud: “What went down?”
He shrugged. “Looked like a gun to me.” He mimed a shot. “So I gave him one.”
My teeth ground. “A bright blue, see through squirt gun?”
He had the gall to grin. “Eight years on the force, no way I go down for this, Lou. One black boy? So the fuck what?”
Too much. “He was MY black boy, you son of a bitch!!” I screamed, and blew his head off.
So yeah, one less cop now. Two if I go down.
Hey, though, twelve years on the force…
The White House is currently accepting nominations for the President’s 2012 Citizen’s Medal. This is awarded to US citizens who have performed service to their community and/or country above anything which might reasonably be expected of them.
I nominated Jessica Ahlquist of Cranston, Rhode Island. Here is the justification for my choice as I sent it to the White House nomination site:
Despite intense opposition Jessica Ahlquist stood up for the Constitution in suing her school to get a prayer banner taken down that violated the First Amendment’s establishment of religion clause.
She persevered through torrents of venomous personal abuse, including some from government officials, and did so with a grace and courage remarkable and inspirational in any citizen, much less one so tender in years.
In doing so, she has not only permanently altered and improved the observance of foundational law in Cranston, RI, but has become a nationwide inspiration to freethinkers, secularists, and all who hold the Constitution’s protections dear.
From now on no one can long entertain the notion that he or she is too young, weak or unimportant to make a lasting difference to how society treats atheists or any other minority, when such treatment is in opposition to our society’s laws. Jessica Ahlquist has ably and amply demonstrated that all that is required is courage, determination, persistence.
I can think of no citizen more deserving of this award at this time.
The nominating process is open until April 24.
The final stop in my Athiest Atheist Week Evah was the Rock Beyond Belief concert at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Rock Beyond Belief has its own blog site actually, on Freethoughtblogs no less, so I won’t go into a lot of detail.
Suffice to say that it came into being as a direct response to the Graham Ministry’s Rock The Fort concerts, which were explicitly evangelical concerts that openly bragged of converting soldiers to their particular brand of Christianity (mostly from other sects, of course). That’s using taxpayer dollars for an explicit attempt to privilege one particular religious sect above all others, and is plainly not Constitutional.
Atheists in the military are constantly under illegal pressures from evangelical Christians trying to establish religion as a prerequisite for so-called ‘spiritual fitness’ and denying equal opportunities to atheists such as the use of common facilities for freethought meeting and the like. Such was the case when I was in the US Navy, and by all accounts the situation is far worse in the Departments of the Army and Air Force.
The importance of Rock Beyond Belief, the reason why it was especially important to make the event a success, was that it was the first time an atheist festival of any kind had been successfully organized on a military base; it took foxhole atheist Sergeant Justin Griffiths over two years to get all the permissions lined up. Now that it has happened once, the plan is never to do it again… except as a response to another evangelical conversion concert. The Foxhole Atheists don’t think it is proper to hold either type of concert, but if they do their thing, we must do ours. To simply allow only one side to break the rules is a path to abject defeat, and abject defeat is something the military like less than anybody.
Happily, the concert was indeed a terrific success! There were approximately 2000 people in attendance eventually; the initial turnout was a bit slow because widespread rain slowed traffic, but the sun won out over the rain and it ended up being very fine.
I must confess, I forgot the sunscreen and got a bit lobstered, but I did have a large umbrella that let my fair-skinned ginger son escape the same fate. That for me, as for many other people there, was the best part about the concert; it was very much a family-centered affair, with many children in attendance.
It was my son’s first rock concert, as well as the first atheist event we’ve attended together (he only decided firmly on the atheist camp in the past year or two – his brother and sisters are all Christian). He invented the hand sign above – a combination of the rock’n'roll devil horns and the capital A of atheism. We even bought ourselves matching t-shirts and “dog tags” as souvenirs of the event, as you can see.
He seemed to enjoy the speakers as well as the musical acts, applauding with appropriate hollering and whooping, and there were other kid-appropriate activities as well – a climbing wall, some science demonstrations with magnets and non-Newtonian fluids (an entire wading pool of ooblek!), face painting and the like.
My son chose to be face-painted as a zombie apocalypse survivor. We were kind of hoping his mother would freak (Dave Silverman of A.A. commented “Wouldn’t that be awesome?”) but she’s wise to us.
