One of the Steubenville rapists has been freed

And his lawyer has released a statement on his behalf. Got your puke bucket handy?

Ma’Lik Richmond recently completed his designated time at the Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Detention Facility. The past sixteen months have been extremely challenging for Ma’Lik and his extended family. At sixteen years old, Ma’Lik and his family endured hardness beyond imagination for any adult yet alone child. He has persevered the hardness and made the most of yet another unfortunate set of circumstances in his life. As with each other obstacle, Ma’Lik has met it squarely, lifted his chin, and set his shoulders; he is braced for the balance of his life.  While away, Ma’Lik has reflected, learned, matured, and grown in many ways.  He is a better, stronger person and looks forward to school, life, and spending time with family.  At this point, Ma’Lik wants most to be a high school teenager. In conjunction with his release, Ma’Lik, his family, and guardians ask that the media respect their privacy in this matter, as we all need to heal and move on with our lives. We will have you know that Ma’Lik will be taking all the time necessary to focus on his academic and personal goals. We ask for your support and prayers as we move forward, Thank you.

He endured, he persevered, he grew, and become more mature and learned — why, raping an unconscious young girl has made Mr Richmond a better fucking person. What a great thing for his character, and the character of any teenager who wants to improve himself.

There’s also a statement from the lawyer for the victim.

Although everyone hopes convicted criminals are rehabilitated, it is disheartening that this convicted rapist’s press release does not make a single reference to the victim and her family – whom he and his co-defendant scarred for life. One would expect to see the defendant publicly apologize for all the pain he caused rather than make statements about himself. Rape is about victims, not defendants. Obviously, the people writing his press release have yet to learn this important lesson.

What he said.

‘Corrective rape’ aimed at ‘curing’ lesbians

All right, I have to stop reading world news first thing in the morning. What did I encounter today? A crisis in South Africa — there is an epidemic of really stupid men who believe the way to ‘cure’ lesbians is gang rape.

"If we want to finish lesbians and gays they must be forcefully raped," says one, grinning at the camera. "A man must go back to his manhood. Women must be women. She must be ready and willing to have sex."

"They must be raped so that their gay and lesbian behaviour can come out," adds another.

The third raises his voice, points two fingers at his temple and concludes: "This gay and lesbian thing must end. I say bang bang bang!"

If I were a woman, those men would turn me into a lesbian, I think. Also, no illusions here: this isn’t about converting women to heterosexuality. It’s about intimidation and power. Some of the events in the story are about women being executed after the rape.

Ouch.

Martin Robbins has a good guest post at Adventures in Ethics and Science on the Bora situation. I asked what is the path to redemption; he provides an answer. There isn’t one. If you’re looking for a way back to the previous situation, you won’t find it.

Because ultimately, getting your friends and your career back shouldn’t be the goal at all. The goal should be to fix yourself, and to do everything in your power to ensure that you never find yourself back here again. That means acknowledging everything that happened – not just the stuff people have found out about so far. It means accepting that there may be situations that you need to avoid in future. It means admitting just how bad things got, and beginning a process of real, honest change to make them better.

It isn’t easy, and it may not relaunch your career or win your friends back or repair your damaged reputation. It may mean sacrifice – changing career, moving cities, accepting that you’ll never regain certain friendships – but eventually you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and know that you’ve grown and improved; that you’ve made genuine progress toward a better and healthier future; that you can be proud of your achievements in the months or years since you made the decision to change. 

Please arrest David Brooks

He confesses to criminal behavior. He smoked marijuana in high school, although he later stopped.

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

I’ve read his essays in the New York Times, and given that response to smoking weed, I suspect he’s still lighting up a couple of times a day.

But here’s the weird disconnect in this particular story: He and his buddies smoked weed back in the day. It was fun. They went at it for a while, and then It just sort of petered out, and, before long, we were scarcely using it. I’ve never done the stuff myself — I have kind of a phobia about smoking anything, from growing up in a house with chain-smoking parents — but that’s what I saw in all my friends, too. There might have been a brief stoner phase, but then they gave it up, or maybe would just have an occasional joint at a party, but it was not a serious problem. I knew more people lost to alcoholism than to marijuana.

