If you’re anything like me, your first thought is “What isn’t wrong with Utah?” and while the state often finds itself the subject of shocked looks, they’re now setting the bar a bit higher by trying to criminalize miscarriage.

According to HB462 any woman obtaining an illegal abortion can be charged for criminal homicide, this is unique in that other laws regarding the prosecution of illegal abortions only allow for prosecution of the individual performing the abortion and provide immunity to the pregnant woman. You may be wondering why not just obtain a legal abortion then and avoid the penalties of this bill, to address that let’s take a closer look at Utah. Utah stretches over 84 thousand square miles and has a population of just under 3 million; to service this population Utah has 6 abortion providers (data as of 2005). In addition to that Utah already had several laws on the books to make abortions less accessible to women. Minors are required to have the consent of a parent, doctors are required to offer to show the woman an ultrasound of the fetus and if the woman asks to see it the doctor is required to describe the image in detail, a woman must receive state-directed counseling including information directed at discouraging abortion followed by a 24 hour waiting period (do they get a free handgun with their abortions there??). In all, Utah is a state highly hostile to legal abortions and to quote the author of this latest bill, Representative Carl Wimmer, “I’m pro-life and anti-abortion and I’m doing everything in my power to restrict abortions in Utah”.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of this bill is what wound up not being included in it. Thanks to the efforts of concerned individuals and the blogosphere, a provision was removed from an earlier version of the bill (which had already passed the house and senate and was sitting on the governors desk waiting to be signed when the controversy erupted) which allowed for prosecution, up to life in prison, for an “intentional, knowing, or reckless act” that led to a miscarriage. This wording, the original wording that legislators in Utah wanted passed (and were forced to back down from), could potentially have put a woman in jail for not leaving an abusive husband, driving without her seatbelt, or even falling down the stairs.

Speaking of Iowa and falling down stairs, it seems Utah isn’t the only state run by inane misogynists more concerned with penalizing women for having a uterus than defending their rights. Christine Taylor of Iowa, while pregnant, became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs, she was checked out and OK’d by the paramedics but being concerned for the wellbeing of her fetus choose to go to the hospital to get fully checked out. While being checked by the nurse Christine confided in her that, as her husband had left her upon finding out she was pregnant with their third child (can we say ass-hole?) and being unemployed at the time, she hadn’t been sure that she wanted the baby and had given consideration to abortion or adoption early on. Months later upon revealing this to said nurse after the aforementioned tumble down her stairs, she is asked again to relate her story to a doctor who, upon asking her some more questions, has her promptly arrested for attempted infanticide. I guess the doctors thought her concern for the well being of her baby was indicative of a desire to cause a miscarriage (no one said you have to have common sense to become a doctor). Christine spent two days in jail, not the healthiest place for a pregnant woman, and after three weeks of investigation the District Attorney declined to prosecute. That he declined to prosecute is a good thing, but the why is the disturbing part. He didn’t decline due to the inanity of the situation, he didn’t decline due to the egregious breach of doctor patient confidentiality or the fact that it’d be impossible to prove that this woman had any intent to do harm when she fell or even the simple fact that you’re talking about a thought crime. No, the DA decided not to prosecute her due to the wording of the law. According to Iowa state law a woman has to be in her third trimester for this law to apply, and while the hospital staff had thought that Christine was early in her third trimester, she was actually late in her second. In other words, had Christine fallen just a few weeks later she’d be delivering her third child in an Iowa jail. ‘Inanity’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.

So next time you’re thinking how bad Indiana is, at least it’s not Utah or Iowa.

*****For more information on this topic and other issues of ‘Women and Freethought’ tune in to tonights live Dial-an-Atheist for a conversation between Freethought Fort Wayne’s own Rae Surface and Ashley Martin, Vice President of Campus Atheists and Agnostics of IPFW. The show can be seen tonight at 7pm on local access tv (Comcast 57, Verizon Fios 27). It should be a great show so make sure to tune in!*****

(further reading, a woman was forced by the police to be admitted to a hospital for asking for a second opinion on how to handle a complication with her pregnancy in Florida)

Is our idea of privacy really changing? This seems to be the case according to a recent PC World article, Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving.

The Anecdotal Evidence

Netflix recently offered a $1 Million dollar prize to anyone who could make a 10% improvement in their recommendation engine. Netflix’s recommendation engine is the software that uses information about the movies and TV shows that you have ordered previously and tries to recommend other movies or TV shows you may like. It took nearly 3 years but, in September 2009, someone won this prize. At the awards ceremony, Netflix announced round two of their competition.