In short, we spent some high quality time together and made some good memories to treasure. It was a very satisfying end to my Athiest Atheist Week Evah!
You try to hold back but the whole room tilts that way. It sits there, mocks you, calls out to you: be rich, be free, come on down, why not you?
You clench up on the brass rail of the bar like you want to screw it. Both your palms and the glass of gin sweat.
Why not? Give me just one, good… You tick them off in your mind. Job. Spouse. Kids. Joy.
You close your eyes. Your head whirls. You lurch. Just one small piece of luck.
You push the coin. You pull the arm. The world spins.
Yes, I know, I’m slower than light in a Bose-Einstein condensate… What can I say, I’ve been too busy procrastinating to update.
I may come back to some of the other speakers at the convention, such as the sex-positivism of several speakers (i.e. not letting emotional and cultural relics of religion ruin your sex life) but for now I just want to convey the most dramatic theme of the second day.
The emotional difficulty in becoming an unbeliever is directly proportionate to how religious a person was before coming to his or her senses. The practical difficulties of becoming an open or ‘out’ unbeliever are in direct proportion to how integral religion is to a person’s lifestyle.
Although there were other impressive speakers, the big attraction of the second day was without question the apostate parsons. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it must be to come out and admit that the ideas that informed your entire life, that form the major part of your public and private identity, no longer make any sense to you. Admitting that you’ve been totally hoodwinked your entire life by fables and stories, that the deep connections you might have felt were to an imaginary being, that the supposed truths you’d made a career of teaching were not truths at all but fabrications… it has to be harrowing.
Apart from that, of course, religious professionals who manage to rid themselves of faith face an additional burden that few other new atheists have to deal with, and none to the same extent: their professional careers are entirely dependent on their faith. Many atheists risk losing friends and family, but while it’s not entirely unknown elsewhere (professional politicians come to mind, though I suspect that fear is a bit exaggerated) few of them have to face losing a paycheck as well. The Clergy Project was set up to help people in that position.
In the advance literature for the conference Mike Silverman had noted that “Pastor M” would be talking about the difficulties faced by people in the situation of being trapped in a profession that required them (were they to continue in it) to lie about their spiritual beliefs. It wasn’t clear right up to the last minute that “Pastor M” intended to ‘come out’ as an atheist at the conference; he was supposed to speak in a disguise so that he could keep his Job. The theme of the conference was “Come out, come out” however and that’s just what he did. “Pastor M” revealed himself to be Michael Aus, pastor of a mainline nondenominational church in Houston Texas. Even less expected was the coming out of Teresa McBain, a Baptist pastor from Tallahassee Florida (from the 18 minute mark below).
(BTW, at 22:10 she’s responding to me: I shouted “No, you’re not!”)
A very interesting spinoff of this was the coverage of the big atheist weekend, including Michael Aus’s coming out, on “UP With Chris Hayes” on MSNBC. (Actually I think Aus came out on Chris’s show before he went to the convention.) Usually in television discussions of atheism, we’re lucky if we get even one nonbeliever in the mix; I can’t count the number of discussions of atheism I’ve seen which were entirely between theists. The guests on Chris’s show was entirely freethinkers, including as it turns out Chris Hayes himself, which I hadn’t known before. The other guests were Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Susan Jacoby, Jamila Bey, Robert Wright and Jamie Kilstein. I’m pretty sure that’s a television first!
Besides the two pastors newly coming out there were several apostates who had been out longer, such as Jerry DeWitt (who took several turns speaking and was very popular).
The Charismatic ex-pastor Ernest Perce’s story struck me particularly, simply because I also have a son who needed hearing aids. Good thing I didn’t trust to God to fix his hearing!
“Brother” Richard Haynes also gave a compelling story of how losing his faith meant he lost essentially everything in his old life.
I found it interesting that with the exception of Michael Aus the apostates skewed heavily toward the more emotional styles of Christianity, Charismatics and Evangelicals. Perhaps that’s because that style tends toward a “you’re in or you’re out” mentality, unforgiving toward lukewarm commitment. In any case, these people show that reason can overcome even fervent religiosity, and as Mr. Perce said we’re likely to see more of them coming out with the help of Recovering From Religion and especially the Clergy Project.
