Robert Spitzer Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’

Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’

 PRINCETON, N.J. — The simple fact was that he had done something wrong, and at the end of a long and revolutionary career it didn’t matter how often he’d been right, how powerful he once was, or what it would mean for his legacy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer, who turns 80 next week, suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.

And he would later learn that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

Disturber of the Peace

The idea to study reparative therapy at all was pure Spitzer, say those who know him, an effort to stick a finger in the eye of an orthodoxy that he himself had helped establish.

In the late 1990s as today, the psychiatric establishment considered the therapy to be a nonstarter. Few therapists thought of homosexuality as a disorder.

It was not always so. Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.

Advocates for gay people objected furiously, and in 1970, one year after the landmark Stonewall protests to stop police raids at a New York bar, a team of gay rights protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a young Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case.

“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”

He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality often did not.

He also saw an opportunity to do something about it. Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.

That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists who would not budge. In the end, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress.

The arcane language notwithstanding, homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Dr. Spitzer achieved a civil rights breakthrough in record time.

“I wouldn’t say that Robert Spitzer became a household name among the broader gay movement, but the declassification of homosexuality was widely celebrated as a victory,” said Ronald Bayer of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia. “ ‘Sick No More’ was a headline in some gay newspapers.”

 Partly as a result, Dr. Spitzer took charge of the task of updating the diagnostic manual. Together with a colleague, Dr. Janet Williams, now his wife, he set to work. To an extent that is still not widely appreciated, his thinking about this one issue — homosexuality — drove a broader reconsideration of what mental illness is, of where to draw the line between normal and not.

The new manual, a 567-page doorstop released in 1980, became an unlikely best seller, here and abroad. It instantly set the standard for future psychiatry manuals, and elevated its principal architect, then nearing 50, to the pinnacle of his field.

He was the keeper of the book, part headmaster, part ambassador, and part ornery cleric, growling over the phone at scientists, journalists, or policy makers he thought were out of order. He took to the role as if born to it, colleagues say, helping to bring order to a historically chaotic corner of science.

But power was its own kind of confinement. Dr. Spitzer could still disturb the peace, all right, but no longer from the flanks, as a rebel. Now he was the establishment. And in the late 1990s, friends say, he remained restless as ever, eager to challenge common assumptions.

That’s when he ran into another group of protesters, at the psychiatric association’s annual meeting in 1999: self-described ex-gays. Like the homosexual protesters in 1973, they too were outraged that psychiatry was denying their experience — and any therapy that might help.

Reparative Therapy

Reparative therapy, sometimes called “sexual reorientation” or “conversion” therapy, is rooted in Freud’s idea that people are born bisexual and can move along a continuum from one end to the other. Some therapists never let go of the theory, and one of Dr. Spitzer’s main rivals in the 1973 debate, Dr. Charles W. Socarides, founded an organization called the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, or Narth, in Southern California, to promote it.

By 1998, Narth had formed alliances with socially conservative advocacy groups and together they began an aggressive campaign, taking out full-page ads in major newspaper trumpeting success stories.

“People with a shared worldview basically came together and created their own set of experts to offer alternative policy views,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist in New York and co-editor of “Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics, and Culture.”

To Dr. Spitzer, the scientific question was at least worth asking: What was the effect of the therapy, if any? Previous studies had been biased and inconclusive. “People at the time did say to me, ‘Bob, you’re messing with your career, don’t do it,’ ” Dr. Spitzer said. “But I just didn’t feel vulnerable.”

He recruited 200 men and women, from the centers that were performing the therapy, including Exodus International, based in Florida, and Narth. He interviewed each in depth over the phone, asking about their sexual urges, feelings and behaviors before and after having the therapy, rating the answers on a scale.

He then compared the scores on this questionnaire, before and after therapy. “The majority of participants gave reports of change from a predominantly or exclusively homosexual orientation before therapy to a predominantly or exclusively heterosexual orientation in the past year,” his paper concluded.

The study — presented at a psychiatry meeting in 2001, before publication — immediately created a sensation, and ex-gay groups seized on it as solid evidence for their case. This was Dr. Spitzer, after all, the man who single-handedly removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders. No one could accuse him of bias.

But gay leaders accused him of betrayal, and they had their reasons.

