Author: Adam Lee

I’ve written about the morality of circumcision from a secular standpoint, as well as the medieval sages and Victorian doctors who advocated circumcision because it makes sex less pleasurable. I say there’s no justification for circumcising infants who can’t consent, and if you happen to agree with me, here’s your chance to do something about…

Atlas Shrugged, p.55 I said earlier that I give Rand credit for treating women as the intellectual equals of men, but there’s one whopping big exception to that. Strangely enough, it’s not really touched on in Atlas – you’d think that a book as long as this would give the author plenty of opportunity to…

The following letter was originally written by Miri Mogilevsky of Freethought Blogs. As I’m a signatory, I’m reprinting it below. This was sent to the CFI Board of Directors as they prepare to meet this week to discuss the controversy surrounding Dr. Ron Lindsay’s opening remarks at the Women in Secularism conference. If you have…

The Massachusetts anti-gay group MassResistance isn’t giving up. Even though same-sex marriage has been legal there for nearly 10 years and is supported by a strong majority of the public, they’re still fighting to turn back the clock. And although most people might say that Massachusetts’ failure to become a Sodom and Gomorrah-esque den of…

I’ve been thinking for a few days that there’s a gap in the language that needs to be filled, and as always, I turn to the hive mind of the internet to help out. In fact, it’s the internet that’s created the need for this word. It’s made possible a new kind of career: a…

On Patheos’ evangelical Christian channel, Peter Enns has been soliciting comments from his readers about what the greatest challenges are to remaining Christian. He got hundreds of responses, and he’s compiled a list of five common themes in the answers: 1. The Bible, namely inerrancy. This was the most commonly cited challenge, whether implicitly or…

In my last post about the inquest into Savita Halappanavar’s death, I mentioned a similar story then unfolding in Latin America: a pregnant 22-year-old woman, known in the media only as Beatriz, was five months pregnant and gravely ill, suffering from lupus and kidney failure. Allowing the pregnancy to continue would almost certainly mean her…

In the aftermath of the unfortunate introduction at Women in Secularism 2, a group of speakers have written and signed a joint letter to the Center for Inquiry’s board of directors, detailing their objections to Ron Lindsay’s offensive remarks and what they’re asking the board to do. I highly recommend reading the full text of…

Atlas Shrugged, p.62-63 I’m going to skip ahead a bit, because this next section has a connection to my previous post about Dagny’s reminiscences. Dagny is leaving work at night after another long day (“She resented the small defeat of being tired”) and passes through the main concourse of the Taggart building: Dominating the concourse,…

Last month, a broad spectrum of feminist activists and organizations published an open letter to Facebook, demanding that the social-networking colossus crack down on pages that glorify or promote violence against women. Although Facebook’s moderators had long disallowed anti-Semitism, gay-bashing and other kinds of hateful content, they often excused misogynist pages, even graphically violent ones,…