Jack Diehl

Indonesia to ban mini-skirts over “links to rape”

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News of Note: ‘You know what men are like’: Indonesia to ban mini-skirts over links to rape

Indonesia’s powerful religious affairs minister believes that mini-skirts are pornographic and should be banned under the country’s tough new anti-porn laws.

Minister Suryadharma Ali has been appointed to run Indonesia’s new anti-porn taskforce, announced by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier this month.

He told reporters in Jakarta yesterday that before deciding what they must ban as pornography, the taskforce would consult widely to come up with “a set of universal criteria”.

However, “one [criterion] will be when someone wears a skirt above the knee,” according to the Jakarta Post.

“Pornography is something that we can feel … but we have to make the criteria,” said Dr Suryadharma.

Wanting to be or feel sexy is an entirely justifiable and natural human behavior. This reminds me of a conservative high school’s dress code, not something that an actual country would enforce on its citizens. With the growth of anti-women and anti-other fundamentalism, how soon will we see this type of repression on Main Street USA.

Indonesia’s new anti-porn taskforce must not have heard about the fallacy of slut shaming, so aptly in the hands of our SlutWalk advocates, who assert that no one asks to be assaulted no matter how s/he appears to their rapist, or murderer. Blaming the victims of rape for dressing sexy is simply absurd and offensive and deflects an act of violence to something akin to a sex act gone awry.

Stories like this reveal the astounding depth of sexual repression our world must still conquer. With laws like the one being pushed in Georgia to exchange the words “rape victim” with “rape accuser” in all state law, we have a  long way to go to assure a world where no one even conceives such a vile thought, or mounts a task force to tell us how we must dress to not incite the insane violence of rape?

*Creative Commons Image by: “Applegurl“

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / News of Note  by 05 Apr 2012 0 comments

Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords

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News of Note: Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.

“It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it “an egregious privacy violation.”

What about relationship status, sexual orientation, and religious belief? I don’t expect all the details of someone’s personal life to be completely agreeable with every employer and I certainly don’t expect them to use all the information they obtain in an unbiased way. The work environment is one that demands neutrality and tolerance. When companies pry into the private lives of their employees, they are venturing where they were never intended to go.

It is naive to believe anything online is private? We live in a world that is becoming more transparent everyday. If the truth about each of us is forced onto the table, how will society react? I don’t think it is reasonable for employers to ask for Facebook passwords during interviews but I do believe it is inevitable. Are you ready to show the world your true self?

Creative Commons image by: jakeliefer

in News of Note  by 03 Apr 2012 0 comments

The new legal theory that enables homophobic evangelizing in US schools

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News of Note: The new legal theory that enables homophobic evangelising in US schools

Last month, 8,000 public high school students in Montgomery County, Maryland, went home with fliers informing them that no one is “born gay” and offering therapy if they experienced “unwanted same-sex attraction”.

The group behind the flier, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), isn’t the kind one expects to find represented in student backpacks. Peter Sprigg, a board member of PFOX who doubles as a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, recently told Chris Matthews that he believes “gay behavior” should be “criminalized.” PFOX president Greg Quinlan told another talk show host that gays and lesbians practice “sexual cannibalism.”

The Family Research Council is a documented “hate group,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Truth Wins Out (TWO), a high-profile organization fighting anti-gay religious extremism, has covered the Montgomery school fliers, and even filed a lawsuit recently against PFOX and Greg Quinlan for defamation — Quinlan resorted to accusing TWO Executive Director, Wayne Besen, of threatening his life. Such an obvious attempt to smear TWO should only serve to further paint PFOX as the bigots that they really are.

I can only imagine the amount of bullying and self-loathing that these fliers generate. Kids are discovering their own sexuality in high school, discovering who they are.

Over the past 20 years, legal advocacy groups of the religious right – a collection of entities that now command budgets totaling over $100m per year – have been pushing a new legal theory, one that has taken hold of some parts of the popular imagination and that has even been enshrined in recent judicial rulings. The essence of the theory is that religion isn’t religion, after all; it’s really just speech from a religious viewpoint. Borrowing from the rhetoric of the civil rights movements, the advocates of the new theory cry “discrimination” in the face of every attempt to treat religion as something different from any other kind of speech.