The study had serious problems. It was based on what people remembered feeling years before — an often fuzzy record. It included some ex-gay advocates, who were politically active. And it did not test any particular therapy; only half of the participants engaged with a therapist at all, while the others worked with pastoral counselors, or in independent Bible study.

Several colleagues tried to stop the study in its tracks, and urged him not to publish it, Dr. Spitzer said.   

     Yet, heavily invested after all the work, he turned to a friend and former collaborator, Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, psychologist in chief at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, another influential journal.

“I knew Bob and the quality of his work, and I agreed to publish it,” Dr. Zucker said in an interview last week. The paper did not go through the usual peer-review process, in which unnamed experts critique a manuscript before publication. “But I told him I would do it only if I also published commentaries” of response from other scientists to accompany the study, Dr. Zucker said.

Those commentaries, with a few exceptions, were merciless. One cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only flawed but morally wrong. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination,” concluded a group of 15 researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer was affiliated.

Dr. Spitzer in no way implied in the study that being gay was a choice, or that it was possible for anyone who wanted to change to do so in therapy. But that didn’t stop socially conservative groups from citing the paper in support of just those points, according to Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a nonprofit group that fights antigay bias.

On one occasion, a politician in Finland held up the study in Parliament to argue against civil unions, according to Dr. Drescher.

“It needs to be said that when this study was misused for political purposes to say that gays should be cured — as it was, many times — Bob responded immediately, to correct misperceptions,” said Dr. Drescher, who is gay.

But Dr. Spitzer could not control how his study was interpreted by everyone, and he could not erase the biggest scientific flaw of them all, roundly attacked in many of the commentaries: Simply asking people whether they have changed is no evidence at all of real change. People lie, to themselves and others. They continually change their stories, to suit their needs and moods.

By almost any measure, in short, the study failed the test of scientific rigor that Dr. Spitzer himself was so instrumental in enforcing for so many years.

“As I read these commentaries, I knew this was a problem, a big problem, and one I couldn’t answer,” Dr. Spitzer said. “How do you know someone has really changed?”

Letting Go

It took 11 years for him to admit it publicly.

At first he clung to the idea that the study was exploratory, an attempt to prompt scientists to think twice about dismissing the therapy outright. Then he took refuge in the position that the study was focused less on the effectiveness of the therapy and more on how people engaging in it described changes in sexual orientation.

“Not a very interesting question,” he said. “But for a long time I thought maybe I wouldn’t have to face the bigger problem, about measuring change.”

After retiring in 2003, he remained active on many fronts, but the reparative study remained a staple of the culture wars and a personal regret that wouldn’t leave him be. The Parkinson’s symptoms have worsened in the past year, exhausting him mentally as well as physically, making it still harder to fight back pangs of remorse.

And one day in March, Dr. Spitzer entertained a visitor. Gabriel Arana, a journalist at the magazine The American Prospect, interviewed Dr. Spitzer about the reparative therapy study. This was not just any interview; Mr. Arana went through reparative therapy himself as a teenager, and his therapist had recruited the young man for Dr. Spitzer’s study (Mr. Arana did not participate).

“I asked him about all his critics, and he just came out and said, ‘I think they’re largely correct,’ ” said Mr. Arana, who wrote about his own experience last month. Mr. Arana said that reparative therapy ultimately delayed his self-acceptance as a gay man and induced thoughts of suicide. “But at the time I was recruited for the Spitzer study, I was referred as a success story. I would have said I was making progress.”

That did it. The study that seemed at the time a mere footnote to a large life was growing into a chapter. And it needed a proper ending — a strong correction, directly from its author, not a journalist or colleague.

A draft of the letter has already leaked online and has been reported.

“You know, it’s the only regret I have; the only professional one,” Dr. Spitzer said of the study, near the end of a long interview. “And I think, in the history of psychiatry, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a scientist write a letter saying that the data were all there but were totally misinterpreted. Who admitted that and who apologized to his readers.”

He looked away and back again, his big eyes blurring with emotion. “That’s something, don’t you think?”   

***************************************************     

Avon supports anti-gay preacher in Brazil

One of six hundred outdoors Mr. Malafia released in Rio de Janeiro City on Sep 2010: "In favor of family and preservation of mankind. God created male and female."