Ex-preachers certainly do make excellent speakers, anyway!
”Don’t cut that up. I want it whole.” He eyed the light cloak with greed. All his clothes were made for cold, not heat. ”Roll you for it.”
Some odd quirk of mind made him use his fair dice. He lost.
He lost the next round too, and had to do bones.
He craned his neck up at the man. All those hours nailed up in the sun. It was so hot… too hot to break bones.
Nuts to that. He turned his spear and poked a hole in the Jew’s side. Blood and water.
He was dead all right.
- by BT Murtagh
(Yes, I ripped off the word “fiblet” from Peter Watts of rifters.com – who is way more writer than I will ever be.)
Immediately following the Reason Rally was the American Atheists National Convention 2012, which was equally impressive in its own ways. For one thing, just as the Rally was the largest free gathering of the godless in history, the AANC2012 was the biggest paid conference, with 1300 people buying tickets to it. It was money well spent for me!
Actually the above is slightly inaccurate; immediately following the Reason Rally was the post-Reason Rally party, and believe me the godless partied down! I got very little sleep. It’s probably fortunate that there are few pictures of me there, at least on my phone. This is the only one in fact:
(The young lady was named Kelly, and the tall party animal in the middle is Andre.)
As a result I was a tad disoriented getting to the convention at the hotel it was taking place in, which as it happened worked out rather well. I took a wrong turn and bumped into Richard Dawkins getting his wireless microphone fitted, and was able to have a brief chat with him and get our picture:
We discussed how important it is to get kids to think clearly from an early age. He was particularly pleased that I had already purchased “The Magic of Reality: How We Know What Is Really True
The other two pictured are “A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
I had a couple of much longer chats with Sean Faircloth, both before and at the book signing, getting a notion of what might be involved in becoming a politically activist atheist in my rather religious state. Both as Executive Director of the Secular Coalition of America and as Director of Strategy and Policy at the Richard Dawkins Foundation (US) he’s very keen on building up political opposition to the Religious Right.
I have to leave it here for now, until my next post, but one thing I want to say in general about this conference: as much as or even more than the Reason Rally, it was overwhelmingly positive and inclusive in tone. There were speakers like Ayanna Watson addressing the specific concerns of Black Atheists of America, David Tamayo doing the same for Hispanic American Freethinkers, Greta Christina speaking to the LGBT atheists, and it wasn’t restricted even to just American points of view: apart from the UK being represented by Richard Dawkins and DPR Jones, there was Christina Rad from Romania and Taslima Nasrin, once of Bangladesh and now a woman without a country for the crime of apostasy from Islam.
People tend to think of atheism as a purely negative position, and that is strictly true in a narrow sense. The atheist movement, however – and yes, there is such a thing and it is becoming more real all the time – is very positive, inclusive and not at all narrow.
As I said before, the amazing thing about the Reason Rally was the sense of community. That observation extends further into the American Atheists National Convention and the Rock Beyond Belief concert – it really has been the athiest atheist week ever – but these are my impressions of the Rally.
The latest and greatest crowd estimates as of April 1st for the Rally are that 30,000 people attended. As Dave Silverman put it, “Thirty thousand. Dot dot dot, in the rain.” Even on a nicer day that would have been a damn impressive number, I think, and I suspect it made a quietly important impact on the Beltway thinking process.
There were extensive comments on every major news channel the next day… except Fox, and that omission may be every bit as important as the inclusions. Fox is the channel of the socially conservative Right, and for them to completely ignore such an unprecedented rally (bigger than Beck’s!) is suggestive of fear.
Also impressive to me was the response on the channel closest to being the anti-Fox, MSNBC. “Up With Chris Hayes” had a panel to discuss the Reason Rally, which was unusual in that all the guests (and as it turned out, the host) were atheists: Susan Jacoby, Steven Pinker, Jamila Bey, Robert Wright, Jamie Kilstein, Richard Dawkins and Chris Hayes himself. That made a wonderful change from the usual response to atheist gathering, several theists and maybe one atheist talking it over.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Of course, we atheists are by our very existence controversial, and two speakers in particular seemed to fan some flames. One was on Chris’s show: Richard Dawkins, who dared to suggest that perhaps it was a good idea to challenge religious notions such as the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation. The thing was, the Rally had been billed as not being a religion-bashing event but a celebration of unity amongst we the godless, and some felt that Dawkins had hurt that notion.