These religious groups do not have the ability to distinguish between religious dogma and rational thought. Freedom of religion is great because it also gives us freedom from religion. We need to actively label the intolerance that these groups spew as religion, and never allow them to sneak into public schools.

I like to imagine a future that is more progressive. With hate groups like PFOX finding ways to teach their backwards ideas in public schools, the future we all want to see protected is being undermined. If you have experienced similar intolerance or bigotry, we would be happy to add your story to our continuing coverage of this most important issue.

in Key Issues / News of Note  by 01 Apr 2012 0 comments

Rock Group Delivers Controversial Message at Public School Assembly

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News of Note: Rock Group “Junkyard Prophet” Delivers Controversial Message at School Assembly

High school students in Dunkerton, Iowa, were expecting an assembly about bullying and making good choices. What they got instead was the Christian rap/hard rock band called Junkyard Prophet delivering an anti-gay and anti-abortion rant.

According to the La Crosse Tribune, after the band performed, they separated the girls, boys, and teachers into three breakout groups. “They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, whose 16-year-old daughter, Alivia, called her in tears after the event. Reportedly, one of the band members led the girls in a chant pledging purity and encouraged them to be submissive to their husbands after marriage.

The boys were shown images of musicians who died of drug overdoses. A video of the event shows a band member criticizing Elton John and Lady Gaga for encouraging “sexual deviancy” and supporting laws outlawing homosexuality.

I find it hypocritical and unfair that faith-based groups like Junkyard Prophet (and PFOX) are imposing their intolerant beliefs on helpless school children. The separation of church and state should (and unfortunately often does not) protect all children in public schools from being force-fed religious dogma and intolerance. Arguments against homosexuality, abortion, and premarital sex, are clearly rooted in the teachings of christian zealots, and have no business being taught to public school children as objective information.

These organizations have no shame in taking any opportunity they can to inject dogma into publicly funded schools. How can we organize to prevent this intolerance from being perpetuated in the future? This surely isn’t the end of it.

Creative Commons image by: Jsome1

in News of Note  by 26 Mar 2012 0 comments

PayPal backtracks on “obscene” e-book policy

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News of Note: PayPal backtracks on “obscene” e-book policy

(Reuters) – PayPal, the online payment service owned by eBay Inc., is backtracking on its policy against processing sales of e-books containing themes of rape, bestiality or incest after protests from authors and anti-censorship activist groups.

PayPal’s new policy will focus only on e-books that contain potentially illegal images, not e-books that are limited to just text, spokesman Anuj Nayar said on Tuesday. The service will still refuse, however, to process payments for text-only e-books containing child pornography themes.

When I heard that PayPal was throttling the sales of various legal e-books, I wondered if that was a reasonable use of their power. For many people Paypal is a necessary evil. If you make a living on eBay or run a shop in Second Life, you’re probably going to want PayPal in order to get paid.

But this begs the question, “Do corporations have the right to impose censorship on their clients?”

Paypal is a money transmitter. They offer a service similar to a bank (they are a bank in Europe), and they sell no products. As long as no one is dealing in illegal activity, do you believe Paypal has any right to choose what their users can buy? Let us know what you think.

in News of Note  by 22 Mar 2012 0 comments

Utah legislature passes bill requiring ‘abstinence-only’ sex education — or none at all

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News of Note: Utah legislature passes bill requiring ‘abstinence-only’ sex education — or none at all

Utah legislature has passed a sex education bill that allows schools to decide whether they will teach students about human sexuality and in the event that they do, requires that it use “abstinence-only instruction materials.” The bill now goes to the governor for approval.

Abstinence only education ignores the fact that human beings will inevitably have sex. Parents may be scared to death that their child could become sexually active, but that shouldn’t justify denying all children information about contraceptives and other aspects of sexual health. America’s obsession with sexual repression continues to take this country further backwards. What do you think it’s going to take to end this abusive trend?