This is a short post about Avon Products, Inc. and how their policies regarding LGBT community are not the same depending on the country. In addition, this a call for action for my friends and readers abroad, mainly in the USA, since Avon headquarters are American and their representatives in other countries are subsidiaries.

As you probably know, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) makes a list every year called Buyer’s Guide to help people decide from which corporations to buy their products and services. The personal care company Avon Products is very well rated by HRC, but their subsidiary in Brazil has in their product catalogs books written by a notorious anti-gay evangelical leader named Silas Malafaia.

Just to have a clue about ho is this man, he said in November 2011 to The New York Times the following: “I’m the public enemy No. 1 of the gay movement in Brazil“. Andrew Chesunt, an expert on Latin American religions compared him to Pat Robertson, a very known conservative and homophobic evangelist in United States:

He’s like Pat Robertson in the sense of being a pioneer in moving Brazil’s evangelical right into the national political realm.

Mr. Silas Malafaia is a television evangelist and he uses his milions of dollars to broadcast paid shows in two Brazilian’s national networks, besides having frequent meetings with congressmen in the capital of the country, Brasília. I highly suggest you to take a better look in all Mr. Malafia said to NYT.

"Minister Silas Responds": one of hundreds of books of Mr. Malafia that Avon's catalogs distribute in Brazil. Source: Avon Brazil site

Above you can see one of Mr. Malafaia’s books announced in Avon’s catalogs. Acoording to Avon Brazil, in their advisor page, their brochure “Fashion and Home” is the largest seller of books in Brazil. When Avon offers Mr. Malafaia books, the company is helping Mr. Malafaia to continue his persecution against LGBT community in Brazil.

Many of us had already contacted the company both in Brazil and USA, but we need your help to speak about this issue louder. This is why I’m asking you to send a message to Avon USA (Contact Us) so they can push Brazil’s subsidiary to review their catalog and remove the books of this anti-gay evangelical leader. Also help us to spread this call for action to your friends that are consumers of Avon products.

Besides that, you can sign our petition to Avon Brazil in this link. You just need to provide your full name (Nome completo) and e-mail address. You can also fill your city (Cidade) and CEP (Zip code) if you wish.

You can also speak out to Avon USA using their social networks: Facebook and Twitter. I’m really grateful for your help with this issue.

Original source:

http://queerandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/avon-supports-anti-gay-preacher-in-brazil/

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Richard Dawkins: "Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig"

This is an old issue, but it's always good to make certain points very clear.

[http://richarddawkins.net/articles/643584-why-i-refuse-to-debate-with-william-lane-craig]

Don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name either. Perhaps he is a "theologian". For some years now, Craig has been increasingly importunate in his efforts to cajole, harass or defame me into a debate with him. I have consistently refused, in the spirit, if not the letter, of a famous retort by the then president of the Royal Society: "That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine".

Craig's latest stalking foray has taken the form of a string of increasingly hectoring challenges to confront him in Oxford this October. I took pleasure in refusing again, which threw him and his followers into a frenzy of blogging, tweeting and YouTubed accusations of cowardice. To this I would only say I that I turn down hundreds of more worthy invitations every year, I have publicly engaged an archbishop of York, two archbishops of Canterbury, many bishops and the chief rabbi, and I'm looking forward to my imminent, doubtless civilised encounter with the present archbishop of Canterbury.

In an epitome of bullying presumption, Craig now proposes to place an empty chair on a stage in Oxford next week to symbolise my absence. The idea of cashing in on another's name by conniving to share a stage with him is hardly new. But what are we to make of this attempt to turn my non-appearance into a self-promotion stunt? In the interests of transparency, I should point out that it isn't only Oxford that won't see me on the night Craig proposes to debate me in absentia: you can also see me not appear in Cambridge, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and, if time allows, Bristol.