I don’t agree. Sure, the primary purpose was to get together and show our numbers, but what is the point of that if we don’t express what it is that makes us distinct as a group, which is precisely that we don’t accept the kind of ridiculous evidence-free notions Dawkins referred to? Moreover, it was to show that our ideas are at least as mainstream as the silly religious ones, and as the survey in Britain commissioned by the RDF-UK showed, many nominal Christians are precisely that, a part of the “Christian” demographic in name only. It isn’t bashing to inquire whether someone genuinely holds a risible belief, it’s an invitation to a dialogue in which they can try to express why the belief is worthy of respect; the fact that they’d rather take offense than defend their belief is tantamount to an admission that it is indefensible.
The other big draw who ruffled feathers for violating the advertising was Tim Minchin. The Rally had been billed as “family friendly” and one of Tim’s songs which he elected to play was… well, this one:
NSFW, and I can see where the “not family friendly” objection has a point, but I couldn’t help noticing that not one of the people who held forth objecting to it mentioned that the actual subject of the song, viz. the Pope protecting and thereby enabling child rape, was far more offensive than the f-bombs… thereby utterly proving Tim’s point.
Finally, I’d like to give a mention to one of the bravest speakers there, emotionally speaking. The hateful Westboro Baptist Church did attend, though they got far less attention than they craved, I’m sure. The only Phelps who got that kind of respect was the apostate Nate, who left the family/cult at eighteen to get away from the hatred, and still doesn’t show them any hatred but only sadness and regret at the wasteland they have made of their lives.
In a way, Nate sums up the whole movement: we don’t hate the religious, we hate the religion, and the waste of human potential it represents, and most of all the hatred it so often (not always, but too often) inspires in the hearts of people in its thrall.
to the Rock Beyond Belief concert and accidentally spent it, well…
Sucks to be you!
UPDATE: Okay, that’s why it looks weird… it’s a Silver Certificate, redeemable in actual silver metal I guess, which (Googlety-googlety) comes to about a sixteenth of an ounce of silver. I’ll keep the bill itself, thank you!
Oh, all right… if you can give me the serial number I blanked out up there, I will mail it back to you.
Quite frankly, there is no way I am going to be able to give you a coherent narrative of the Reason Rally that will do it any kind of justice. It was an amazing event. The final attendance estimate by the Parks Service was about 25,000 people in the rain, far more than Glenn Beck managed for his rally on a sunny day. This Al-Jazeera report gives a good view:
Dave Silverman and others had been tweeting heads-ups about the potentially rainy weather for a couple of days. Lots of us (myself included) brought extra umbrellas or ponchos or tarps or rolls of supersize heavy duty garbage bags, and gave them to people who had been caught unawares. (Emergency ponchos are 88 cents at my local Wal-Mart so I brought a handful of those.)
The sense of community was profound. Whenever anyone needed a hand with something, people didn’t even ask, they just pitched in.
The first famous (or at least Internet-famous!) person I met this weekend besides Jen was the redoubtable Aron-Ra, whose YouTube channel has long been a favorite of mine. I had assumed he looked a lot bigger on camera than in person… VERY VERY WRONG!!! Not only is he taller and broader than me (and I’m no shrimp) he projects a sense of solid mass you’d have to experience. He’s also quite cordial though, at least to people who aren’t being creationist idiots at him.
I met a lot of very friendly and funny people at the Rally. The best comment about the rain is on the right here! I quite liked the meta-comment on “signs” as well.
There were some questionable political signs. Shouldn’t it be “Voldemort/Palin 2012″? Then again, maybe not… anyway, Dino-Riding Jesus supports that ticket!
Okay, getting a little tired now so I’ll wrap up. This was the biggest gathering of the godless in American history, and I’m glad I was part of it. It made a big statement, showing ourselves and others that we really are out there and have to be taken into account, and also that we are not some kind of monsters but perfectly ordinary people: atheist, is all.