Creative Commons image by Flickingerbrad

in News of Note / Sex Education  by 20 Mar 2012 0 comments

Use Birth Control? You’re Fired!

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News of note: Use Birth Control? You’re Fired!

You may want to sit down for this one. Arizona legislators know that whether or not her insurance covers it, a woman may get the prescription she needs to prevent an unintended pregnancy. They want to give her boss the right to control that too. The bill they are pushing would not only allow employers to take the insurance coverage away, but it would also make it easier for an employer who finds out that his employee uses birth control to fire her. You heard me right . . . to fire her.

Allowing discrimination under the banner of religious freedom is a popular theme in America, although the right to religious freedom is constantly falsely interpreted by the right wing. It means: Individuals retain the right to their own religious choices, including ignoring the dictates of organized religion, not the perverse opposite. Religions have no rights to impose behavioral restrictions on others.

When people must choose between sexual freedom and sexual repression, I’m counting on freedom being the more popular choice. We are evolving, and in the end, these bigots will fail.

Creative Commons image by: vociferous

in News of Note / Sex Education  by 18 Mar 2012 0 comments

Pot Legalization Foe Getting Rich off the Drug War

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News of Note: Pot Legalization Foe Getting Rich off the Drug War

“The lobbyist who helped kill California’s Proposition 19, the 2010 ballot measure that would have legalized recreational marijuana, has constructed an entire business model around keeping pot illegal. While fighting against the proposed law, lobbyist John Lovell accepted nearly $400,000 from a wide array of police unions, some of which he also represented in attempting to steer millions of federal dollars toward California’s marijuana suppression programs….

“Police unions and their lobbyists weren’t the only economic interests with a stake in Prop. 19. The alcohol industry and prison guards also contributed money to fight the measure. “

Is cannabis illegal because America needs more people in prison? Is cannabis illegal because people shouldn’t have an alternative to alcohol? If not, then how do these lobbyists justify their support of cannabis prohibition? Locking people up in prison not because they are dangerous, but because you profit from it, is a crime against humanity. The primary opponents against cannabis legalization are not concerned with human safety.

When laws are passed under false pretenses, who is our government looking out for? And what is our society turning into?

Creative Commons Image by Petr Brož

in News of Note  by 16 Mar 2012 0 comments

US Congress Expands New Anti-Protest Law

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News of Note: US Congress expands authoritarian anti-protest law

A bill passed Monday in the US House of Representatives and Thursday in the Senate would expand existing anti-protest laws that make it a felony—a serious criminal offense punishable by a lengthy prison term—to “enter or remain in” an area designated as “restricted.”

The bill—H.R. 347, or the “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011”—was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate, while only Ron Paul and two other Republicans voted against the bill in the House of Representatives (the bill passed 388-3). Not a single Democratic politician voted against the bill.

What about our 1st Amendment right to peaceful assembly? With the Occupy movement sweeping the globe last year and the US Presidential election continuing to gain momentum, this bill has come at just the right time to squash any civil response or resistance. As John F. Kennedy famously said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” I hope that it doesn’t ever have to come to that.

Creative Commons image by: Lutz

in Key Issues / News of Note  by 14 Mar 2012 0 comments

Santorum backs nullifying existing gay marriages

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News of Note: Santorum backs nullifying existing gay marriages

There are 18,000 married gay and lesbian couples in California and at least 131,000 nationwide according to the 2010 census, conducted before New York state legalized same-sex marriage in July.

Rick Santorum says he’ll try to unmarry all of them if he’s elected president

He would “unmarry” all same-sex marriages? Instead of listing reasons why gay marriage is a good thing and why it should have nothing to do with politics, I’d rather emphasize how terrible Rick Santorum is. I would normally disregard his comments as impossible or beneath me, but the nagging reality that we could have him (or someone with similar views) as president scares me senseless.

Santorum represents the magnitude of ignorance and hate many Americans still must overcome.

What do you think has caused these backwards ideologies to maintain so much face in America? What do you think we should be doing about that? We look forward to hearing your opinions.

Creative Commons image by: Gage Skidmore

in Key Issues / News of Note  by 12 Mar 2012 0 comments