But Craig is not just a figure of fun. He has a dark side, and that is putting it kindly. Most churchmen these days wisely disown the horrific genocides ordered by the God of the Old Testament. Anyone who criticises the divine bloodlust is loudly accused of unfairly ignoring the historical context, and of naive literalism towards what was never more than metaphor or myth. You would search far to find a modern preacher willing to defend God's commandment, in Deuteronomy 20: 13-15, to kill all the men in a conquered city and to seize the women, children and livestock as plunder. And verses 16 and 17 are even worse:

"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them"

You might say that such a call to genocide could never have come from a good and loving God. Any decent bishop, priest, vicar or rabbi would agree. But listen to Craig. He begins by arguing that the Canaanites were debauched and sinful and therefore deserved to be slaughtered. He then notices the plight of the Canaanite children.

"But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan nations on Israel's part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, 'You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods' (Deut 7.3-4). […] God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. […] Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy.  Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives."

Do not plead that I have taken these revolting words out of context. What context could possibly justify them?

"So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli [sic] soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalising effect on these Israeli [sic] soldiers is disturbing."

Oh, the poor soldiers. Let's hope they received counselling after their traumatic experience. A later post by Craig is – if possible – even more shocking. Referring to his earlier article (above) he says:

"I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God's command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land.[…] Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
It is therefore completely misleading to characterise God's command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. No one had to die in this whole affair."

So, apparently it was the Canaanites' own fault for not running away. Right.

Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn't, and I won't. Even if I were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, I would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty.

And if any of my colleagues find themselves browbeaten or inveigled into a debate with this deplorable apologist for genocide, my advice to them would be to stand up, read aloud Craig's words as quoted above, then walk out and leave him talking not just to an empty chair but, one would hope, to a rapidly emptying hall as well.

Cosmic Solitude

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I heard this expression several years ago, but I didn't remember exactly in what context. It seemed very appropriate, though, to describe the feeling that comes over us when we face the idea that we are alone before the Universe. When we get to the conclusion that there is no supernatural being to protect us, the first sensation is of helplessness, it's scary. The intensity of that fear will vary according to how much the person was involved in the religious thinking, but it always occurs in some degree, except for those who become atheists in a very young age, before they develop the psichological dependence on this "divine entity".

Where did it come from?

The story behind the expression is interesting. It started with an interview a writer (Vides Junior) had with me about five years ago for a book he was writing, yet to be published.

One of the questions was:

8 - Does the search for knowledge necessarily lead to atheism?

My answer: No, but it favours it. It depends a lot on what premise the person starts from. I know people who have a lot of knowledge, but as they start from the premise that there is a god, they only take into consideration the arguments that favour this perspective. For knowledge to lead to atheism, the person has to be very honest, and he has to be able to face very hard truths, among them what I call 'cosmic solitude'.

And in the next answer I took up the subject again:

          9 - What is god?

My answer: That's complicated. I think it comes in part from the need to feel protected, in part because human beings are not able to accept their own finitude. It's hard to face the cosmic solitude.

According to Freud, 'god' is the father figure, and can be protective or punishing, or both. Anyway, extreme religiosity is usually a sign of immaturity, incapability for making decisions.

He got curious and asked me to get deeper into the concept of "Cosmic Solitude"

My answer: Searching the internet, I found that it has to do with Carl Sagan, but it's about the fact that we don't have contact, and neither do we know if there are inhabitants on other planets. I started to use the expression to define the feeling of helplessness that follows when we stop believing in a god. I got the idea from a book of Flávio Gikovate [a Brazilian author], but I don't think he used this expression.

The idea is that before the Universe we are nothing, totally insignificant. As there is no god to protect and guide (and punish) us, we are alone, helpless. We are forced to decide for ourselves, to assume total responsibility for our lives, and that's hard to do. This makes people more important, since they are our only source of support. It also forces us to accept imperfection as something inevitable, to understand that life is not fair and the world isn't good, and will never be.

****************************************************

Later on I developed the concept a little further.

The acquisition of knowledge will never be enough to make someone reconsider his concepts, especially the most cherished and deeprooted ones. You have to resort to an almost brutal honesty, you have to be able to bear the pain of realizing that we are wrong and trying to fool ourselves. Facing ourselves is the most difficult thing to do, and to admit that we are wrong causes a mental distress very hard to bear.

But after the fear passes, after the feeling of helplessness is accepted as the inevitable consequence of our independence, many things change for the better. One of the feelings that arises is an amazing sensation of freedom. Since there is nobody to protect us, neither is there anyone to punish us. The responsibility that is imposed upon us during this process also implies in freeing ourselves from 'imaginary sins', there is no such thing as sinning in our thoughts, the only thing that matters are the concrete results of our actions. We are alone before the Universe, that's true, but we have each other; human solidarity assumes an entirely new meaning.

