Neither obligation nor interdiction.

Notwithstanding the conclusions of the Bouchard/Taylor Commission, who proclaimed last year that the ...

Muslim head scarf is no real threat to Quebec values and most women in the province wear it by choice, not out of coercion, ...

La fédération des femmes du Québec challenged a recent decision by publicly funded institutions to forbid their female civil service employees from wearing the hijab, or head scarf since it is a symbol of religious adherence.

Yet Sikh bus drivers are allowed to carry ceremonial kirpas and work while wearing their traditional turbans.

The FFQ considers that Muslim women have been singled out for specific discrimination and that this will cause further hardship for those who are immigrants or newly minted citizens.

Others think that fundamentalist, ultra-rightwing, orthodox, radical or conservative religious groups are exploitating the Charter of Rights for political gain. Djemila Benhabib in particular had some very harsh words for the FFQ public position that would allow women to wear the hijab while working as health care practitioner, for example.

Perhaps all women should consider donning a head scarf, worn in the hijab style, for one day as an expression of respect for our Muslim female colleagues who may be obliged to do so, as a sign of devotion to their religious beliefs or who voluntarily choose this symbol of cultural pride.

 

I'm talking about an organized display of solidarity and not just a snap decision reserved for bad hair days - if you know what I mean?

In Saudi Arabia, plus ça change...

Oh. Wait. Nothing has changed, it's still the same damned sexism and misogyny and state-sanctioned violence against women.

In Saudi Arabia, a judge - not an imam - has justified and excused men's physical violence against their wives.

There's a slew of news items reporting this misogynist's pontification. From the Associated Press:

A Saudi judge told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap a wife who spends money wastefully and said women were as much to blame as men for increased spousal abuse, a Saudi newspaper reported.

The remarks do not carry the weight of law, as they were made out of court. But such public pronouncements by Saudi judges — who are also Islamic clerics — are often widely respected.

A rights activist decried the remarks and said she and other campaigners viewed them as the latest setback in women's efforts to gain the right to vote, drive, freely participate in politics and be protected from violence.

In recent news, a Montreal women is taking Harper's government to task and possibly to court. Johanne Durocher claims Foreign Affairs staff and officials at the Canadian embassy in Riyadh have not done their job in facilitating her daughter's return to Canada and have endangered her life by reporting her actions to her husband. Nathalie Morin, Durocher's 24 year old daughter moved to Saudi Arabia in 2005 to be with the father of her son, after he was deported from Canada.

Under Saudi law, the children’s father has the final say over whether the children can leave Saudi Arabia.

Durocher claims that her daughter is being held against her will and that she is being physically abused. If Hamad Al-Razine is typical of the judges who preside over court proceedings that oppose husbands to wives, Durocher has a hard road ahead in obtaining justice for her daughter in Saudi Arabia. Radio-Canada has been following this story as it unfolds.

Catholic doctrine will only protect women from harm when they're fetus.

A pedophile - heterosexual and Catholic - priest assaulted more than 70 girls and young women during the course of his life. In 2006 Charles Sylvestre was tried, and finally admitted his guilt to 47 charges of indecent assault and was sentenced to prison where he died of natural causes in 2007. Last week the Catholic Church settled with one of his victims.

An Ontario woman who was repeatedly raped by a Roman Catholic priest while she was a girl has received what is believed to be the largest individual settlement in a sexual abuse case in Canada — $2 million. The victim, Lou Ann Soontiens, was in grade school when the abuse began at the hands of Rev. Charles Sylvestre. It continued for seven years.

CBC's The Fifth Estate investigated the case of Charles Sylvestre. Given the scale of the abuse, harm and damage he inflicted to the daughters of devout Catholic parishioners, how is it that he was allowed to continue his campaign of sexual terror against little girls?

Only the continued complicity of his superiors in the arch-diocese can explain how, in spite of evidence such as sworn police statements, Sylvestre committed acts of physically, emotionally and spiritually violence against at least 70 female children for over 50 years.

Cardinal G. Emmett Carter, for example. A ferocious, even vicious abortion-criminalizer, the Catholic Cardinal seemingly considered attacks upon the physical, emotional and spiritual integrity of female children a lesser evil, or perhaps no evil at all if perpetrated by a priest in his diocese? Callous indifference to the lives of women, unless they are fulfilling their purpose as human incubators - or refusing to do so, appears to be a professional requirement for the clerics of the Catholic Church, especially the very ambitious ones.

Zygote Zealots in New Zealand.

New Zealand Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign researcher Alison McCulloch wants the abortion-criminalizing organization that is currently attempting to secure a court ruling to award full human rights to fertilized eggs to disclose who is funding its legal battle.

“It’s not just about abortion. It never is,” Ms. McCulloch said. “It’s about a minority morals agenda that opposes sex education, contraception, civil unions and gay marriage. Embryos have human rights, gays and women don’t.”

Meanwhile, the Abortion Law Reform Association is lobbying members of its Parliament to publicly support the Abortion Supervisory Committee.

"The Crown lawyers defending the ASC, and in turn the reproductive rights of New Zealand women, need to be given the full backing of legislators in the face of a
case that is aimed at ending access to safe abortions," Alranz president Margaret Sparrow says in a statement.

In New Zealand, most abortions are allowed by physicians on mental health ground. Women and their health care practitioners are bound by laws regulating the termination of pregnancy. Dr Sparrow suggests New Zealand could do what the Australian state of Victoria did - decriminalize abortion. However, until that happens, legislators should defend the status quo.

Pope Benedict has no sense of irony.