Yet the point of Brooks’ column is that Colorado and Washington have made a major mistake in legalizing marijuana! Apparently he was a wise and sensible human being who could try a drug a few times without harm, but all those kids in those Western states? Not to be trusted. And how dare the government abstain from scolding activities that he once enjoyed!

But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.

In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be.

Right. Subtly discouraging lesser pleasures involves throwing young people in jail.

It’s bizarre. Brooks really is a prim little snob; what he got away with should not be allowed for Youth of Today, and he’s got this weird thing going where he wants less government except that the government should be using threats and the police to make damn sure the kids like the arts rather than partying. So…does he also favor shutting down all state-run liquor stores? It would be the only consistent position to take, after all.

But it doesn’t matter. Brooks needs to be jailed, just to encourage a nurturing moral ecology for the rest of us and to get him off the pages of the NYT. If they can’t get him on drug charges, how about arresting him for wanton cruelty to logic and reason?

Vikings football is rather hard to support now

Not that I was ever much of a booster, but this behind-the-scenes look at how team management operates by Chris Kluwe is disappointing. He was fired from his position as a punter after he’d achieved some notoriety for his progressive positions and lack of religiosity — and he now explains that it’s likely that it was because of those positions. And man, it sounds like he was working in an ugly environment.

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He had not done so during minicamps or fall camp that year, nor had he done so during the 2011 season. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending "the gays" recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance. I tried to laugh these off while also responding with the notion that perhaps they were human beings who deserved to be treated as human beings. Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

My limited experience with football coaches suggests that this isn’t an unusual attitude they take. Kluwe also stirred up concern because he said a few harsh things about the Catholic Church — I can relate.

On Feb. 11, I received a message saying, “Please fly under radar please,” from a phone number I would later learn belonged to Rick Spielman. The text message presumably concerned several things I had tweeted that day regarding Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to step down. Spielman later called me and asked me to stop tweeting about the pope because angry people were ringing up team headquarters in Winter Park, Minn. It should be noted that my tweets concerned the lack of transparency and endemic institutional corruption of the Catholic Church, which among other things allowed child abuse to flourish. I also pointed out how that applied equally to financial and government institutions, and reiterated that I had nothing against anyone’s religion, only against the abuses of power that institutions allow. Nonetheless, I complied with Spielman’s request and did not tweet anything else about the pope that day, or in the future.

Now I’m really looking forward to the American Atheists convention in Salt Lake this April — Kluwe is the keynote speaker. I hope I can meet him there, and shake his hand.

But then there are a lot of good people who will be speaking there: Barry Lynn, Maryam Namazie, Matt Dillahunty, Greta Christina, Sikivu Hutchinson, Vyckie Garrison…you should register now!

Uganda, Great Britain, same difference

Uganda is notorious for having some of the most repressive anti-gay laws in the world, but that’s not enough for the bluenoses of Africa, oh no: they’ve just passed sweeping anti-pornography laws.

The Bill defines pornography as any cultural practice, form of behaviour or form of communication or speech or information or literature or publication in whole or in part or news story or entertainment or stage play or broadcast or music or dance or art or graphic or picture or photography or video recording or leisure activity or show or exhibition.

It also prohibits any combination of the preceding that depicts unclothed or under clothed parts of the human body such as breasts, thighs, buttocks and genitalia, a person engaged in explicit sexual activities or conduct; erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement and any indecent act or behaviour tending to corrupt morals.

That’s a bit…broad, don’t you think? That “underclothed” bit is already being interpreted as a ban on mini-skirts, for instance — just exposing any bit of the thighs has just been criminalized. Give ’em time, they’ll get around to making exposing the knees illegal, and then the ankles, and eventually everyone will be wandering about dressed like Victorians.

But it’s not just Uganda that is run by prudes: David Cameron in the UK is anxious to police the internet with the same prim attitude. He’s been working with ISPs to lock down the internet.