The idea that we are absolutely insignificant in the great scheme of things, that the Universe wouldn't change a bit if our little planet would cease to exist, is a hard blow on our self-esteem. The paradox of our existence is this: on one hand we are nothing to the Cosmos, on the other hand we are extremely important to the people around us.

Alone in the Universe, but together.

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[Originally posted on  http://bulevoador.haaan.com/2011/04/17/solidao-cosmica/ - translated by myself]

The Pope Has Hired a Lawyer

From the blog Proud Atheists:
http://proudatheists.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/the-pope-has-hired-a-lawyer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ProudAtheists+%28Proud+Atheists%29

In Kentucky, the 51-year-old attorney is defending Pope Benedict XVI from a deposition motion in a case involving child abuse by clergy. In a suit pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Lena is arguing that the Vatican cannot be tried for transferring a predatory priest from Ireland to Oregon. In Mississippi, he is defending the Vatican against accusations that it participated in a money-laundering scheme. In New York, Lena is defending the Holy See in a commercial-licensing dispute about the use of images belonging to the Vatican Museums.
Wherever it is in the United States that the Vatican stands accused, Lena is there to protect it.
“I am counsel for the Holy See,” Lena said.


(The rest of the article from Washington Post)

Is atheism just a negative?

To begin with, for the sake of keeping things simple, atheism is in fact just the non-belief in deities. But does it really end up being "just" that?

I think atheism is a moment of transformation, it's a radical change in focus. It's like when you stop running after the mirage far away in the desert (the one that when you get close you realize there's nothing there) and start paying attention to what's immediately around you, having a good chance to find something that could really give you a means of survival.

The moment we stop believing in any deity, most people also stop believing in any supernatural fenomenon, soul and afterlife. When we drop these concepts, the focus of our lives end up changing radically. Since we're not going to have a "second chance with the people we love, all that's left is to pay attention to them now, be with them and treat them well while they are here with us.
We become humanists.

Since there are no supernatural fenomena, there's no point in waiting for a "divine intervention", we have to act and make decisions on our own. Since there's no "soul", the idea of "sin" also loses its meaning, and what matters are the concrete consequences of our acts.
We become practical.

We start to understand that we have to act here and now, and that knowledge is fundamental for us to be able to act more effectively. Studying and learning more about the world around us becomes more and more important, and we also want to share our knowledge with other people.
We analyse the evidence and draw conclusions instead of believing.

We start giving more importance to compassion and empathy towards all others, instead of worrying about some rules written in a book.
More humanism.

I have already said this in other occasions, and I will say it again: atheism is not something we decide to adopt, it's a conclusion that we draw after analysing the facts and comparing to what we have been told. Nobody convinces anybody to become an atheist, it's an inner, private process of each person. It might seem something simple and small but, as I tried to show above, it has dramatic consequences on the way we look at our lives.

Pope’s letter protects church, not its victims

Excellent post of Michael Nugent:
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2010/03/21/popes-letter-protects-church-not-its-victims/


Summary:
 
1. The Pope’s main priority is to protect the church, not its victims

2. The Pope wrongly blames secularism for priests raping children

3. The Pope’s apologies are incomplete and his appeals are self-serving

4. The Pope’s “concrete initiatives” are a distraction not a solution

5. The Pope is evading the church’s responsibilities to civic society

With the "best of intentions"...

U.S. Evangelicals’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/24012/u-s-evangelicals%E2%80%99-role-seen-in-uganda-anti-gay-push?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NewsWithConscience+%28News+with+Conscience%29

This article shows that it's not enough to have good intentions, we need to have a very clear notion of the consequences of a our actions. Naively these americans spread their erroneous and prejudiced opinions about homosexuality based on their religious belief, and now they have started a fire they can't put out.

They may become responsible, even if inidrectly, for the deaths of homosexuals in Uganda, simply because they weren't able to evaluate what influence their "information" would have on the backwarded and superstitious mentality of those people.

As they say, "of good intentions...

... hell is full."

