Bill 78 required students protesting to send the police a map of their planned route. Here's what they sent in.

To understand the government’s justification for the law, the best thing you can do is not listen to what the lawmakers are saying. This is not to say that I’m accusing them of being deceitful about the purpose of the law, but rather that they have been bumbling idiots in their public relations. They have claimed that they passed the law to bring respect and calm back to Québec. (That’s actually Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier, by the way, in a direct quote, via the The Globe and Mail. I’m seriously not making that shit up.) They have also defended the law by saying that societies have found it reasonable to impose certain constraints, first of all to protect protesters…. (That’s Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil, via CBC.) You could burn out your brain trying to speculate on exactly what might threaten 200,000 students marching in unison with media cameras on them all the way – other than the armoured and armed police, and if they are the threat, then the lawmakers should probably be more concerned about restricting their power rather than the students’ – or asking, if “respect and calm” is so important that it warrants silencing protest, why not just pass laws to silence all dissent, but Saturday Cerebration is not about giving you an aneurism trying to detangle politician-logic.

Instead, to understand a solid justification to the law, consider this: about two-thirds of Québec students are not on strike, and just wish to go to their classes and finish their education. Some of them have even filed court injunctions to prevent protesters from blocking them from being able to go to class. And in some cases, those court injunctions have been flaunted, as protesting students blocked or disrupted classes that went ahead. There were even reports of violence and intimidation.

Now, obviously, no one supports violence, harassment or intimidation on either side, but there are already laws to deal with those things. And certainly, if the goal is simply to prevent violence, harassment and intimidation, silencing protest is, to paraphrase Tommy Douglas, using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut. But what about just the disruption caused by the strikers – not just to students who want to go to classes, but also to the businesses in the areas where they march, and the general population when the massive marches block off huge sections of the downtown core. It could be argued – and some people have tried, clumsily, to argue it – that they have rights, too: rights to go to school and work, and generally go about their lives without undue disruption. Indeed, the purpose of government is specifically to make sure they they can do those things.

The specific actions taken by Bill 78 are, undeniably, fucking stupid. Even with the most generous interpretation of its purpose – as I’ve given it – it’s still fucking stupid in its execution. I don’t know what the hell is going through Charest’s head. Maybe he thinks he’s channelling Trudeau and trying to show what a hardass he is with his “just watch me” moment. But at least Trudeau had the excuse that people were dying; Charest’s excuse for acting now is that he’s a cheapskate, and too stubborn to deal with the students for over three weeks. No, the bill is fucking idiotic, period, even if the justifications for it are sound. The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (the Commission of Human and Youth Rights) is on the case, though. What I an interested in is – even though the implementation of the bill is stupid – whether the justifications for it are sound.

Why the right to protest is important

Red square worn by those in support of the Québec student protest

First, assume a perfect democracy or democratic republic; that is, assume a country where the majority will is accurately determined and precisely implemented in all questions. Canada and Québec are, of course, not perfect. Certainly, there are some glitches. But we’re alright, viewed broadly.

Now, most people would assume that this would be an ideal state of affairs, but that’s not quite the case. While majorities will have their will carried out perfectly, minorities will not. Some callous bastards will shrug that off, saying that’s just the way democracy works. Well, it is the way democracy works, but that doesn’t make it right. Very often, minority groups are dealing with situations that are not well understood by the contrasting majority, and, sometimes, issues that most people just don’t care about.

As a real-world example, consider transgendered people. These people come in all flavours: some have male sexual biology but female gender (they have a penis, but feel female), some have female sexual biology but male gender, some are intersex (they are neither biologically male nor female – they may be a bit of both, or neither) and may identify as male or female or both or neither… and so on and so forth in a wild and beautiful chaotic map of diversity. Most tolerant people would shrug and say: “So what? I don’t have a problem with that. It’s a free country, they can be whatever they are, or want to be.” Really? How would you feel – assuming you’re a cis-woman (female biologically, with female gender identity) – if someone whipped out a cock in the women’s bathroom? Hm? Or – to take advantage of another topical issue – imagine you’re a cis-female Olympic athlete, with a real shot at the gold… only to find yourself standing next to someone a third of a metre taller than you, with broad shoulders, deep voice, no breasts, and facial hair. That’s a real problem. and the hard truth is that there are people born with both male (XY) and female (XX) chromosomes, so they’re really neither (or both).

The point is: their issues simply aren’t a concern of the majority, and, worse, the majority may be entirely unsympathetic to their plight, or even hostile to it. And sometimes, their fundamental rights and dignity may be trampled on by the uninterested, or openly hostile, majority. This is not a rare occurrence in history. Racial segregation laws, anti-gay laws, laws that discriminated against women… all of these are laws targeted at minorities (except women, who, while technically not a numerical minority were and are certainly a minority in terms of social power) who were – and in some cases still are – being unfairly and unjustly treated by a disinterested or antagonistic majority.

Of course, we have laws against that kind of discrimination. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (and the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne, incidentally) is supposed to prevent exactly that kind of tyranny against a minority by the majority. (Arguably, all laws exist to protect minorities – particularly minorities of one, ie, individuals. Because if a majority is under attack, they’re really in no danger.) Thing is, it’s not easy to get a Charter challenge, or any human rights case, under way. It requires extensive legal expertise, and it’s fucking expensive. It can also take years, while the victims of a bad law continue to suffer under its weight. Not to mention that it’s not hard for hostile judges to simply throw out legitimate cases rather than allowing them to move up the judicial chain. (My personal favourite example of this is an American example. Michael Newdow tried to challenge the constitutionality of the words “under God” in the pledge, saying that when his daughter was made to recite it in school, she was being forced to acknowledge a God in defiance of separation of church and state. His case was thrown out… because he didn’t technically have legal custody of his daughter.)

The hard truth is that when a minority is being unjustly treated, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get justice done when faced with a majority’s chronic don’t-give-a-shit-itis. You can embark on a campaign to make the majority aware of the issues, and sympathetic to them, but that can sometimes take generations to take effect. It is unjust and calloused to simply tell the people living under the weight of the injustice to just shut their holes and put up with it until the lethargic majority starts to take an interest in them.

Hence, the protest.

The point of a protest is to get in the faces of the disinterested majority, and force them to do something about the minority’s complaints. The idea of a protest is that the small group makes itself a big issue by getting in the faces of the majority. They do this by disrupting the normal day-to-day activities of the majority. This, of course, makes the majority pressure the democratically-controlled leadership to do something about the minority, if only to make the disruptions end.

Recall, though, that I’ve been talking about protests against unjust, and often illegal, treatment of the minority. Thus, when the government is pressured by the majority to act, they have a choice: treat the minority group even more unjustly – possibly with even more illegal laws and actions against them – or… give them the justice they are asking for. Of course, sometimes the government does make the bad choice, and you end up with shit like police beating or spraying protesters – or Bill 78 – but when that starts to happen, the majority generally stirs, and realizes… hang on, something’s wrong here. They don’t always stir – they may just sit back and not care at the protesters being beaten, arrested, and further stripped of their equal rights, and justice; protesting is not a sure-fire way to get what you want, and there are considerable risks. But in a progressive and free society, generally government can’t get away with that kind of shit (for too long), so eventually… they will have to do the right thing.

What about if the protest’s demands are ridiculous? What if the protest is not about injustice? What if it’s just a minority trying to grab more than their fair share from society? Well, first, remember that protesting is dangerous; if the majority doesn’t protest any draconian actions taken by the government, the protesters are fucked. But protesting is also costly to the protesters. Often you have to give up most or all of your livelihood to maintain a protest. And, after time, if there’s no sign of success, weariness eventually sets in. The key this is that if the protesters do have a legitimate issue, then when the majority pressures the government to act, the pressure will probably be to deal with the issue properly. But if the protesters do not have a legitimate issue, it is unlikely that the majority will pressure the government to give in – more likely they’re pressure the government to crack down. So if a group doesn’t have a legitimate issue, they stand to lose big. Protesting is a very high-risk venture.

Of course, even if the protest’s demands are valid, if they can’t muster up enough attention and disruption, and sustain it for long enough, they will fail, too.

That’s what protests are for, and that’s what they do. In a democracy, when a minority is being unjustly or illegally treated, protesting allows them a chance at justice, by using social disruption to provoke an otherwise disinterested majority into taking up their cause… effectively turning themselves into a majority. If the majority is not merely disinterested, but hostile, protesting will still work, though it becomes much more dangerous, because when the government is pressured to act, they must either choose to do the right thing (give the minority justice) or do the wrong thing (crack down on the protests), and if they choose to do the wrong thing, then even though the majority is not sympathetic to the minority’s cause, they will not be pleased to see the government going Sharpeville on their fellow citizens, and will force the government to do the right thing (by stopping them from doing the wrong thing). They are a cry for justice by an oppressed minority, designed so that the disinterested majority will not be able to ignore them.

The other side?

Green square worn by those opposed to the Québec student protest

But even if you accept that protests are a necessary instrument for social justice – even in a perfectly functioning democracy – there’s still the other side of the story.

The whole point of protests is to aggravate and inconvenience a majority of people – particularly people with power. In a peaceful, non-violent protest, that aggravation and inconvenience – while frustrating – will never be illegal. Still, people have a right to live their lives without aggravation and inconvenience, right?

Not necessarily. All rights in a society are granted based on reason. (I’m not even going to acknowledge the lame notions of divinely granted rights, or rights simply granted by fiat without justification.) Your rights are balanced with everyone else’s rights. For example, you have a right not to be detained against your will unnecessarily… but that right is not absolute; it is balanced against the rights of everyone else in society, so that if a reasonable case can be made that you’re a danger to society (specifically, a danger to others’ rights), your right to freedom gets thrown out the window, and you’re in the slammer.