The language of the mythical ‘porn filter’ is so insidious, so pervasive, that even those of us opposed to it have been sucked into its slippery embrace. And so even when it turns out that O2 are blocking the Childline and Refuge websites, or that BT are blocking gay and lesbian content, we tend to regard them as collateral damage – accidental victims of a well-meaning (if misguided) attempt to protect out children from the evils of cock.

But this was never the case. As Wired reported back in July, Cameron’s ambitions extended far beyond porn. Working through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has put in place a set of filters and restrictions as ambitious as anything this side of China, dividing the internet into ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ categories, and cutting people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.

“As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on “violent material”, “extremist related content”, “anorexia and eating disorder websites” and “suicide related websites”, “alcohol” and “smoking”. But the list doesn’t stop there. It even extends to blocking “web forums” and “esoteric material”, whatever that is. “Web blocking circumvention tools” is also included, of course.”

And the restrictions go further still. Over the weekend, people were appalled to discover that BT filters supported homophobia, with a category blocking, “sites where the main purpose is to provide information on subjects such as respect for a partner, abortion, gay and lesbian lifestyle, contraceptive, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.”

Wow. That had me wondering whether freethoughtblogs was blocked yet, but as Martin Robbins explains at that link, they are being secretive about who is getting blocked, as well.

Hey, I wonder if they swapped the Ugandan and UK parliaments, if anyone would be able to tell?

Please don’t do this

Ken Ham is all smug and indignant over something an atheist wrote about him. And this really hurts to say, but I think Ken Ham has a case. Here’s the bit of “satire” written about a certain despicable creationist.

I’ve decided that for my Christmas dinner I will capture and cook alive, slowly, Ken Ham himself. I’ve a lovely place in a secluded wood all picked out with a human size iron pot of oil just waiting for me to plop Mr. Ham into and bring slowly to a boil. There’s no need for me to gag him either because we’ll be SO secluded, no one will be able to hear even his loudest yelps of pain. Man, this is gonna be a great Christmas. I’m glad Mr. Ham took the time to remind me of how evil and nasty I am just because I don’t believe in his god. He took away any last twinge of morality in me that might’ve said, “It’s wrong to boil people alive in oil and eat them, so don’t.” Oh well, he has no one to blame but himself for becoming my Christmas dinner! Hee Haw! How’s that for imposing my a-theism on you, eh, Mr. Ham?

That’s…unpleasant. It’s threatening. It is allowing a fundamentalist creationist claim the moral high ground.

You know what it isn’t, though?

Funny.

Removing the cloud of discrimination from conversations about science

It’s always nice to hear the grown ups talking. Last night on Virtually Speaking Science, Tom Levenson interviewed Janet Stemwedel and Maryn McKenna on the subject of science writers and sexual harassment/gender discrimination. I listened to it while I was grading papers, and I think it may have contributed half a grade point or so on my evaluations, just by putting me in a more positive mood.

Now you can listen in too — it’s a pleasantly rational discussion of a real problem, and that’s how we take a small step towards correcting it.

Popular Science Internet Radio with Virtually Speaking Science on BlogTalkRadio

So “halal” means “inhumane”?

OK, readers, you torture me. Yesterday I’m sent Joe Rogan, today I wake up to a horrific video of cattle being slaughtered. I have no illusions that slaughterhouses in the prosperous West are not horrible — but at least there are laws that if, for instance, if a cow falls down, you don’t get to have “fun” stabbing it in the eyes with a knife.

That’s a hint. Don’t watch the video if you’re at all squeamish.

I’m cured, no more meat

My wife is a vegetarian, and I’ve mostly cut meat out of my diet, too — I’ll indulge a bit when I travel, but that’s about it. But I’m done now. It makes no sense: it’s not sustainable or economical, but worse, it’s brutal and cruel. Rolling Stone has just published a remarkable expose of Big Meat, the factory farms that abuse animals.

I made the mistake of watching the videos, too. Fortunately, my dinner had been vegetarian already, or I might have lost it. So be warned.

Really, everyone, this is a small step. We’ve been cutting back on meat for years — I might have a small portion, once a week, if that. We’ve already got all the recipes we need, my wife is already fully vegetarian, this is just making a little more commitment on my part. It’ll be an easy transition.