In December 2009, Netflix was sued. The plaintiff’s claim was that the improvements were so good that the recommendation engine could actually identify individual people by their movie viewing habits. Netflix has settled the lawsuit, reached an agreement with the FTC and canceled their round two competition.

Google, the Knower of Everything, has gotten itself into 2 recent privacy-related. The first centers around it ’s Street View feature of Google Maps and the second was with its release of Google Buzz.

Google’s Street View is an additional Google Maps option that allows you to zoom to the street level and see pictures of that street as if you were standing in it. This feature is available in many cities in the U.S. and around the world. I personally find this an extremely helpful feature when I’m planning a trip to an unknown city and it was extremely helpful in my adventures in Toronto. The ability to find a parking garage that is easily accessible to your hotel room in downtown Toronto requires a certain amount of persistence and luck. With Google’s Street View I was able to “drive” the routes to these parking garages ahead of time, even identifying one that while more convenient was also going to be inaccessible due to the time of day and the lane control restrictions (i.e., good luck making a left-turn during rush hours) that would have been in effect at the time I would have needed access. While this concern over privacy related to Google Street View has been very minimal in the States and Canada, it apparently is creating quite a stir in Europe.

The other, and perhaps more disturbing, privacy-related incident involving Google is the recent introduction of Google Buzz. Google Buzz is Google’s attempt to get into the Facebook/Twitter market, however what gets the privacy advocates all in a tizzy isn’t so much what Google Buzz is but the process by which Google introduced the product.

Essentially Google turned on the Buzz feature for all of its GMail users, whether they wanted it or not. Having said that, you actually had to click on some confirmations to enable the feature so if you never answered the “Would you like to turn this on?” questions, you were not technically on Buzz. With Buzz simply being some other folder in your GMail Inbox it implied it was just another way of emailing but it was much more than that and many privacy advocates were concerned that this would create a lot of unintended privacy-related issues. Initially Google made it very hard for the average email user to “opt out”. Although it’s pretty straightforward now, there’s a “Turn off Buzz” link in the very bottom of your GMail account.

The Problems

What are our expectations regarding privacy? I personally expect my cellphone won’t be used to actively spy on me but I’m also aware that when my cellphone is turned on some government agency can track me to within a reasonable area simply by triangulating my cell’s connection to various cell towers. Maybe I watch too much NCIS.

I expect that if my school district gives my child a laptop that they won’t spy on my kids in a weird pervy kind of way but that they will have some kind of software to track if the laptop is stolen.

I also expect that the company I work for will be monitoring my internet usage, possibly for productivity-related issues, but also from a liability perspective. I don’t have any expectation of privacy per se when it comes to company-related equipment but I expect that IT won’t sit there and read my emails without cause. However there is a case before the Supreme Court that challenges a company’s absolute right to monitor when corporate policies imply that their may be a “reasonable right to privacy“.

The Analysis

The PC World article highlights a keynote speech at the recent South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. Danah Boyd, of Microsoft Research*, doesn’t think that privacy is dead but that what is changing, especially in the online part of our lives, is the expectation of control over our content.

And perhaps, this is exactly the problem. Have we given up the idea that we can be some kind of anonymous person leaving no digital tracks by default and only when, ironically**, we choose to go online do we give up the idea of anonymity? Or is it that no matter what we do we are leaving small digital tracks until we go online and then we make big digital tracks? Do only the big tracks matter?

Where Google got itself into trouble was the way in which it released Buzz not because Buzz gave up any new levels of privacy. I can “give away” the same amount of privacy on Facebook that I could on Buzz. The most obvious exception is if I don’t want to be on Facebook, I don’t sign up. If I don’t want to be on Buzz, I didn’t have a choice. Facebook follows an “opt in” strategy while Google’s Buzz was, although not exactly, an “opt out” strategy something people find to be a bit distasteful.

Again Google’s Street View problems had a more “opt out” feel to it. You could ask Google to remove certain pictures of you but you first had to know they took them and then know that you had an option to have them removed. In a memorable portion of the article,

However, others are quick to point out that Google is capturing its images from public roads, therefore whatever Google captures would also be viewable by anyone walking or driving down the street. The bottom line being, if you don’t want the general public to see you in all your naked glory, perhaps you shouldn’t be standing naked in the living room window.

The obvious counterpoint is that while the above position is understandable there is an expectation that if I’m walking down the street and see some guy naked in his front window I won’t take a picture of him. Something Google didn’t have the common decency to do.