A relevant analogy is that your right to freely practice your religion does not give you the right to never hear or see criticisms of your religious beliefs. You do not have a right to not be annoyed or insulted (I hesitate to use the word “offended”, for this kind of case). You have the right to go to church, but you don’t have the “right” to not see a sign mocking your religious icons on the drive there.

Now, clearly, if I were just being a shit, and preventing you from going to work for the hell of it… you would have a right to not have to deal with that. I would be trampling on your freedom to live your life for no good reason. In that case, I could justifiably be arrested (I’m sure there’s a charge for that, somewhere).

But if I were preventing you from going to work when your job is to run a sweatshop… the story changes. Now I have a legitimate reason for trampling on your freedom to live your life – assuming that I have some stake in what you’re doing, for example, that I’m an employee. Because now, my rights and freedoms are being trampled by what you are doing (or not doing, if my beef is that you won’t implement needed safety procedures, for example). So it’s only fair that, because your actions or inactions are denying me justice, that I have the right to disrupt them.

Now consider protests. The point of a protest is that a minority group is facing injustice, and has no other recourse to expediently fix the situation. And the reason they’re facing injustice and can’t get it easily fixed is because the majority – who have the power to fix the injustice – are doing nothing about it. Their inaction is denying the protesters justice, so it is only fair that the protesters have a right to disrupt their attempts at avoidance of the issue.

In other words, the average Québécois does have a right to go about their lives without the kinds of disruption protests cause… but that right is superseded by the rights of the protesters. As an issue of fairness, the balance is obvious: if the protesters are given precedence, the average Québécois is being inconvenienced… but if the average Québécois is given precedence, the protesters are facing injustice. Clearly the protesters’ rights trump the rights of the average Québécois.

You get the same conclusion if you consider the bigger picture. The whole reason protest is necessary in a democratic society is because democracy does not work for minority groups; it leaves them open to injustice without any practical recourse to protect themselves against it or fight it. Take away protest, and all of a sudden, even though you may still have a democracy, you can no longer have a free and equal society. Given the critical importance of protest as an instrument of social justice, and given the fact that the whole reason protest works is that it is aggravating and disruptive, it makes no sense to prevent the aggravation and disruption – to do so would simply eliminate a vital tool of a stable, free society.

Summary

Society requires balancing rights, and each specific case of balancing has to be considered carefully. Sometimes the rights of an individual trump the rights of society, such as the rights of an individual against illegal search versus the rights of the rest of society to security. Sometimes the rights of society trump the rights of an individual, such as the rights of the rest of society to be free from threat of harm versus the rights of an individual to have a machine gun.

In this case the question is whether the rights of people to disrupt and aggravate society with protests trumps the rights of the rest of society to be free from unnecessary disruption and aggravation, or vice versa. My answer is yes, for the following reasons:

• When comparing what will be lost if either sides’ rights are overturned, the rest of society generally loses very little (because they suffer mostly frustration and aggravation), while the protesters will potentially lose the very important right to be free from injustice. (In the event that the rest of society starts losing more than merely being annoyed – for example, if they start losing money – they can always sue the government for dragging their feet in bringing justice to the minority group protesting… or, if they agree that the group’s protest is unwarranted, they can try to sue the protest’s organizers for damages. By contrast, the protesters would have no practical recourse for what they would lose if they can’t protest (which is why they’re protesting in the first place).)
• Given the importance of protest as a tool of social justice, and the high risk associated with protesting (not even considering the potential for abuse and mistreatment by police that seems to be par for the course), the imbalance in power between the protesters and the rest of society requires, for fairness’ sake, that the protesters be given more leeway.
• Also given the importance of protest as a tool for social justice, and the fact that the disruption and aggravation of the general population is vitally important to its function, it would be stupid to prevent the disruption and aggravation. Actually, it would be more than stupid; it would be essentially putting the first nail in the coffin of a free and fair society.

So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts about what – if anything – in these arguments is correct, and what is wrong… why it is wrong.

Let’s take the case of a hypothetical victim of sexual harassment. Now, there are some assholes that would be quick to say that the victim had it coming… maybe because of the way ze dressed, or maybe just because ze were friendly and smiled. But anyone whose colon doesn’t run through their brain can see that’s nonsense. No matter what the behaviour of the victim before the offence, offence is offence; it’s just plain wrong. The perpetrator doesn’t get a free pass just because the victim dressed or acted slutty, or “open” – from the perpetrator’s perspective – to being violated.

But all of what I’ve just mentioned refers to the period before and during the offence. There is no behaviour the victim can undertake before or during the offence – aside from explicit, non-withdrawn consent – that will make it morally sound to blame them for what happened. None. Not even if a scantily clad, girl with a shirt that says “fuck me, I’m horny” were to walk into a crazy party full of inebriated, brain-dead jocks at the Kappa/Sigma/Rape-a fraternity – all of whom are on bail for a previous gang rape under identical circumstances that the girl knows all about – and willingly drinks herself into a stupor… not even then would she be in any way responsible, or deserve any portion of the blame, were she to be sexually assaulted. Because as long as those guys were morally-adult persons, they should know that without explicit, sober consent, any sex would be rape. And if they aren’t capable of figuring that out, they shouldn’t be in a fraternity, they should be in a zoo, or some other institution where they can be properly controlled and monitored like any other human who is criminally incapable of knowing right from wrong.

But let’s talk about after the offence. At this point, the offence has happened – for which the victim carries no responsibility, of course – but does the victim now have any responsibilities?

In fact, ze does.

If you’re the victim of an offence, you have a responsibility to report it to the proper authorities, and see that justice is done. If you don’t, then you still have no responsibility for the offence you suffered… but you do have moral responsibility for any future offences suffered that might have been prevented had you spoken up. Let me make this crystal clear with an example. Say Amy was raped by Joe. No matter what the circumstances surrounding the rape, Amy bears no responsibility whatsoever for it; Amy is the victim, and she is completely blameless. But let’s say, after the rape, Amy decides – for whatever reason – not to report it. Some time later, Joe rapes Betty. Now, of course, Betty is completely without any responsibility for her rape (and obviously for Amy’s as well)… but what about Amy? If Amy had reported Joe, and seen to it that justice was done, Joe wouldn’t have been able to rape Betty. Did Amy have a responsibility to report Joe? Yes, she did. We all have a social responsibility to report crimes, and see that justice is done. It’s part of our responsibilities as citizens, and as members of society. Amy failed in her duty as a member of society when she did not report Joe, and so she bears partial moral responsibility for Betty’s rape. Amy still bears no responsibility for her own rape, but, Randian bullshit aside, society requires that people care more about themselves when considering whether to take or not take actions.

And yes, certainly there are often penalties for doing the right thing. Women reporting rape or sexual harassment, in particular, can have a hell of a time of it. I’m not unsympathetic to that. But that doesn’t excuse failing in your duty to do the right thing. And the hard fact is that every person that refuses to do the right thing because of some penalty or another makes it that much harder on everyone else in the future who wants to do the right thing. Everyone has the responsibility to do the right thing, even when it’s hard. That’s what morality is. It’s not always easy to be moral. But it’s always right.

Now, you may disagree with my position. You may disagree that it’s too harsh to expect people who have suffered an offence to report it when the costs of reporting at so high. You may think it’s unfair to put the blame on past victims for the suffering of future victims, even though the past victims could have prevented any future offences. Fair enough, maybe I’m wrong. This is something we can have a discussion about. But I don’t think any sane person can argue that – returning to the example – Amy would be a complete fucking dick to go public and decry the fact that there’s so much rape in the world… claiming solidarity with Betty… and that it’s so terrible that no one puts a stop to it. Again, to be crystal clear: Amy has suffered an offence, and done nothing, which allowed the offender to offend again – with Betty. Amy has no right, whatsoever, to pretend that there’s something wrong with the rest of the world that the same kinds of offence keeps happening, and she certainly has no right to cast judgement on the rest of the world for the fact that Joe gets away with repeat offending.

In case you were wondering why I’m discussing all this now, it’s because of the latest freethought shitstorm. At the recent Women in Secularism conference, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag made an offhand comment about the fact that there was a back-channel information track about some popular freethought speakers who were complete assholes to women at conferences. Her comment started a lot of people talking, and she eventually made a post about it. Now, let me be clear about this: I have nothing but respect for Jen McCreight, and for how she’s handled the situation up to this point. By her own admission, she has never personally experienced any of the bad behaviour, so it’s only logical that she’s unwilling to pursue any further action. Yet, despite that, she has come up with some very good ideas for how to handle the problem, and already there have been improvements. She’s my hero right now! She heard of evil shit going down, so she stepped up and said something about it – even though it wasn’t being done to her personally – and is following it through. And, yes, she’s suffering for it. She’s already being hounded by that whackjob from ERV, which is exactly the kind of nasty backlash she expected. Yet she continues to stand up and do what’s right, and I, along with every other decent person in the freethought movement, have her back.

But then there are those who could have spoken out ages ago… but didn’t… and now want to ride on McCreight’s coattails and cast judgement on the world they couldn’t be bothered to try to fix.

Case in point: Stephanie Zvan of Almost Diamonds, who posted, in a post titled Zero Intolerance:

Q: Do famous atheist speakers really act like assholes to women?

A: Yes.

Q: Really?!

A: I said, “Yes.” I’ve experienced some of it, in front of witnesses. I’ve talked to other women who’ve experienced it personally. I’ve talked to conference organizers who have strategies for minimizing the damage when they have to invite one of these men to one of their conferences.

Also, did you just express “skepticism” over this? It’s a completely uncontroversial statement. Unaccetable gendered behavior exists. Our movement is not immune. Men don’t become immune to bad behavior just because people like how they speak or write or organize. Yes, it happens.

What the fuck?!? You’ve experienced it? In front of witnesses? And we’re first hearing about this now? Because of Jen McCreight!?!