An Atheist in a Good Mood - 5 thousand views

A video that I made about 9 months ago, already counts 5 thousand views. That's something I would never have imagined when I made it. Much of the initial success I owe to my friend Vides Junior, who promoted it in several communities on Orkut.

[The video below is a recent version with subtitles in English. Link to the original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP1XrIamPww]



Actually, I decided to make the video because of  him. He had made a series of videos by the name "An atheist in a bad mood". He's really just playing a role, he's a very fun and pleasant person judging from our many conversations through MSN and in the communities we both take part in. Unfortunately we don't know each other personally, but I intend to correct this as soon as I have an opportunity.

So, one day I thought that I would like to show that the stereotype of the -young-male-rebellious-atheist, always at war with the world, wasn't quite accurate, that there are many kinds of atheists, including older women who are very calm and peaceful atheists. Before you get it wrong, Vides was the first person I showed the video to, and I asked what he thought about my idea of calling myself "an atheist in a good mood". It's a kind of counterpoint to his videos, but not to criticize or put them down. Well, he loved the idea and approved, and only then did I publish it.

The video is amateuristic and unpretentious, I didn't care that much about quality. People tend to be very hard on themselves, thinking they have to be perfect, but that's something I have been able to overcame to a great extent. In fact, people many times like what's not so perfect, because that allows them not to be, too.

I don't know if I'm going to make any more videos, I feel nervous just at the thought of it. But I want to blog more, I think I'm better at that.

Thou shalt respect one another

Realistically speaking, it's not possible to love all mankind. It's not even possible to love the population of a city. Human beings are able to love, in a broad sense, a group of 150 to 200 people with whom they have affective bonds in some way, from friendship and family, to a romantic envolvement. Love is a feeling, and therefore we don't have much control over it. Love is also something very difficult to define, people use the term to justify quite strange behavior sometimes. Some can even kill in the name of "love".

On the other hand I have never seen anybody kill or behave in an irrational way in the name of respect. Respect is an attitude that we can decide to assume in a controlled and conscious way.
I concluded a long time ago that, concerning life in society, respect is infinitely superior to love. Love exhausts us, love demands a lot from us, we can only truly love a quite small number of people.
Respect is something we can have for any person, even if it is only with respect to his physical integrity.

Had somebody said "Thou shalt respect one another" at the right time and in the right place, many tragedies could have been avoided.

The Argument of Fear

[Also known as "Pascal's Wager"]
One of these days I had an experience that I have been through before. On request of an atheist guy, I entered a discussion through MSN with another person, who's that kind of fundamentalist religious type. I don't get into that kind of discussion any more, because I know it's for nothing, but since he asked me I obliged. As I already have some experience to detect what the other person really thinks, I went straight to the point. asking: "Do you think I deserve to go to hell simply for not believing in the Christian god?" She answered yes. I then asked, "And if it depended on you, if it were your decision, would you send me to hell?" Again she answered yes. (I must say that at this point she surprised me, people usually try to appease, saying that it isn't up to them, etc, etc.)

I'd like to make a clear point that I have nothing against anybody's beliefs. And I also know very well that there are many ways of believing, I know many people who believe in "something", but who don't condemn anybody else for not thinking like themselves, and they lead their lives without complying to absurd rules out of fear of not deserving "salvation". I have great respect for people like these and I would never think of trying to make such a person change their mind. I just explain what I think if somebody asks, and they usually don't feel threathened by that. So, we get along well.

But the kind of person who can point his finger at me and say that I'm a bad person just because I don't share his belief, puzzles me.The argument is so childish that it surprises me that the person doesn't feel ashamed to use it. I have concluded that these people lack empathy and compassion, they give more importance to a book than to the person beside them. The kind of god that this person believes in I can only describe as 'vain, resentful and revengeful'. Like a judge who will throw me in prison because I didn't suck up to him. This really reminds me of the Greek gods who punished severly those who didn't pay due homage to them. Sounds familiar?

A person should only be judged by his actions, and actions should be judged by their concrete consequences. It shouldn't matter what you believe or think, only what you do. I don't do bad things simply because I care about people and their feelings. Empathy is the key to it all.

I celebrate Christmas!

Many atheists think that they shouldn't celebrate Christmas out of "principle", as if it were wrong somehow. I think that's a mistake.

