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These Secular Days
Sep. 1st, 2016 09:29 pmI have dived into several secular related projects in the past several days. The first was speaking at the Sunday Assembly, a friendly godless congregation of people who like "church activities" but without a diety. My presentation ws Everyone Should Be Secular which, of course, is a rhetorical statement because everyone is secular. The issue is whether they are a secularist or support secularism - which is carefully distinguished from atheism, which many assume.
A practical example of how state atheism, effectively a type of theocracy, differs from liberal secularism, is the issue of the recent (failed) ban of the burkini in France. A debate with a former union leader (whom I discovered is perhaps not so good at cognitive flexibility) led to my writing an article for the Isocracy Network, Burkinis, Bigotry, and Beyond, which has received a very good response on Facebook and has been crossposted on the LJ community talk_politics.
"Let's be blunt about it. If you support the burkini ban, you're not a feminist or a secularist, you're a misogynistic bigot."
Tuesday was also the AGM of the University of Melbourne Secular Society. As a staff member, I am extremely sensitive of my degree of involvement in the club and try not too heavily involved, whilst at the same time wanting to assist and encourage, because they really are doing a valuable job. On being asked by the president I took on the heady role of returning officer, and that really is as far as I'm prepared to go.
Following on from this, I've arranged a meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby has a meeting at Parliament on September 13th with Harriet Sing, MLC on The Future of the Safe Schools Programme (FB event). On September 17th, I've organised a meeting of the Isocracy Network on Paths to Marriage Equality (FB event) with speakers from Equal Love. This Sunday I'm speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Changing Definitions of 'Marriage' : Past, Present, and Future. Are we detecting a theme yet?
A practical example of how state atheism, effectively a type of theocracy, differs from liberal secularism, is the issue of the recent (failed) ban of the burkini in France. A debate with a former union leader (whom I discovered is perhaps not so good at cognitive flexibility) led to my writing an article for the Isocracy Network, Burkinis, Bigotry, and Beyond, which has received a very good response on Facebook and has been crossposted on the LJ community talk_politics.
"Let's be blunt about it. If you support the burkini ban, you're not a feminist or a secularist, you're a misogynistic bigot."
Tuesday was also the AGM of the University of Melbourne Secular Society. As a staff member, I am extremely sensitive of my degree of involvement in the club and try not too heavily involved, whilst at the same time wanting to assist and encourage, because they really are doing a valuable job. On being asked by the president I took on the heady role of returning officer, and that really is as far as I'm prepared to go.
Following on from this, I've arranged a meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby has a meeting at Parliament on September 13th with Harriet Sing, MLC on The Future of the Safe Schools Programme (FB event). On September 17th, I've organised a meeting of the Isocracy Network on Paths to Marriage Equality (FB event) with speakers from Equal Love. This Sunday I'm speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on Changing Definitions of 'Marriage' : Past, Present, and Future. Are we detecting a theme yet?