You know what? Men don’t become immune to bad behaviour because they’re good speakers, but the do become immune to the consequences of their bad behaviour when people like you don’t fucking speak up about the bad behaviour!

And I’m not alone in seeing this, and I’m not alone in being outraged that there’s a special privileged girl’s club who whispers in the back channels about the assholery that goes on, then whines in the public sphere that there’s so much assholery that goes unpunished. Behold as Zvan gets confronted by a justifiably upset woman:

It’s all well and good to advise “networking behind the scenes,” but I don’t have a fucking network, and that’s part of the reason I feel like going to conferences might be good for me. But if I have to network behind the scenes to be safe at conferences, then I have to already have what I’m looking for to be safe.

Maybe I’m being selfish about this. Maybe I’m too angry. But I’ve been abused enough in my life. I am not about to set myself up to be abused again, and it makes my eyes tear up and my throat constrict to think that going to these conferences means going to interact with people who everyone else may know is abusive but won’t warn me because I don’t have connections.

And Zvan’s response to this plaintive rebuke? To get on her soapbox and lecture about what should be done, while saying This is a genie that isn’t going back into the bottle. It’s a problem that’s gone public in a big way, and it’s going to stay there. Yeah, you know why it’s gone public? Because Jen McCreight made it public. Not you, Zvan. Jen McCreight. McCreight made it public, and what were you doing, Zvan? You were one of the people keeping the fucking genie in the bottle!

It completely boggles my mind that someone like Zvan can have the gall to lecture the world on what the right thing to do about a certain kind of crime is, after they’ve been the ones covering it up for so long. It boggles my mind that people like her can stand up and talk about how much privilege everyone else has, but not see their own, and how they’ve abused to the detriment of women who aren’t as socially-connected as they are, and want to go to freethought conventions.

No, it doesn’t just boggle my mind, it makes me fucking angry. I’m glad to see that the cover over this conspiracy of silence has been lifted, and for that I want to see Jen McCreight get full props and respect. I want everyone to jump to her defence when the inevitable misogynist assholes (like Abbie Smith) start taking potshots at her. But for all those back-channel bastards who have been keep this secret from everyone but their privileged friends, leaving all the other women who go to freethought events to be thrown to the wolves, then having the fucking gall to cluck their tongues and intone dramatically about how bad the atmosphere at these events can get: Fuck. You. All. You are part of the problem. You know why Catholic priests and Jerry Sandusky and their kind got away with raping kids for so many years, because of the complicity of people like you, who knew about the shit going on, but kept it secret within the privileged circle.

Here’s what I’d like to see. I don’t want to see lists of names published with only hearsay about past incidents. But from now on, anyone who witnesses this bad behaviour… report it. Report it to the event organizers, and if they won’t do something about it, report it to someone who has enough integrity and public standing to shame both the jerk and the event organizers. Those who have been harassed in the past, if you see one of the jerk’s names on the speakers’ list for a future event, contact the event organizers with your story. Demand that the jerk either be taken off the speakers’ list, or, if that’s not possible, that ze be escorted at all times by a chaperone – basically treated like a fucking sex offender. And anyone who gets pulled aside and given some secret back-channel information about evil shit going on that no one else but the select few are privileged to, fucking slap the person telling you about it, tell them that they are part of the reason the problem continues to exist, then go to the event organizers and tell them that this person has important information about event attendee safety that they’re offering only to a privileged few. And again, if the event organizers don’t do something about it, go public, via someone who has the courage and integrity – and platform – to do something about it. Don’t forget to name the person who was keeping this important information secret. And finally, once all that has been taken care of, I’d like to see all those fucking privileged few who were in on the back channel information to step forward and apologize to the freethought community for their part in allowing the shit to continue so long.

No more keeping harassment and misogyny as a dirty little secret in this community. If you don’t have the courage to step forward and speak out about it when it happens, then you don’t get to fucking play the heroic martyr suffering because of it. Find someone who does have the courage and platform to do the right thing, and make a change, rather than bemoaning the status quo.

(And if I sound a little angry right now, it’s because I’m harbouring an innocent victim of a fucking monster right now, whose situation is analogous to what’s going on in the freethought community, actually. There was also a secret, privileged back-channel of important information she was not privy to, and because of it she suffered for years, until someone finally let her into the club a few days ago. Just as in the case mentioned above, had any of the people possessing this privileged information gone to the cops years ago, this person wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in now, with no home, no money, no job, no nothing. Thank you fucking very much, sisterhood of silence.)

I’ve been busy helping my dad bring his music career into the 21^st century, so I’m going to offer this old post I wrote. It was originally a Diaspora* post made after yet another complaint about atheists who speak out. Recent events have brought an old issue back up, and I posted an old Diaspora* post in anticipation of writing about them. That older post references and links to the previous version of this post, but unfortunately, you cannot view it unless you’re on the Diaspora* network. So, for completeness, I am reposting it here.

When people started fighting the evils of racism, there were inevitably those who claimed they were above both sides of the debate. They condemned those who were racist. But then they also condemned those who spoke out against the racists, calling them “uppity”, and accusing them of merely wanting to reverse the racism rather than ending it.

When people started fighting the evils of oppression against women, there were inevitably those who claimed they were above both sides of the debate. They condemned those who denied women basic rights. But then they also condemned those who spoke out against the misogynists, calling them “radical”, and accusing them of hating men just as much as the misogynists hated the women.

When people started fighting the evils of homophobia, there were inevitably those who claimed they were above both sides of the debate. They condemned those who hated gay people. But then they also condemned those who spoke out against the homophobes, calling them “perverse”, and accusing them of flamboyantly flaunting their lifestyle choices just to rub it in the faces of their opponents.

And now, as people fight the evils of religion, there are inevitably those who claim they are above both sides of the debate. They condemn the fundamentalists and religious fanatics. But then they also condemn those who speak out against them, calling them “militant”, and accusing them of being as fanatical about their own beliefs as the other guys are.

When two groups disagree that doesn’t mean that both groups are wrong. When one group has a metaphysical belief, that doesn’t mean that belief is merely an academic belief that has no real impact on the world; people’s beliefs inform their decisions and actions and have a massive effect on the world around them. People’s beliefs do matter, and it is frankly terribly ignorant and condescending to say they don’t.

If you can’t be arsed to understand what the dispute between atheist groups and religion is, that’s fine. No one is forcing you to fight in that battle. But if you can’t be arsed to understand what two groups are in dispute about, isn’t it a bit dickish to cast judgement on both of them? You probably think you do understand them, even though you have never bothered to actually ask both sides what they are about (and if you think atheists are merely about trying to convince theists that there is no god… frankly you have no idea what atheists are, or why they’re speaking out now). Isn’t that a bit dickish?

It seems to me that there are only two options. Either take the time to properly understand what both sides of the debate are about before casting your imperial judgement on them. Or shut the fuck up. Because some fights need to happen – like the civil rights fight, the women’s rights fight, and the fight for gay rights – and if your only contribution is to try and shut the fight down because you’re annoyed by it, without even bothering to truly understand what the fight is about, you’re not helping.

I’ve been busy helping my dad bring his music career into the 21^st century, so I’m going to offer this old post I wrote. It was originally a Diaspora* post made after the FFRF unveiled their It’s time to quit the Catholic Church campaign, which is still ongoing. Some recent events have brought the issue back up, and I’m going to discuss those, so I’m providing this post as background.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), has written an open letter to “moderate”, “nominal”, “liberal” and “cafeteria” Catholics, ‘It’s time to quit the Catholic Church‘, throwing down the gauntlet by challenging them to realize that they are tacitly supporting the misogyny of the Catholic Church.

I agree with the idea, in theory; I have always been quite critical of people who try to sit on the sidelines of these human rights battles. However, I think the letter should have been much broader. Misogyny is only one of the Catholic Church’s laundry list of crimes, which includes homophobia, enabling of paedophilia, abetting perpetrators of war crimes, and much, much more. I would have thought that Catholics, moral as they claim to be, would have stood up and spoken out about all of these problems on their own long before now, but there seems little point in waiting for them to take the initiative anymore.

So we should challenge every single Catholic that claims to be liberal in any fashion, and ask them to justify sitting in the pews every Sunday – or even just ticking the “Catholic” box on a census form – rather that walking out in protest and demanding the Church leadership be held accountable. It’s not a ridiculous thing to expect, after all; if one discovered that their employer/government were acting unethically, isn’t standing firm and demanding correction and accountability the proper thing to do? To put it in stark terms, if you still call yourself a Catholic, even in the face of all the evil the Church leaders have been proven to have done, that means one of three things:

1. You don’t care about the Church’s misogyny, homophobia, protection of paedophile priests or other crimes.
2. You support the Church’s misogyny, homophobia, protection of paedophile priests and other crimes.
3. Someone or something is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to keep supporting the evil the church has done. (And, if so… how?)

Naturally this request will be called “militant” or “aggressive”, since it is a criticism of religion made by an atheist. But atheism has nothing to do with this. What I am asking for is something that any moral person, Catholic or otherwise, should do, in any situation. You are propping up criminal, misogynistic, homophobic thugs who have no qualms about trampling on the rights of other people… so why haven’t you walked away yourself? If there is a reason you continue to wear the badge of Catholicism, what is it? And, is it really worth supporting people who are trying to usurp women’s rights to control their own bodies, who have shielded child rapists from prosecution and allowed them to continue to rape for decades, who treat people as depraved sub-human monsters just because they prefer lovers of their own sex, and more?

The school reached out a hand to William Swinimer, trying to make him understand that if he wanted to share his views, he had to respect the others at the school (more on that in a minute), and… cut to video of father John Swinimer waggling a Bible around as he says he won’t tolerate none o’ that there tolerance, just before he puts William in the car and drives off.