My parents were atheists, but they celebrated Christmas. Christmas in Scandinavia derives from the ancient Yule celebration (Jul, in Swedish), which was the winter Solstice celebration. They celebrated the return of the Sun, it's a fesival of Light. That's why we have candles and blaze. In the beginning it didn't have a Christian meaning, and you can also say that today most people don't celebrate Christmas in that sense. It's a tradition that is part of our culture, it's a time when families gather together and have fun.

I like it, from decorating the house, putting up the Christmas tree, creating a cozy environment with soft light, candles and appropriate music. All this bring me a feeling of well-being, of serenity, and I would never give that up.

I found out that Richard Dawkins himself celebrates Christmas and defends the habit. Not that I would behave any differently if he didn't, but I was pleased to know about it.

Of course there are many people who don't bring this tradition from their homes, and don't like Christmas. That's ok, nobody has to. I just think that nowadays we can attribute whatever meaning we want to these fesivities, each one shold do what brings him/her pleasure.

GOD JUL to everybody!

"Atheism brings a lot of peace"

The final "push" that made me give up astrology in particular, and my search in general, was to a great extent because I got to know RES. When I reached this point, the peace I felt was amazing! It was a such a huge sense of relief, like "whew! I don't have to worry about this any more."

There's a community on Orkut that's called "Atheism brings a lot of peace". And the guy who founded it, did it because he saw this sentence that I had posted in another community.
I'm not saying that everybody will, or should, feel that way. To get to this point, first you need to face the negative side of disbelief, the fact that there is no power to protect us. If we can overcome the fear of "cosmic solitude", what comes as a bonus is a fantastic freedom. And this freedom brings an extremely important counterpoint: responsibility. We can't hold anyboby liable except ourselves, we have to assume full responibility for everything we do. And people become even more important, because there won't be a second chance. After somebody dies, what haven't been said or done will never be said or done, so we have to treat people well while they are here with us.

The first RES meeting

In November 2000 I was in Porto Alegre for a few days and I talked through ICQ with some other editors of RES who also lived there. We arranged to meet in a wellknown bar just to get to know each other, everybody was very curious. One of them asked me how tall I was, he thought that since I was Scandinavian, I had to be quite tall. I answered that I wouldn't tell him how tall I was, that he would see by himself, but that I could guarantee he would be surprised.
When we finally met, it was very funny because he had deduced that I had to be exceptionally tall. When he saw me he got even more surprised than he had imagined. It so happens that I am 1,50 meters "short". (*)

The meeting was great and we had several others after that. Time passed and some moved away and we didn't meet any more, but I am still in contact with some of them, and we're still friends.

(*) This was another issue I had to come to terms with intimately as a teenager. At the age of 14 I understood that I wouldn't grow taller that that. I remember exactly where I was standing, thinking to myself, "what now? what do I do? do I accept this gracefully or do I start wearing high heels to try to look taller than I am?". And the answer came so quickly, and it was very practical. I thought, "you know what? I don't like high heels!". Frome then on I have always lived very well with my height (or lack of it). Like, you need to accept what you cannot change.

A window to the world

For those who are under 20, it might be hard to picture a world without the internet. When it appeared it was still pretty out of reach to most people, even more so in the countryside, 500 km from civilization. I felt very isolated, very lonely, because there weren't many people I could exchange ideas with.

The internet changed that. It must have been in 1999 that we started using it. In the beginning there weren't many resources, the connection was dialled, expensive, and there wasn't so much material to research. But that was how I discovered the RES - Round Earth Society (STR in Portuguese - Sociedade da Terra Redonda), in 2000. An atheist site, that was uncommon! I used to save the pages to read later, so I wouldn't stay connected too long. I found out that they needed editors, including English. I sent an e-mail offering to help. They accepted my offer (we all worked for free) and I started translating texts for the site and I also participated in some discussions. This helped me a lot to define what I thought, the whole reasoning process that I hadn't gone through as a teenager for lack of opportunity, I went through after the age of 40. Several of the editors lived in Porto Alegre, so we got to meet personally several times. It was really an enriching exeprience.