The Conclusion

And that brings me back to Danah Boyd’s speech, when we do not have control over the content being published about us we may have some sense of being violated. The basic idea behind the Netflix lawsuit is both the idea of control and a feeling of violation. Can you opt out of Netflix’s recommendation engine? If I order a movie why do I have to be worried that the Netflix Big Brother (or worse someone else) will know exactly who I am, I just want to watch a damn movie. And so what if I’m obsessed with watching every episode of Air Wolf and Street Hawk.

Both of Google’s recent problems were things Google did to us not things that were done by us. Google stop doing things to me. Perhaps Google’s Don’t Be Evil mantra should be changed to Don’t Be Evil Although a Little Clueless Is OK.

And that appears to be the shift in privacy. We are actively giving up that anonymity and privacy but the recent messages to Google, Netflix, Facebook and others is don’t give it up for me.

? and Danah Boyd

** The Internet early on was heralded as the great equalizer because anybody and everybody could be online and say anything they wanted because they didn’t have to fear repercussions. You were anonymous or could pretend to be anybody. Now the shift online is to actually create an online version of yourself, not some fake avatar with wings and blue skin but simply a digital representation of your physical self.

Here’s the intro to an article in today’s New York Times, Texas Approves Curriculum Revised by Conservatives,

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Father’s commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

This is a huge concern because school textbook publishers often print their books based on the largest school systems in America, Texas being one of the largest. For more information on why Texas matters so much when it comes to textbooks, check out Texas Textbook Adoptions: Whither (Wither) Evolution? from the National Center for Science Education.

Here is the money quote highlighting the level of ignorance from at least one member of the Board, David Bradley,

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state. I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

Sigh… I assume “by the left” he’s referring to Thomas Jefferson or James Madison? Of course, in the closing lines of the Constitution you find the following,

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

Religious Fanatics

Clearly a ringing endorsement of Christianity as the official religion. It’s not like they amended the Constitution to forbid the U.S. government from making a “law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

What’s that you say? They did? The very first sentence of the very first amendment, you say? That’s weird, I wonder if David Bradley and his fellow religious fanatics know that?

and

I apologize for the delay in posting these shows.  Thank for everyone’s hard work and volunteerism….

Links used on the shows…

Newsweek’s “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.”

R. Blanchard and A. Bogaert’s study showing a positive correlation of no. of older brothers on homosexuality in males:
ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/153/1/27

F. Whitam, M. Diamond, and J. Martin’s study showing a significant concordance (correlation) rate of homosexuality between twins:
springerlink.com/content/w27453600k586276/

R. Lippa’s study confirming the correlation between ring-to-index-finger length ratios and homosexuality in men:
psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2003-05568-017&CFID=6251602&CFTOKEN=77584491
tinyurl.com/yldql7c

The American Psychological Association’s position denying that “reparative therapy” has been shown to be safe or effective:
apa.org/topics/sexuality/orientation.aspx [forward to page 8]

Phil Plait’s blog post where we first saw the Hubble Hart images video…

Our next live show is this Tuesday, March 16 7-8 PM on Comcast Channel 57 and Verizon Fios 27.  Rae and Ashley will be hosting and the tentative general theme is going to be women and FreeThought.  This will be a great show.  Feel free to call in 422-8708 during the show times.  We want to hear from you…

We have the Collision event coming up on Friday, March 26th.  We’ll talk more about that at this month’s meeting.  We’ll try to finalize schedules for the coffee klatch, skeptically drinking, euchre/game night, movie night, ect.

The weather will soon be perking up, which means we should probably start thinking about scheduling our first  Adopt-a-highway cleanup soon.

We have confirmed our guest lecturer for April!  More info on that at the meeting.

Hope to see you there!

Last week, a first happened for secular values in American politics. The Secular Coalition for America (as well as other key members in the secular movement) met with White House administration for a policy briefing. While this happens frequently for religious and faith-based organizations, this is the first time a secular policy meeting was held by the White House.

I got an email from the SCA about that meeting. Rather than re-hash when they said, I’ll just put the bulk of the email here:

We made history last week. On February 26, the Secular Coalition for America, along with a unified delegation of members of the secular movement  from across the country, sat down with White House representatives for an official policy briefing-the first of its kind for American nontheists.

Never before has a U.S. presidential administration held such an event with the secular movement, and it’s the latest indication that we are gaining significant momentum, and that secular Americans, numbering in the tens of millions, are a constituency that must be included in national policy decisions.

Since our meeting, rightwing groups have been telling the media that ours is a “hate-filled” coalition, but the truth is that our message could not have been more compassionate and constructive. We used this historic opportunity to call for protecting children from religiously-based medical neglect, ending military proselytizing, and ending tax-funded faith-based initiatives which discriminate and proselytize.