From left to right, father John Swinimer, son William Swinimer - in the controversial T-shirt - and and Varrick Day, pastor at the Pentecostal Jesus the Good Shepherd Church.

Now, everyone I’ve seen who looked at the story in-depth, including myself, noted that the school officials were making it clear that Swinimer wasn’t suspended for the shirt, he was suspended for being a dick. Given that, most everyone concluded that he deserved it. Now more of the story has come out (and sarcastic bravo to the news media for not figuring this shit out earlier – everyone ran the headline “kid suspended for T-shirt” when the school clearly said he wasn’t), and we find out that Swinimer had been proselytizing and telling students that they would go to hell. Apparently, the students didn’t even care about the T-shirt; the dude was a long-time pain in their asses, and they wanted something done about him for a while.

I want to avoid speculating, but it’s hard to given the lack of information. I suspect one of two things happened. Either the principal had been getting complaints about Swinimer for a while, and simply glommed on to the shirt as something technically solid that ze could finally act on, rather than “he said, she said” reports, or nobody had actually properly [i]complained[/i] about Swinimer [i]until[/i] the T-shirt incident, at which the principal then started hearing about the other crap.

Both situations are problematic for the school. In the first case, you would have had a faculty effectively ignoring complaints about Swinimer for bullying. That’s bad. In the second case, you would have had students who were being bullied, but not reporting it… but that’s also something the faculty should assume responsibility for. It’s their job to create a climate where students know what bullying is, and that they should report it, not simmer over it until something big happens.

Whatever the case, the school screwed up, but to their great credit, they and the board have been handling the situation (since it hit the media) like champs. They’ve owned up to screwing up, and taken steps to handle things right. Good on them. Seriously, rock on. Nobody’s perfect, but the best of us admit our mistakes and try to fix them, and right now, that’s you.

Which… brings us to William Swinimer. Now, a lot of people have taken the “poor kid” position, but I’m not there. I agree that he was psychologically abused in the sense Dawkins talks about, and the mess he is now is a result of that. But he’s no kid. He’s 16 fucking years-old, people. He knows what he’s doing. He’s made his choice. There are a couple hundred other people at that school who deserve a good education in a respectful, civilized environment, and they’re going to have a better chance at getting it now that Swinimer is gone. And that’s Swinimer’s choice. (If you want to argue that it’s his dad’s, I call bullshit. His dad wasn’t the one preaching at other students, telling them they’ll go to hell.)

So it goes. There are lots of lessons to be learned. I’d hope that now the school would be smarter about how to handle these kinds of disruptive wannabe-preachers: carefully document all the complaints, get your ducks in a row, don’t do stupid things like using convenient technicalities to make your job easier, and when you’ve got a clear case of bullying… bring the hammer down. And, make sure that the school environment in general knows how to handle that kind of bullying, so you hear about it when it happens. If you do that, the rest will take care of itself; the crazies will crazy-talk their way right out of public sympathy.

As I mentioned before, there seems to be rash of overreaction by freethinkers to imagined bigotry – and now, it seems that spree seems to be a particularly Canadian phenomenon, what with Ashu Solo in Saskatoon threatening human rights complaints over a prayer at an awards dinner and now Swinimer’s school suspending the kid for over a week over a T-shirt. I hope it’s not going to turn into an epidemic.

Before I go any further, let’s get some of the facts of the case clear.

William Swinimer in his “Life is wasted without Jesus” T-shirt

First of all, the shirt in question (just in case you can’t see the image) is a bright yellow T-shirt with the words “LIFE IS WASTED WITHOUT JESUS” on it. The word “WASTED” is rendered in a sort of slimy, dirty-looking typeface, all the other words are a fairly basic sans-serif typeface. “WASTED” is the largest word, around twice as large as the next two largest words “LIFE IS”. The words “WITHOUT JESUS” are rendered very small – less than half the size of “LIFE IS”; you almost can’t read them in the picture to the right unless you zoom in.

And yes, without question, Swinimer was looking for a fight. He wore the T-shirt every day for several weeks, despite repeated requests from the principal to stop. Both students and teachers were complaining (to Swinimer? I don’t know – maybe just to the principal). The principal even offered a compromise: adding the word “my”, to get “my life is wasted without Jesus”. Swinimer didn’t budge. He was given an in-school suspension… and continued to wear the shirt throughout. He was given a full suspension for a week, and continued to the wear the shirt. And, according to the CBC report: He says he will continue to wear the shirt and is prepared to be suspended the rest of the year. And yes, he was goaded on by his pastor, Varrick Day, of the Pentecostal Jesus the Good Shepherd church.

To be clear, and fair, the superintendent of the regional school board has stressed that Swinimer was not suspended for wearing the shirt, but rather for disobeying an order from the principal (to remove the shirt). In other words, most of the coverage of the story is technically wrong. That’s splitting hairs, and avoiding the question of whether it was wrong to insist that Swinimer remove the shirt in the first place. Nevertheless, let’s get this absolutely clear: Swinimer deserved his suspension. The principal said he was being disruptive, and asked him to stop his disruptive behaviour, and he didn’t. Bam. Suspension. The proper thing for him to do when he got complaints was to stop wearing the shirt temporarily while he and the school sorted out his rights between them… and only get dickish if it was determined he did have a right to wear the shirt (which, as I’ll get to in a bit, I think he does), but the school refused to acknowledge his right. As I said, though, Swinimer was not looking for justice, he was looking for a fight, and the school, stupidly, complied.

Even though Swinimer deserved his suspension, that does not absolve the school of any wrongdoing here. Oh, hell no. They didn’t bother to even check into whether Swinimer was right when he said he had the right to wear the shirt… until after the media shitstorm began. (Actually, I’m surprised they took their heads out of Conrad Black’s ass long enough to even cover this.) South Shore Regional School Board superintendent Nancy Pynch-Worthylake and everyone else involved, pay attention: class is in session. Welcome to Not Being a Dumbass 101. When a student is doing something that you don’t like, but they insist that they have a right granted by the Charter to do that thing… you should seriously fucking look into whether that is true before starting the suspension barrage. (Pynch-Worthylake actually explicitly told The Toronto Star that whether the shirt crosses the line into offence was unclear.) Because, seriously you nimrods, the Charter trumps the piddly little bit of power you have been granted – know your place, people. If and only if you have determined that the student’s claim is invalid, and you’ve got your ducks in a row… then you can bring the hammer down. Seriously, when the fuck did the policy become “punish first, figure out whether the student was right later (after pressure from the media!)”?

So to summarize:

• Swinimer was being a dick.
• Swinimer was looking for a fight.
• Swinimer was being used by his church.
• Swinimer was suspended for ignoring orders from the principal, not for the shirt.

But of course, there’s still the elephant in the room: Swinimer was being a dick… but did he have a right to be a dick in that particular way?

Should the shirt be allowed?

One of the things mentioned in the case is that Swinimer said the principal would have accepted a shirt with the slogan, “My life is wasted without Jesus” (emphasis mine). I just want to dismiss this as idiotic before even beginning the real discussion: if the message is intolerant, personalizing it does not make it less intolerant. “It’s better to be not black” doesn’t get “fixed” by turning it into “it’s better for me to be not black” or “i’m better for not being black”.

Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta suggests that “Life is great with Jesus” would have been an better alternative. His explanation is that “life is great with Jesus” has positive tones. True, and to be fair to Mehta, he doesn’t come right out and say that “life is wasted without Jesus” has “negative tones”, or that it’s unacceptable. But he does waffle around the question of whether it is acceptable.

Another thing I’ve heard – and I can’t source this, because I either heard this in the discussions of the case on CBC, or possibly read it in one of the viewer Twitter opinions they like to mention – is that “life is wasted without Jesus” is makes readers feel “judged” because they’re reading it as “your life is wasted without Jesus”. I can’t think of a gentler way to say this while retaining my contempt, but if you’re going to rewrite things you read to say things they don’t say, and then get offended by the interpretations in your head… dude… you’re a fucking idiot. Seriously.

What the shirt actually says is essentially: “it is my opinion that life is wasted without Jesus”. Hell, any time you see someone displaying a statement on a placard or T-shirt or whatever, it implicitly begins with “it is my opinion that”: “(it is my opinion that) abortion is murder”, “(it is my opinion that) Obama is a Nazi Muslim”, “(it is my opinion that) God hates fags”, and so on. In other words, Swinimer’s shirt is not a “judgement”, it’s an opinion, and Swinimer should have the right to express it unless it is threatening or disparaging – ie, unless it’s hate speech.

Now, it’s clearly not threatening, but is it disparaging? Well, no, not really. Certainly it’s not disparaging toward any particular person or group. Some people have tried to interpret “life is wasted without Jesus” as disparaging all non-Christians, but that’s a stretch. Mehta makes an interesting point when he says: I would oppose an atheist student wearing a shirt that says, “Life is wasted with Jesus.” Unfortunately, it’s not the point he thinks he’s making. Because “life is wasted with Jesus” would not be an atheist shirt… it is an anti-Christian shirt (it could just as easily have been made by a Sikh). In contrast, Swinimer’s shirt is not anti anything. What, exactly would the X be in the statement: “the message “life is wasted without Jesus” is anti-X“? You could fill in pretty much anything you wanted, but the point is that you would then be creating the disparagement against that target… it is not implicit in the message, and you can’t blame the message, or the source, for intolerance you’re putting there.