... And in other news, bears shit in the woods. 

Pope Benedict XVI called on Christians and Muslims today to serve mankind with the "light of God's truth" while warning that extremists in nations such as Iraq were exploiting religious differences for political and violent agendas.

Speaking at the Al Hussein bin Talal Mosque, the pontiff, whose three-day pilgrimage here is an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim world, said the "tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?"

Wasn't the point of his Pontificating Preachiness' harangue to condemn stuff like this?  And this?  Oh.  Wait.  That's evidence of the ideological manipulation of christianity for political reasons, by the Vatican 

In counterpoint, not everyone welcomes the pope's visit.  

Jordanian clerics expressed disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI in an address to Muslim leaders on Saturday failed to offer a new apology for remarks seen as targeting Islam. ..."What the pope said about the Prophet Mohammed is untrue. Islam did not spread through the power of sword. It's a religion of tolerance and faith," Hussein said. The pope had in 2006 quoted a medieval Christian emperor who criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman."  

Which is of course MASSIVELY  different from the medieval clerics who justified the evil and inhuman actions of the Inquisition with the doctrine they claimed was inspired by the words of God and Jesus.

Abstinence Axed!

Yay! More evidence of a return to sanity in the Excited States. President Obama will eliminate funding for that 'boondoggle of historic proportions', aka abstinence-only sex ed.

His budget for 2010 will provide at least $164 million for science- and evidence-based sex ed and will ax the $160 million wasted per year on faith-based -- as in 'cross-your-fingers and pray' -- sex ed. He had already cut abstinence-only funding by $56 million and now ALL federal funding will be kaput.

LifeShite quotes Leslee Unruh, president of Abstinence Clearinghouse, a gang of fraudsters who promote this claptrap.

"I believe there will be a political backlash for those who oppose these life saving abstinence programs. The enemies of sexual integrity programs will feel the heat from the army of youth who have seen the light through these programs as they approach voting age," she added.

Huh? Heat? Light? Army? Enemy?

What's going on here?

Oh. Right. Munnee.

There's a blog attached to the Abstinence Clearinghouse site. It SHRIEEEKS: You're Gonna Lose Your Job!!!!

And how is this stimulating the economy by putting thousands of people who work for Title V and CBAE programs out of work? Life is easy when it’s other people’s money you’re spending - and it’s fun until it’s gone. What do they call that again?

Oh yeah…socialism.

If I were an American parent, I'd be doing handsprings and cartwheels knowing these lying, ignorant fundy jerks were no longer allowed to tell my children anything, let alone how to conduct their private lives.

May 7/09 SHRIEEEEK Watch

In the US, today is National Day of Prayer. (Who knew?) President Obama is, unlike his fundy-ass-kisser predecessor, not making a big deal out of it.

The Freaks are SHRIEEEEEKING:

For those Americans among us, today is the National Day of Prayer. For the first time since it was proclaimed in 1952, the American president has declined to participate. He has announced through the Mouth of Zero that he will "pray privately as usual, alone."

Please pray publically and with others, if you can, that King Zero, a/k/a the Antichrist, will be converted and repudiate Satan, his pomps and vanities and all his empty promises, and that St. Michael will cast back into hell those satanic forces who have surrounded King Zero since he went up on the mountaintop and fist-bumped with Satan under the delusion that Satan takes partners in his business.

Pray for our country and all who stand with God and for freedom.

In other SHRIEEEEK-Watch news, the fetus fetishists again demonstrate their incredibly short attention span. Every year, Planned Parenthood uses Mothers Day as a hook for fundraising. This year, author Judy Blume wrote the message. And she's taking immense shit for it. If you're feeling like it, visit her guestbook to give her some support.

UPDATE: Via Five of Five and PZ Myers, go poop on Focus on the Family's National Day of Prayer poll.

She Says, He Says.

Do you hear the sound of dueling banjos in the background?

She says: "Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only way you can effectively, 100% foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy." Asked how she squared her own experiences with her new campaign, she said, "I'm not quite sure, I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say, this is the safest choice.

He says: "Abstinence is a great idea, but I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don't just think telling young kids, you can't have sex, it's not going to work. It's not realistic."

Do as I say, not as I did - so that's Bristol's message. Right. One snarky candid media source used this headline: "Bristol Palin favors oral contraception: Just say no." That goes to the truth of the matter; fundamentalists religious rightwing conservatives view sexuality as a battleground in the war between women and men. They uphold the notion that women are in control by withholding sex; yet undercut that by providing men with control over everything else.

The Brantford Walters

This is gonna be fun.

The Phoenix Coyotes have filed for bankruptcy and Jim Balsillie, bazillionaire of RIM fame, wants to buy the team and bring it to southern Ontario.

Gary Bettman really really really doesn't want this to happen.

Balsillie has set up a website to put pressure on the league. Go sign up.

I bet Bettman's head explodes when he sees that, but how's he going to get out of it? If no U.S. buyers turn up, he's got a rich Canadian offering a princely amount for an unprincely team, and a ready-made market of seven million eager hockey fans who could make the team a financial winner on Day One. Bettman's going to say no? He's going to keep carrying the team on the NHL's nickel, just because Balsillie bugs him?

Should be fun to watch. Just to up the ante, Balsillie should offer to give 10% of the Coyotes to Gretzky (who coaches the team), locate the team in his home town of Brantford -- driving distance from Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo and west-end Toronto -- and name the arena after Walter. Then watch Bettman squirm.

I think the team should be named after Walter. The Brantford Walters.

MORE: Scott Morrison with more details.