The topics they broached: [Source]

• Protecting children from abuse and neglect (especially through “faith-based healing”)
• Ending military proselytizing
• Fixing faith-based initiatives

While this certainly doesn’t reflect all of the topics that we secularists want the White House to be aware of, it is a good start. Here is a link to the full text of the SCA’s prepared remarks. It’s a few pages, but definitely worth the read.

What do you think they should cover next time? Let us know below, and then sound off on a poll the SCA set up for this very purpose.

This is perfect for:

• Those interested in blogging for Freethought Fort Wayne
• Bloggers who need a refresher course on blogging protocol
• Bloggers who wish to learn advanced tricks, like adding events, customizing homepage pictures, etc.

If you have a laptop, bring it, otherwise a pen and paper will do, as I will be demonstrating blogging technique on the conference room’s big-screen television.

Please comment below to RSVP for this workshop. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, feel free to email me: andy_welfle {at} freethoughtfortwayne [dot] org.

But I bring this up because lately I keep seeing the theme of demons come up.  I keep hearing that real Christians no longer believe in Hell; and presumably then, demons as well.  But there are many polls out there that suggest otherwise.  Here’s a particularly annoying Washington Times article that says about half of Americans believe in angels.  I am presuming if you believe in angels, you probably believe in their fallen counterparts.  The article also states that religious liberals are more likely to believe in astrology, the paranormal, and other whacky stuff more so than their conservative co-religionists, so take the article with a pound of salt, because I find that hard to swallow.

But there are plenty of real stories in the news about demons.  There was, after all, an official meeting of exorcists in Poland recently, so obviously some people still take this baloney seriously.

There was also the story in Texas recently (aren’t they always in Texas?) where a mother and her husband beat their one-year-old girl to death with a hammer in order to rid her of demons, after not having the cash to get a professional exorcist to do it up right.  I can understand praying that your baby stops crying incessantly, but if you fear you may harm your own child, you need to be removed from the situation until you can handle it.  Postnatal depression and similar issues are quite common for new mothers, but I’m sure serious religious beliefs can complicate the situation immensely.

I’ve been slowly digesting a book recently called the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches. This is not to be confused with all the other manuals on how to properly destroy people who don’t believe what the Catholic church believes, such as Tomas “The Hammer of Heretics” de Torquemada’s Copilacion de las Instruciones del Offico de la Sancta Inquisicionor (the official manual of the Spanish Inquisition, 1576) or  the Malleus Judeorum aka The Hammer of the Jews, by the inquisitor John of Frankfurt around 1420.

Keep in mind this book was first published in 1486.  It was the standard medieval text on sorceresses and their damnable relationships with succubi and incubi demons and how to destroy their heresies.  1486 is only about 13 generations removed from you and me if you allow a forty-year average life-span from then to now.  That really is not that long ago if you think about it.  It’s almost forgivable how so many can still believe this kind of stuff when you look at it that way.  I’ll let its first few opening paragraphs speak for itself:

Whether claiming that sorcerers exist is such a Catholic proposition that to defend the opposite view steadfastly is altogether heretical.

And  it is proven that it is not a Catholic proposition to claim any of these things: “Whoever believes that any creature can be created or changed for the better or worse or transformed into some shape or appearance in any way other than by the Creator of all things Himself is worse than a pagan or infidel”.  When it is stated that such things are done by sorcerers, to make such claims is not a Catholic but a heretical proposition.

Also, sorcery has no effect in the world.  This is demonstrated on the grounds that if it did, it would happen through the operation of demons, but to claim that demons are able to impede or bring about bodily changes seems not to be a Catholic proposition, because in that case they would be able to destroy the entire world.

…Also, what is subject to physical virtue has no virtue to influence bodies.  Demons are subordinte to the virtues of the stars, as is clear from the fact that certain enchanters observe the constellations in order to invoke demons.  Therefore, they do not have the virtue of having some influence on bodies, and all the less do sorceresses.

Imagine how terrified people must have been back then to think angels and demons were hovering all about you; that enchanters were harnessing the powers of demons through astrology and alchemy; that the slightest illness could bring about the end of this world and the beginning of the next.  It’s why people still say “bless you” after you involuntarily sneeze.  They used believe you sneezed out your soul, and if someone said “bless you”, it made it harder for demons to possess your body before your soul could find its way home.

I bet the people who still take their religion seriously have to be embarrassed to admit in believing a lot of the antique baggage that comes with their religion is true.  I’ve had a believer tell me it is offensive to ask if one literally believes in angels and miracles and Noah’s ark and all the rest.  I think it’s not so much that it’s offensive, it’s that it’s embarrassing for them to have to answer “yes”.