Another important point is that the message says nothing whatsoever about other people, or their beliefs. Messages like “life is wasted if you’re not white” or “life is wasted if you’re not Christian” are disparaging other characteristics and beliefs, albeit indirectly. “Life is wasted without Jesus” is not; it is disagreeing with other beliefs, but not disparaging them. Jesus is certainly an aspect of Christianity, and a fundamentally important one, but Jesus ≠ Christianity. Saying “life is wasted without Jesus” is not the same thing as saying “life is wasted if you’re not Christian”. I don’t doubt that Christianity and Jesus are inextricably intertwined in the minds of most Christians, or that Swinimer intended for the message of his shirt to be that everyone else’s beliefs suck, and they should convert. But those things aren’t in the message, and it is wrong to put them there then judge the message by them. (Consider: I would imagine that most atheists who wear “you can be good without God” shirts intend for the message to mean that God is useless, and everyone should abandon him and “convert” to atheism… but that’s not what the message actually says, and guessing the intentions of the atheists who wear that shirt doesn’t make it so. Besides, the atheists wearing those shirts may have benign intentions… and so might Swinimer.) “Life is wasted if you’re not Christian” and “life is wasted if you’re not Sikh” are disparaging statements; “life is wasted without Jesus” and “life is wasted without a dastar” are not.

Note, too, that the shirt doesn’t say, “life is wasted unless you have accepted Jesus as your saviour”. It just says “life is wasted without Jesus”. Really, that message is essentially “the existence of Jesus in the world has made life worth living”, which is obviously non-disparaging and non-threatening. It’s essentially the same as “the existence of Justin Bieber in the world has made life worth living”, or “life is wasted without Justin Bieber”. It is simply not a condemnation or disparagement of other people or beliefs.

So, so far I’ve clarified that “life is wasted without Jesus” is not judgemental, it is not threatening, and it is not disparaging… to anyone, unless they reinterpret the message to be personally about them, and if they do then the judgement, threat or disparagement is coming from them, not the message. But what about Mehta’s concern… about the message not being positive?

To Mehta I would say: messages need not be positive to be perfectly acceptable. “Meat is murder” is negative, but do you think it’s necessary to encourage a change to “vegetables are nice!”? Indeed, some perfectly legitimate messages have to be negative. How would a student express an opinion that Harper is a terrible prime minister positively? “Could be worse; coulda been Hitler!”? If people have to be protected from negativity, we’ve become a pretty sad and pathetic species. I agree that people should be protected against being threatened or disparaged… but protected against negativity? Come on, Mehta. You call yourself a teacher?

In summary, “life is wasted without Jesus” is clearly a non-threatening and non-disparaging message; as written, it’s little more than a statement of opinion that Jesus has made the world a better place. In order to find any kind of insult or threat in it, one must put it there; it’s not part of the message. Granted, Swinimer may think of the message as equivalent to “your lives are pointless without Christianity”… but that’s irrelevant; it’s not what the message actually says. It may be a little imperious and overbearing, but so would be “North High is the best!” – should that shirt be disallowed? Of course not; being dickish is not enough to make a message unacceptable. It may not be a positive or uplifting message, but there is no requirement that a message must be positive or uplifting to be tolerable. The school was wrong to ask him to remove it. Those who complained are the same calibre of people who complain at “atheists exist” and “you can be good without God” messages; they’re creating the insult, not discovering it.

I don’t agree with the shirt, obviously, but I think the only thing offensive about it is its aesthetics. It is opinionated and provocative, but there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you look at how the shirt is laid out, it’s particularly inoffensive, because you have to get right up close to Swinimer to even read the “without Jesus” part… and if that kid’s been wearing the same shirt for weeks, who the hell would want to do that? (Actually, that might suggest a second thing about the shirt that’s offensive, but I’m far to classy a blogger to speculate on Swinimer’s personal hygiene.)

Why has the abortion debate come up again in Canada? That’s an interesting question; it could be a sign of a bolder Christian Right, or it could be a smarmy political ploy. Crommunist has a nice rundown of the possibilities. But I’m not particularly interested in the political aspects. Instead, I’m going to use this – my first Saturday Cerebration – to look at the debate philosophically. I’m going to look at the arguments of the anti-abortion crowd, and pick them apart to see whether they have any real standing, with a focus on the rational and moral characteristics of the argument, rather than on the scientific and empirical. It is my opinion that the scientific and empirical arguments are relentlessly damning to the anti-abortion arguments already, and already well understood. However, the philosophical and moral arguments for or against abortion are not quite as well understood.

Is abortion murder?

Before that can be answered, we have to ask, “what is murder?” I submit that murder is:

1. The killing of a person;
2. By another person;
3. That is intentional (the intention was to kill, it wasn’t a side-effect of another intention);
4. And illegal (in violation of the prevailing human laws).

Every one of these features must be present for an action to be a murder. Losing control of a car and running down a pedestrian satisfies 1, 2 and 4… but not 3, so it is not murder. A soldier gunning down a terrorist satisfies 1, 2 and 3 (arguably)… but not 4, so it is not murder.

The first point would require the fœtus to be a person when it is aborted, which is debatable, and will be discussed later. The second point is a given. The fourth point is really the clincher – if abortion is legal… then by definition it isn’t murder. We’re done here.

Is abortion an intentional killing?

Or are we done? I think most people, if I asked them whether an abortion was intentionally killing the fœtus would answer yes without hesitation. I would like to challenge that.

Aside from the paranoid of fantasy of a few crazy right-wingers, I don’t think any reasonable person can seriously entertain the idea that women get abortions on a whim. A lot of men would, at this point, take it upon themselves to speak for women’s reasons for having abortions, but I don’t have the balls to do that (nyuk). I’m not going to speculate on why women get abortions – I’ll let women speak for themselves. The Guttmacher Institute is a respected US non-profit organization dedicated to advancing reproductive health. They publish two peer-reviewed journals, one of which is Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. In the September 2005 issue, an article by Lawrence B. Finer et al. titled Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives looked over the results of several surveys conducted between 1987 and 2004 on thousands of women who were receiving abortions. The results are obviously US-specific, but I think it’s fair to generalize. (I chose this particular study because it was from a peer-reviewed journal, published by a respected organization dedicated to reproductive rights, and because it is freely available.)

According to the results: Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated that they could not afford to have a child now, and large proportions mentioned responsibilities to children, partner issues and unreadiness to parent.¹ In fact, the paper goes so far as to note:

In contrast to the perception (voiced by politicians and laypeople across the ideological spectrum) that women who choose abortion for reasons other than rape, incest and life endangerment do so for “convenience,” our data suggest that after carefully assessing their individual situations, women base their decisions largely on their ability to maintain economic stability and to care for the children they already have.

Especially with that empirical data in hand, I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that women don’t get abortions as the final act in some long-winded and circuitous plan to kill babies. I think we can rule out the notion that women who get abortions intend to kill the fœtus. Clearly their intentions lie in other directions – such as the intention not to go into poverty or to become so overtaxed by raising another child that they can no longer care for the family they have – and killing the fœtus is the only option they have. In fact, I’d bet that if there were a way they could transfer the fœtus to another mother, or “postpone” it somehow until they’re ready to be a month, that they’d probably make the choice to do so, though that’s just speculation on my part.

The relevant point is that it’s pretty clear that women don’t get abortions to intentionally kill babies, or fœtuses. Even if abortions were illegal, they wouldn’t be murder, because they’re not done with the intention to kill, they are done with other intentions in mind, and killing is an unavoidable consequence. Thus, even if abortion were illegal, and even if the fœtus killed was actually a person (which is debatable), it would still not be murder, it would be manslaughter.

The bottom line: abortion is not murder.

Is abortion killing?

Without a doubt, abortion is killing. But there should be nothing shocking or disturbing about that, if the fœtus is just a mass of cells. We kill cells all the time – every time we have a beer, for example, or even scratch vigorously enough. Where this might matter would be if the fœtus is a person, or at least a human, and I’ll get to those issues shortly.

The bottom line: abortion is killing, but that’s no big deal if all we’re killing are cells.

Is a fœtus a person?

If you have any familiarity with the abortion debate, you would know that one of the central issues revolves around when a fœtus becomes a person. Anti-abortion advocates claim that a fœtus is a person at the moment of conception. I’ll discuss why it matters if and when the fœtus is a person in a bit, but before that, I’ll deal with the question itself.

There is a lot of controversy in philosophy over what, precisely, is the definition of person. But there are some aspects that are universal. A person must be – at least:

• Self-aware.
• Sentient.
• Possibly sapient.

While a fœtus may be capable of these things eventually – after enough development – it’s quite clearly not for the vast majority of its gestation period. In fact, it’s arguable whether the baby is yet a person even after birth! Personhood might develop until sometime after birth, after some more cognitive development as the baby grows.

What’s important for this discussion, though, is that the fœtus cannot be a person at conception, or for several months after. We may not be able to precisely define the moment personhood is achieved, but there’s no way to rationally argue that it is achieved early enough in gestation to be an issue for most abortions. According to Statistics Canada, 85-90% of abortions each year occur before 12 weeks of gestation. (It’s also interesting to ask, when late-term abortions do happen, why they happen. Unfortunately, I cannot find good Canadian sources for that, but this document contains data from another Guttmacher Institute survey, asking about reasons for late-term (after 16 weeks) abortions. 71% of women said they were simply unaware it was going to be a late term abortion. 48% said they had trouble making arrangements (and 60% of those blamed money problems). And most of the rest has to do with social or family pressures against having an abortion. That would seem to suggest that if anti-abortion activists were really concerned about the possibility of aborting a person, rather than trying to argue absurdities such as that the fœtus is a person at the moment of conception, their efforts would be more wisely spent improving and increasing access to women’s health care, and reducing the social stigma associated with abortions.)

The bottom line: while we cannot determine the precise moment when a fœtus becomes a person, the requirements are high enough that it has to occur very, very late in the pregnancy, which makes it a non-issue for most abortions. Therefore, for the case of most abortions, no, the fœtus is not an person.

Is the fœtus a human?

