I had a conversation with my Catholic uncle regarding religion, and my lack thereof, and he argued, “What’s to stop me from killing someone if I didn’t have the Bible?”

Well, obviously God is something he needs to quell whatever demons he fosters. But just because because he needs a book to tell him what to do/not do,…

Trump certainly hasn’t read the Bible in his life - he just waves his Bible around according to where he is doing a rally. I’m an athiest but know lots of lovely people of different religions. This Bible belt rhetoric where the priest is infallable, and even when he is caught out it’s the victims who pay for his…

One of my friends suggested I run for a local office a couple of years ago, because I’m generally pretty civic minded. She was surprised when I told her I could never get elected. Why? I’m an atheist and I refuse to lie about that with some bullshit lipservice like, “I was raised Catholic.”

I live a secular life, and I think I’m largely a good person. It drives me insane that predators and scammers like these can claim a moral high ground over me because of their religion, and our society will largely agree.

I had one in the early 70's. I was married to the fetus’ father. We had already decided we didn’t want any children.

Holy rollers! I’d like their defence to be “God told us to; prove otherwise” and watch lawyers and theologians tie themselves and other in philosophical knots

In that case maybe it’s a good thing you weren’t hired. You would have had to get another job anyway. And imagine having to work for a boss who operates on the whims of the zodiac. You would have been blamed for any decision that you did while Mercury was in retrograde or some shit. In this case it was a bullet dodged…

I lost out on a job because of my “star chart”. Had everything lined up, prepped to give my notice a the awful job I was desperate to leave, and the final step in securing my new job was giving my time of birth so they could run my star chart.

There’s a whole conservative movement out there counting on you not knowing this history, and you not knowing this history is why we have soooo many young people thinking that abortion is a horrible thing that selfish women do to kill babies.  I’m so glad you know this now and hope you get ten friends to read this.

Yeah, astrology has been fucking up people’s lives for thousands of years in my culture too, like preventing people from getting married because their horoscopes don’t match, or stigmatizing women because Mars happened to be in some arbitrary position in the sky when they were born.

So? That people have been doing something for thousands of years because they didn’t know better is not a very good argument. Women couldn’t vote or own property in my culture for thousands of years. Medicine used to consist of bloodletting, homeopathy and superstition. I’m glad society has evolved

I read the Slate article when it came out. I was born in 1966 so was a teenager in the early 1980s. I did not know this history. It is so important.

Oh hey, assholes, people who torture other people are criminals.  FYI.

Slavery lasted thousands of years. Something being old in no way makes it ‘good’ in any sense.

Now obviously slavery is worse than astrology, that said, astrology is stupid.

Trump. Climate change denial. White supremacy. Stupid is having a strong resurgence.

When I was in middle school and high school, EVERYONE used “retarded” and “gay” casually as slurs. By the end of college, it was no longer part of most people’s vocabulary, thanks to a growing awareness that those words were hurtful when used in that context. But Twitter and Facebook weren’t around when we were in…

How is this not torture? 

They’re just taking a page from the Joe Arpaio handbook. Disgusting.

I could see this - maybe - if the inmate were some sort of wildly violent Hannibal Lecter type and the hospital staff would actually be endangered if she weren’t contained to the bed. But on a misdemeanor charge?? WTF???

So, is there a joke in there? Because I don’t see if. Also, let’s not just make homophobic jokes, let’s joke about child abuse? . Ugh.