The RES lasted about 4 years, and then it simply got stuck, because the President didn't have time to dedicate to it, and he didn't delegate to anybody else the task to take care of the site. It was a pity, but anyway it was a precursor to several other movements, and it fulfilled its role. And there was an article in a magazine, Veja, in which I appeared.
http://veja.abril.com.br/050602/p_084.html

Even nowadays the only way for many atheists to find others is through the internet. And many virtual orgnizations became possible only because of this, in such a huge country as Brazil.
So Saint Google is our "patron saint" and Bill Gates is our prophet. ;-)

My mother, the major rebel.

My mother taught me that we don't have to accept conventions, we should always ask why, If there isn't a good reason to keep them we can very well discard them. I remember her always telling us that homossexuals, for instance, should be accepted as they are. And I remember her saying to somebody that there was nothing wrong with unmarried couples sleeping together, that wasn't a "sin". The only thing that was wrong was doing harm to other people.

When she read stories to us at bedtime, it was fascinating, because she was into amateur theater, so she made different voices for different characters and enacted the story in such a way that you felt you were seeing it all happening.

Even now when I'm reading I "dive" into the book in such a way that I sometimes wonder if I read the book or saw the film.

One thing is for sure, 99% of the time the book is infinitely better than the film.

Sofia, a woman of courage

My greatgrandmother lived in the times when Finland belonged to Russia. The Finns never accepted that and resisted it as much as they could. Sofia used to travel to Sweden and bring subversive pamphlets in pockets hidden in her underskirt. She also used to hide plates for printing subversive propaganda at the bottom of her cookie tin. Sometimes there came people escaping from the Russian side and they found shelter in my grandparents' house.

It's very interesting to know these things, and I'm proud of belonging to a family with so many stories of courage to tell.

Even older stories - Inherited rebellion?

My grandmother compiled a book from my greatgrandmother's diaries and letters. Because of that I know things about my ancestors since about 1750. One of them, he must have been a "great-something" five or six generations before me, was a general in the Swedish king's army (Finland was Swedish territory until 1809, when it was conquered by Russia).

So, the story goes that the king was a very young boy, impulsive and spoiled, who only wanted to go to war. This ancestor of mine would have lost his patience and slapped the king in the face. For that he got death penalty.

His wife put on her best dress, the one she had worn for her wedding, and went to beg for mercy, but it was no good. He was decapitated shortly after.

The family legend tells that the fabric of this dress was used to cover a chair, and my greatgrandmother wrote that when she was a little girl she once made a hole on the backside of this chair and saw, through several overlapped layers, a finely embroidered fabric.

Could it be that rebellion is genetic?

The importance of reading

I grew up im house full of books. My parents had the habit of reading stories to us at bedtime, and this certainly had a fundamental role in the fascinationa I've always had for books.

When I started school I learned to read in record time. I got my library card at the City Library. At that (in the 60's) the libraries in Finland were already very good, with a great variety of books. I went to the children's sector, of course, borrowed 5 books, which I read in two days, and went back for more. I must have been about 10 or 11 when there were no options there for me anymore, so I started to ask for books in the adult sector.

When I came to Brazil I already spoke a reasonable English (my native language is Swedish), but I didn't speak any Portuguese at all. A neighbor of ours, who was a teacher, used to lend books to me, and that helped me a lot to learn the language. In a matter of less than two years I was practically fluent and was studying without difficulties in regular school.

Reading provides the opportunity to learn from the experience of others, and gives us a variety of concepts to compare and decide for ourselves what seems valid. That's why it's important to read a little of everything, including opinions we don't agree with.

Decisive influence of my father

My father was very adamant about things when he was younger, and I ended up rebelling against him, because I needed an emotional support that he was unable to give me. But he softened a lot with time, and understood that confrontation, especially with people who are close to you, only push them away. When he knew I was involved with astrology, he didn't reproach me or anything, just made clear that he didn't believe it.
I was quite surprised when asked me to make his horoscope. He told me that, although he didn't believe in astrology, he thought I could be a good astrologer. He said: "I'd like to hear what would come through a "filter" like you".
That was one of the factors that led me to understand that it was ME who did everything, my intuition, empathy and knowledge about human nature enabled me to say things to people that were useful to them.
And it also made me understand that I could do all that, and probably much better, WITHOUT astrology.