This is a different dimension to the question of whether the fœtus is a person. If a fœtus is not a person, it doesn’t have any rights… but if a fœtus is a human, then it is an animal, and it deserves at least the same basic protections we provide for other animals. In fact, it arguably deserves more, because it is very special kind of animal… an animal that could be a person – if not already, then it will be with proper upbringing.

Before I go any further, let me make a clarification that I am surprised I have to make. Apparently, a lot of people are unable to differentiate between “person” and “human”; many people think the two terms are synonymous. That’s ridiculous. “Human” is a biological term, referring to a certain species of hairless African ape. “Person” is a philosophical term, referring to an entity that is self-aware and capable of rational thought. The two terms have about as much in common as apples and polygons do.

A human – disregarding personhood for the moment – is just an animal, albeit a special kind of animal because it has, or potentially could have, personhood. But ultimately, disregarding personhood, a human is just an animal. As such, a human deserves the same protections we offer for any other kind of animal – at least. But is a fœtus a human?

No, not quite. A human is not just a clump of biomatter with homo sapiens sapiens DNA… a human is a clump of biomatter with homo sapiens sapiens DNA that is independently viable. A parasitic twin or a fœtus in fœtu is not a human. A fœtus is not a human until it is independently viable. Normally, that means that at around six months’ gestation, there’s around a 50-50 chance of the fœtus being human. Before that, it’s just a clump of biomatter in the mother that is potentially a human. (And we’ll get to the “potentially” stuff later.) So, at the time that most abortions occur, the fœtus is not a person, and it is not a human – though it may have the potential to be both.

The bottom line: “humanhood” does not begin until the fœtus is independently viable, which occurs quite late in pregnancy. Therefore, for the vast majority of abortions, no, the fœtus is not a human.

Is abortion killing a potential person?

Having established that abortion is killing – even if it’s only killing cells – and that the fœtus, while not a person, may potentially be a person, the next major question is whether abortion is killing a potential person.

The statement “an abortion kills a potential person” is malformed, though it is difficult to understand why. The easiest way to illustrate what’s going is to make use of timeline illustrations.

In the illustrations that follow, I’ll be using the following variables:

• t: The time variable.
• C: The moment of conception.
• P: The “moment” that personhood begins. (Note that personhood may actually not be a binary state, but may develop over a period of time. Regardless, as I’ve mentioned above, most abortions take place long before any development into personhood could reasonably be argued to have even begun. Therefore, for simplicity, we can treat the span of personhood development as a single point, for this argument.)
• A: The moment of abortion.
• X: The decision point, where the decision to abort or not abort is made.
• 1, 2, …: Markers for points of interest.

Let’s start by looking at the timeline for a normal, healthy pregnancy that is allowed to result in a live birth of a healthy baby that eventually grows into a normal human adult:

No problems here, I hope. If you imagine a person at 1 or 2 who can see the future, they will see (even before conception) that there will eventually be a person – or in other words, they can see point P in the future. Bear in mind, though, that we’ve made a lot of assumptions to get to even this point. Not all pregnancies turn out well – in fact, there are some estimates that fewer that 10% of fertilized eggs actually make it to a live birth, with the vast majority being spontaneously aborted before the woman even knows she is pregnant. But I am willing to make the most generous concessions, and assume that at either 1 or 2, the probability of P is 100%.

Now let’s suppose the woman considers an abortion. Let’s assume she begins considering abortion at the moment of conception (just to avoid another point on the timeline), but the decision is not made until point X. At that point, the fœtus is either aborted, or is not, splitting the timeline into two possibilities.

There are three points of philosophical interest:

• A person at 1 who looked into the future of the fœtus would not see a “potential person”. What they would see is a possibility of a potential person – possible person – the probability of which is decided by the probability of the woman choosing not to abort. For example, if the possibility of the woman choosing to abort is 50-50, then a future-viewer at 1 will see a fœtus with a 50% possibility becoming a person. The situation is even worse if the woman is 99% likely to abort. The fœtus has only a 1% possibility of being a person.
• If the woman opts not to abort, then a person at 2 who looks into the future would see a potential person. (And, with my generous assumptions, a 100% likely person, though in reality, not quite that certain.)
• But if the woman opts to abort, then a person at 3 – which is before the actual abortion – would not see a potential person. There is no P in the future from 3.

Anti-abortion crusaders like to use terminology like “potential person” because it makes it sound like a fœtus is somehow destined to become a human, unless something “unnatural” occurs. This is profoundly misleading, on many levels. On the purely biological level, a fertilized egg actually has only a very small likelihood of actually ultimately becoming a person. And that likelihood will only be realized if the mother consciously takes steps to make it so. Becoming a person is not the “natural” future of a fertilized egg; dying and being flushed out during the woman’s next cycle is the natural future of a fertilized egg. It is the conscious choice of a woman to nurture that egg to live birth that allows it to possibly become a person (though even then it is not guaranteed), and most people’s conception of “natural” does not include conscious intercessory action by a human agent. Except, of course, when it suits them, such as it does for anti-abortion activists in this case.

Biological considerations aside, the argument that a fœtus is somehow destined to become a person is also specious philosophically. As the timeline demonstrates, once the decision to abort has been made, the fœtus is almost certainly not destined to become a person… so by the time the abortion actually happens, it is categorically false to claim that what is about to be aborted is a “potential person”.

An anti-abortion proponent might then try to argue that the “potential person” is destroyed when the decision to abort is made. But even at that point, the argument is specious. The fœtus is not “potentially” a person, or rather, may or may not be a potential person, depending on the choice the woman is going to make. The fallacy is in pretending that the path that leads to personhood (P) – on the diagram, the upper branch of the timeline – somehow has more weight or is more “correct” or “natural” than the path that doesn’t. But before X – before the decision is made – both paths are equally valid. There is nothing “wrong” with choosing the abortion path; it is just as correct to say that a woman that chose not to abort is creating a future person who otherwise wouldn’t have existed at X as it is to say that she is destroying one who otherwise would have. Worded that way, a woman who opts to abort is simply not creating a person she otherwise might have, had she chosen to. And clearly there’s no harm there.

The claim “an abortion kills a potential person” is ultimately a very sophisticated and multilayered naturalistic fallacy, with some very subtle levels to it. It also relies on ambiguity in the term “potential”, because in common usage “potential” is usually used to imply something very likely to happen without intervention (for example, “a potential disaster”). Though, technically, every heart beat in your life is “potentially” your last, even though the vast majority of them are actually not. Once the decision to abort is made, of course, there is no more “potentiality”, so by the time the abortion actually happens, it simply isn’t the killing of a potential person. The potential person may be destroyed at the moment the choice is made, then, but that is only a matter of perspective, not reality. An equally valid perspective is that what was destroyed was not a potential person at all (but, had the abortion not been chosen, a person was given existence they didn’t have before).

To hammer the point home, here is what the timeline would look like if the abortion was never in doubt:

As this makes crystal clear, at no time ever was there even any chance of the fœtus becoming a person.

The bottom line: the claim “an abortion kills a potential person” is malformed, and it hides several subtle naturalistic fallacies, and relies on ambiguity in the word “potential”. An abortion does not kill a potential person, because if the abortion happened, the fœtus had no potential of being a person.

Is abortion moral?

Finally to the meat of the matter: the morality of abortion. Given that abortion is neither murder, nor the killing of a person, nor the killing of a human, nor even the killing of a potential human, it’s not obviously immoral. But, let’s take a closer look.

The morality of an action depends on the intention. A person who helps someone study so they can pass their medical exam may be acting morally… if their intention is actually to create more good in the world by helping an essentially good person become a doctor. On the other hand, if their intention is to get that person into medicine – where their talents are mediocre – and away from politics, where they might institute progressive policies that would prevent the first person from making more money scamming people… then they would be acting immorally. It’s not what you do, it’s why you do it.

So whether or not abortion is moral depends on why it is done. I have already looked at the reasons women have for getting abortions, and concluded that it is not intentional killing. Indeed, as I quoted before: Nearly three-quarters of respondents indicated that they could not afford to have a child now, and large proportions mentioned responsibilities to children, partner issues and unreadiness to parent.¹ In other words, most women who opt to get abortions specifically cite concerns that might make them unfit parents for the baby, or that might make them less able to care for their existing children. That means that the reality is that most women opt to get abortions not for immoral reasons… but for explicitly moral reasons. Women get abortions because it’s either that… or do harm to the baby or their existing children because they would be unable to cope with parenting them all well. To put it in stark terms: for most women who get abortions, abortion is the moral, if difficult, choice.

Not that this should be particularly surprising: abortion is an incredibly difficult procedure for a woman, emotionally – especially with the social stigma surrounding it. A woman who makes the choice to abort has obviously had a difficult time making that choice, despite what the anti-abortion fanatics would have you believe. And even after the abortion is done, many women regret not carrying the baby to term, even while they know that would have been impossible. But despite all that emotional weight, women who choose to have abortions have the strength to make that choice for the sake of the children they already have, and for the sake of the child they might have been unable to raise. That’s not immorality, that’s courageous morality; these women should not be hounded for their choice, they should be supported, and given whatever assistance they need to get through the stress of it.

To clarify: abortion is not always a moral choice, and in some cases it might be an immoral choice. If the intention of the abortion is merely to kill a baby… then it’s an immoral choice. But even then, if the woman was that calloused, they would probably have been a terrible mother anyway, and even if the child is given up for adoption, adoption isn’t always good for the child. However, it seems absurd to think that women would undergo a medical procedure like abortion for specious reasons, and the survey evidence supports that notion. The reality is that when a woman chooses abortion… they’re probably doing it for very good reasons.

The bottom line: given the reasons most women give for having an abortion, abortion is not only not immoral, it is usually a moral choice, and a courageous moral choice, too.

Is anti-abortion advocacy moral?

This follows up from the previous section. Given that, for most women who choose abortion, abortion is the moral choice to make, and given the difficulty of making that choice, where does that leave the people who are trying to prevent those women from getting abortions.

Well, quite frankly, it makes them immoral assholes. Abortion is already a difficult enough choice for a woman, and if it is the moral choice, then making it more difficult for ideological or religious reasons is a truly dickish thing to do. There may have been a justifying argument if most abortions were done for specious or immoral reasons… but as I’ve shown, the evidence clearly indicates that most abortions are made for very moral reasons. Anti-abortion activists only make moral choices made by courageous women more difficult.

The immorality of anti-abortion activists is especially clear in light of their thuggish tactics. At the highest level, their efforts are centred not just on denying women the right to an abortion, but on humiliating any woman considering one, by forcing invasive and unnecessary medical procedures on them, and threatening doctors with fines or loss of licence if they don’t comply with the slut-shaming. At the lower levels, their focus is on outright intimidation, by blockading abortion clinics, flashing gory pictures and threatening placards at women, and even taking their picture when they enter and leave. (At some US abortion clinics, women have to be secretly escorted in and out under guard.) They might try to justify these things with the argument that their goal is to “save babies”, but it is only the most depraved moral standards that subscribe to the the axiom that the ends justify the means.

And the immorality is even further highlighted when one considers the things anti-abortion proponents could be doing if they actually cared about the things they say they care about. For example, if someone actually cared about the “potential babies” being aborted, then they should be heavily pushing for more and better sex education – especially for teenagers; 19-28% of those surveyed (depending on the survey) were 19 or under, and 22-27% didn’t feel mature enough to raise a child. They should also be strong advocates for some kind of social help with child care, because 74-78% of survey respondents said that a baby would have interfered too much with their lives (such as getting an education, doing their job or having a career) and 69-73% explicitly cited financial concerns. (For comparison 28-38% said they had already completed their childbearing, and 8-12% and 13-14% were concerned about their health or the health of the fœtus respectively.)¹ They should also be funnelling money into scientific research into things like fœtal transplants – so that rather than simply killing the aborted fœtus, it could be transplanted to and carried to term by a woman who is otherwise unable to conceive – or simply straight up better birth control technologies.

But, as is painfully clear to anyone who spends any time looking at the rhetoric and tactics of anti-abortion activists… nothing about that movement is about “caring”; certainly not about caring for the “potential babies” that they want to force unready mothers to have.

The bottom line: given that most abortions appear to be done for moral reasons, making abortions more difficult is an immoral act. On top of this, the tactics used by most anti-abortion activists are primarily tactics of intimidation, with the ultimate goal being to pressure women who don’t think they’re ready to be mothers – and who may be right – into becoming mothers. Thus, anti-abortion advocacy, at least as currently practised, is immoral.

(Update: this post was written between Wednesday and Friday, but on Thursday Jen McCreight of Blag Hag fame posted an article titled When abortion is the more ethical choice, where she notes: … I never see abortion framed in terms of being “more ethical.” I agree, which is why I embarked on this philosophical exercise. I strongly recommend reading that post alongside of these arguments about the morality of abortion and anti-abortion advocacy.)

Summary

There are many good scientific and biological arguments to support abortion, but I have chosen to build up a philosophical case for it, focusing on some of the things often said about abortion, but rarely ever justified.

These are the conclusions I have come to:

• Abortion is not murder.
• Abortion is killing, but just killing cells, not a person or (human) animal.
• Abortion is not intentional killing – most women who get abortions do not do so with explicit intent to kill a fœtus.
• A fœtus is not a person.
• A fœtus is not a human. It is a bunch of cells with human DNA, but it doesn’t become a human until it is independently viable from the host organism (ie, the mother).
• Abortion is not killing a “potential person”.
• Abortion, for the reasons it is usually done, is moral.
• Anti-abortion advocacy, at least as currently practised, is very immoral.

And, of course, each of these conclusions is justified in their respective sections above.

So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts about what – if anything – in these arguments is correct, and what is wrong… why it is wrong.

1. Finer, L. B., Frohwirth, L. F., Dauphinee, L. A., Singh, S., Moore, A.M. (2005). Reasons U.S. women have abortions: Quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 37(3), 110-118.

Saturday Cerebration is going to be series intended to challenge readers to think more critically and philosophically about practical, real-world problems. I will pick a question or argument, then present an argument for or against it. I may not actually believe the position I am taking. I may, in fact, deliberately argue for things I believe are wrong, or against things I believe are right; I may argue for racism, or against human rights. I will also not indicate (at least within the post) which side I really take. Saturday Cerebration will not be about me or my beliefs; it will be about you, and your brain. It will be a challenge to you to exercise your philosophical and thinking processes.

What I want to happen is that when you read a Saturday Cerebration, you will be challenged to think more deeply about something that you probably already have a firm position on. I want you to look at the arguments I make, and consider them rationally and philosophically, to figure out where I’m right, and where I’m wrong. What is right, or wrong, about the arguments I have made? Where are the fallacies, if any? Are the premisses legitimate? There may be nothing wrong with the whole argument! Or, it may be riddled with fallacies. The challenge to you, dear reader, is to figure out what’s going on, and identify and correct the problems as necessary.

To be clear, even when I argue for something I believe in, there may be flaws in my argument. Just because an argument is flawed, that doesn’t make the conclusion flawed, but it’s still important to correct the argument. The same is true when I argue against something I disagree with.

When I argue for something I don’t agree with, it may be because I am parroting bad arguments others make… or it may be because I am presenting an argument I cannot dispute even though I dislike the conclusion. In such cases, I would love someone to help point out the flaws in the argument. When I argue against something I agree with, the same is true.

How to read a Saturday Cerebration

Saturday Cerebration will cover some very emotionally intense topics, that are relevant, and even important, to our lives and society. And some of them will be deliberately provocative; I may consciously argue for a position I find detestable, to challenge you to find a good rebuttal.

The most important thing when reading a Saturday Cerebration is to remain calm. If you fail to keep a cool head, and let your emotions take over, you’ll probably fail to properly dispose of the argument. That’s failing as a philosopher, and a rational thinker. That’s letting the other side win.

The second most important thing to remember is that I am not (necessarily) expressing what I believe. Therefore, getting angry or snarky at me will just make you look like a fool. I will sometimes be playing a “devil’s advocate” role, arguing for positions I find abhorrent, because I think it is important for a critical thinker to know how to react to an argument they find disgusting. If your only reaction is disgust, then you’re not mature enough for Saturday Cerebration, but if you can manage to put your emotions aside and defeat the argument, then you will have increased your critical thinking skills and added a solid rebuttal to your inventory for when you run into that argument in the wild.

For example, I might try to craft a very convincing and strong argument that racism is good. If you can’t even handle reading through such an argument without your head exploding… don’t play Saturday Cerebration. If the only response you can muster after reading something you disagree with is just to call me names, or tell me how stupid or evil I am… don’t play Saturday Cerebration. If you can’t realize that it’s possible for someone to convincingly argue for something they don’t believe in… don’t play Saturday Cerebration. Go play something more your intellectual speed, like Kerplunk. Saturday Cerebration is a challenge for adults to exercise their critical thinking skills, even in the face of powerful emotional arousal. This is a big people’s game, not for children who can’t keep their cool.

If you can keep your cool, then you can properly analyze the argument, and identify where and how it fails – or if it succeeds. Here’s how to go about doing that, step-by-step:

1. DO NOT LET EMOTION GET THE BETTER OF YOU! Keep your cool, and consider the arguments calmly and rationally. Bear in mind that I may not even believe the argument I’ve made – I may think it’s a stupid and even repugnant argument – so screaming at me about it is only going to make you look like a moron (and yes, I will publish stupid comments like that). Saturday Cerebration is an exercise; it’s a challenge; it’s a game. Saturday Cerebration posts do not (necessarily) reflect my own beliefs.

2. An argument consists of premisses and a conclusion, linked by inferences. More complex arguments may be built of smaller arguments, so that the conclusion of a sub-argument becomes a premiss for the larger argument. For example, the argument:

   • All horses have four legs.
   • Buster is a horse.
   • Therefore Buster has four legs.

   has two premises and one inference, leading to one conclusion.

   A premiss is a statement of fact. Most arguments work by listing two facts, then drawing a conclusion from them via an inference. The facts are the premisses. The two premisses in the argument above are that horses have four legs, and that Buster is a horse. Premisses can be either true or false. They’re usually easy to identify, because they’re basically anything that doesn’t work with a “therefore” in front of it.

   The conclusion is also quite easily identified: they start with “therefore” (or there is an implicit “therefore”, at least). The conclusion in the example above is that Buster has four legs.

   Inferences are what connect the premisses to the conclusion. The idea is that once you know the premisses, the conclusion is necessary, and obvious. For example, if all horses have four legs and Buster is horse, then Buster has to have four legs. All horses do! And, Buster is a horse. The conclusion is undeniable, and inescapable.

   In order for an argument to be sound, all of its premisses must be true, and all of the inferences must be valid. If that is true, and the argument is sound, then you must accept the conclusion – unless you intend to be irrational. If any of the premisses are false, or if any of the inferences are invalid, then the argument is not sound, and the conclusion is suspect. It might still be right! (For example, if the second premiss of the argument above is false – if Buster is not a horse, but a dog – the argument is not sound, though the conclusion still happens to be correct. If Buster was a turkey, then the argument is not sound, and the conclusion is false.) But you can’t be sure.

   So what you want to do is determine if the argument is sound by checking the premisses and the inferences. If the premisses are all true, and the inferences are all valid, then the conclusion must be correct – even if you don’t like it. If there are any false premisses or invalid inferences, the conclusion might be incorrect… but at the very least, you know it’s suspicious.

3. Premisses are simply statements of fact, so you can check them the same way you check any facts. In the example argument, you could simply check to see if it really is true that all horses have four legs, and if Buster really is a horse.

4. Inferences are very tricky to check. You should familiarize yourself with logical fallacies, which are different types of broken inferences. An example of one type of formal fallacy, called “denying the antecedent” goes like this:

   • If Buster is a horse, then Buster has four legs.
   • Buster is a dog.
   • Therefore Buster does not have four legs.

   Now, both of those premisses could be true… but clearly the conclusion is wrong. The problem is that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premisses. You know that Buster would have four legs if he was a horse… you don’t know anything about the number of legs he might have if he’s not a horse – he might have four, two or a hundred.

   This may seem like a silly notion, but these kinds of mistakes are rife – especially in politics. You’ve probably heard something like this: “If you support SOPA, then you are against piracy. You don’t support SOPA. Therefore, you’re not against piracy.”

   Fallacies can also take more informal forms, like appeals to emotions, were there really is no inference between the premiss and the conclusion, but emotion can make you feel like there should be one. For example, an appeal to fear: “If the Bible is true, and I don’t believe in it, I’ll burn forever in Hell. I’m afraid of burning forever. Therefore, I believe the Bible is true.”

5. If you’ve found a false premiss, or a fallacy, then you have found a flaw in the argument, and the conclusion is suspicious. This may make you happy if you disagree with the conclusion… but if you agree with the conclusion, then you should try to fix the argument. Fix the premiss, fix the fallacy, or toss the whole thing and offer a different argument instead.
6. If you can’t find any problem with the premisses, and you can’t find any fallacies, then you must accept that the conclusion is true. This may not be a problem if you agree with it… but if you disagree with the conclusion, you should go back and try again – try to find a flaw in the premisses, or in the inferences. If you still can’t find a problem with the argument… well… either you have to change your belief, or you have to hope that someone else will figure out how to beat the argument.

If your goal is to disagree with the conclusion of a Saturday Cerebration, then you should attempt to find flawed premisses or bad inferences. Don’t just send me a message telling me how wrong I am. Tell me what’s wrong with the argument.

If your goal is to agree with the conclusion of a Saturday Cerebration, you should still try to find flawed premisses and bad inferences, just to convince yourself that your belief is validated. You should always challenge your beliefs, even deeply held ones.

It is my hope that Saturday Cerebration will become a semi-regular way for both myself and my readers to practice critical thinking, using realistic arguments. I also intend for them to be puzzles for you to mull over for a couple of days – that’s why I am doing them on Saturday, so you can spend a lazy Sunday thinking about the argument. (Or, if you’re going to church, you can tune out the sermon and puzzle over the argument instead.)

So remember: the arguments made in a Saturday Cerebration will not necessarily represent my own beliefs. They are critical thinking challenges. If you disagree with the conclusion, try to figure out why the argument is not sound – are the premisses wrong, or are the inferences invalid? If you agree with the conclusion, try testing the argument for soundness anyway. If you find a flaw in the argument, congratulations! Please share what you’ve found in the comments. If you can’t find a flaw, you can also ask in the comments for help. Bear in mind, though, that even I might not be sure what, if anything, is wrong with the argument. But I’d love help figuring it out.

The first Saturday Cerebration will be tomorrow! I hope you enjoy the mental exercises!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta responded to the story of Ashu Solo flipping out over a prayer at a municipal awards dinner with a resounding groan – a response I agree with. Atheist Revolution‘s vjack criticizes Mehta’s response in a post titled In Defense of Making Mountains of Molehills, where he says:

Hemant’s primary objection appears to be with the specific content of Solo’s complaint….

Facepalm.

Mehta’s primary objection is not with the specific content of Solo’s complaint. Seriously, how could you even think it would be? The man has written a blog for years that repeatedly reasserts the fact that complaints like Solo’s are perfectly legitimate!

Mehta’s objection is with the method of Solo’s response. Solo was not wrong to feel put out by the presence of a sectarian prayer at a municipal event (where he was one of the people being honoured!). He was wrong to respond to it by screeching “bigotry” and running to the courts, rather than first trying to deal with the problem in a calm and rational manner – specifically, approaching the event organizers and/or mayor and pointing out why such prayers are wrong in public events. By all accounts, the mayor seems to be a thoughtful and tolerant person who just didn’t realize what a douchey move prayers are at public events.

If Solo had just kept his cool and talked to the mayor, the mayor might have realized the error and changed the public policy to eliminate prayer from all municipal events. The mayor didn’t get it – there’s no doubt of that, especially if you look at some of the conciliatory gestures he offered. But he might have gotten it if he’d been given half a chance. Some religious people you just have to give up on – they’re just dead to reason – but there’s no sign yet that the mayor is one of those people. With a little calm, respectful explanation, he might have come to understand the rationale behind secularism, and made it policy without a fight. If he was a crafty mayor, he might even have spun the move as being more accepting of cultural and religious diversity, perhaps bettering his chances at the polls next election. It could have become an opportunity to bring more secularism into the government in a constructive and mutually respectful way. Instead… it’s just another big, heated fight, further fuelling the public perception of atheists as assholes.

Of course if the mayor or other city officials had refused to take the prayer out of public events… then Solo would have been justified in going to war. And I would have been 100% behind him, as I imagine most atheists and secularists would. Instead, by overreacting the way he has, he’s divided atheists, and made us look like pugnacious idiots to the general public.

The just-not-getting-it continues when vjack tries to argue that Solo’s response was successful with this gem:

But Solo certainly got the mayor’s attention, didn’t he?

Yeah, but if getting the mayor’s attention was the only – or even primary – goal, then Solo could have done so much more effectively by dropping trou at the dinner, jumping on the mayor’s table and shitting on his plate, then using the turd to spell out the words: PRAYER DOES NOT BELONG AT GOVERNMENT EVENTS.

Getting attention is not the goal, it’s merely a means to achieve the real goal: getting God out of government. Failing to recognize that is simply shortsightedness. We only try to get attention when we cannot affect real change by more direct means… such as by reasoning with a mayor about why prayer at public events is wrong.

Solo fucked up, and he screwed all Canadian atheists and secularists in the process. Now, instead of cheering at a victory won without fighting as a mayor embraces secularism… or girding up for a real fight in the courts after a mayor dismisses secularism despite rational and respectful pleas… we atheist activists have to shrug with embarrassment and explain why Solo is “not one of us” while responding to shit like this.

We want atheists to speak out, and stand up for their rights, yes… but we don’t want them to be fucking dicks about it. Extend a hand of peace first, and when it gets slapped away – and only if it gets slapped away – should we raise a fist. We are supposed to be a movement of reason, so our first tactic should be to try to reason with our opponents. We should only resort to fighting when they will not see reason. Only an idiot would think that the only two options are to cower hidden or to come out swinging. So what’s your position on that vjack?:

But I’d far rather have him do what he did than remain silent.

Facepalm.

I can’t say much better than Mehta has what a terrible and overwrought response Solo’s was. And it comes back down to the same damn thing as in the Atheist Revolution case: just because it looks like bigotry, doesn’t mean it is. It could be a perfectly rational and non-bigoted response to a different train of logic (as in the vjack/Anne Graham Hotz case), or it could simply be an accident caused by thoughtlessness (as in the Solo/City of Saskatoon case). In both cases, the correct response is to learn more first, then to teach. First we learn more about Anne Graham Hotz’s motives for not voting for atheists, then we teach why those motives are bigoted (if they are) – and if Anne Graham Hotz isn’t interested in learning, then we educate the general public about the ignorance and bigotry in her reasons for not voting atheist, which just may make them recognize and rethink similar themes in their own minds. In the Solo case, first we ask how and why the prayers happened, and if the cause was just thoughtlessness then we teach the officials involved why it was upsetting – and if the cause was an active plan to put God in government, then we teach them a lesson about that.

Every time I tell atheists to restrain themselves from crying “bigotry” at the drop of a hat, I get accused of accomodationism and called a “faitheist”, which is hilarious since I’m one of the most confrontational atheists you’ll ever meet. My point is always that you should never swing blindly at an opponent. When something stings you, study it first… then decide on the proper response. Sometimes the proper response is to simply shrug it off, or ignore it. Sometimes the proper response is to gently educate the persons who stung you, so that they learn about the mistake they unwittingly made. And yes, sometimes the proper response is to sting back… hard. But even in those cases, the time you spent studying the problem is never wasted. No battle plan ever suffered because of too much intelligence.

If Solo had kept his cock in his pants instead of swinging it around like a maniac at the first sign of trouble, it might have been a win-win situation: he might have been able to convince Mayor Atchison to take steps to better accommodate other religions and no religions (in other words, making the City of Saskatoon even more secular), while Atchison takes the front stage for creating a more open and welcoming government (which might be to Atchison’s own political benefit). It’s conceivable (especially given Atchison’s response) that we could have created a new champion for secularism in government (even if only in a limited sense)!

But the chances of that are probably all blown to hell now. My heart is warmed by the boldness and strength in the atheist movement recently, but it’s depressing to see such fervour untempered by wisdom. vjack didn’t get it, Solo didn’t get it – hell, even Joe at Canadian Atheist didn’t get it (but what else is new, eh?). When you feel insulted or marginalized as an atheist, the first step is not to point fingers and scream “bigotry” and “discrimination”, it’s to think – to understand the insult or slight better. And that doesn’t mean a thought process like, “well, i’ve seen other cases of bigotry and discrimination that sorta kinda look like this, so… that must be what it is!”; it means real thinking – we’re a movement that prides itself on rationality, so we should act like we believe what we preach. Understand the insult or slight, and its motivation, then decide on the best response: which could be firing up the word processor for some hot letters to the editor… or it could be a gentle reminder that atheists exist, and have feelings, too.