Category: Women

Ethics, Safety, Security, Women

TSA Complaints Reveal Travelers’ Humiliation and Torment

by  •  • 0 Comments

It took four years, but the Transportation Security Administration finally fulfilled a 2008 Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA) request by the investigative journalism group ProPublica for documents detailing complaints against the agency. The information ProPublica received revealed some extraordinarily intrusive searches that caused the subjects substantial humiliation, pain, and in some cases physical injury. In one case, a female traveler complained that a TSA screener asked her to remove her prosthetic breast so they could swab her for explosives. Another traveler accompanying her wheelchair-bound mother reported that TSA screeners made her mother get out of the wheelchair and walk during security screening. As a result, the woman fell and was injured. Another traveler reported packing a full bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey in his luggage, only to arrive to find the bottle almost empty. Other travelers complained that after TSA searches they were were missing money, jewelry and laptop computers. When ProPublica asked TSA why it took four years for them to send the documents, they received an apology and were told the agency gets 800 requests a year for similar information. TSA also blamed the volume of records they had to review to fulfill the request, even though their total response turned out to be only 87 pages long.

Source: ProPublica, May 4, 2012

Atheism, Ethics, Religion, Women

Baptist Minister Publicly Admits Disbelief in God

by  •  • 1 Comment

Teresa McBain

After a lifetime in the church, Teresa McBain, pastor of Tallahassee, Florida’s Lake Jackson United Methodist Church, got a standing ovation when she announced that she is an atheist at the American Atheists National Convention. McBain publicly apologized to her neighbors back home for having been a fundamentalist who knocked on peoples’ doors to offer them religious tracts, hoping to convert them and believing they were wrong for having other beliefs. “I didn’t know anything about you. I’d never seen your faces. You were just ‘those people.’ And I was the one on the right track, and you were the ones who were going to burn in hell. And I’m happy to say, as I stand before you right now, I’m going to burn with you,” McBain said at the convention. McBain served as a pastor for ten years. Her coming out as an atheist resulted partly from her  participation in the Clergy Project, a private, invitation-only, safe online community of current and former pastors, priests and rabbis who no longer hold the supernatural beliefs of their religious traditions. The Clergy Project was founded in March, 2011 by Dan Barker, also formerly a minister for 19 years and co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in Madison, Wisconsin. When the project started, it immediately gained 52 members Since then it has grown to over 200 participants.

Read more →

Grassroots advocacy, Health, Religion, Women

“Clergy for Choice” Calls for 40 Days of Prayer for Abortion Rights

by  •  • 0 Comments

Logo of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

A religious group in Humboldt County, California is initiating a new, pro-choice grassroots movement in support of abortion rights called “40 Days of Prayer Supporting Women Everywhere.” Clergy for Choice offers a message of support for women dealing with reproductive issues, including pregnancy.  A 2-page, tri-fold brochure describing the effort (pdf) says, “We are religious leaders who value all human life. We trust you to decide about your sexuality & planning your family. Humboldt County Clergy are available to talk with you about the spiritual aspects of sexuality and reproductive choice.”  The back of the brochure lists daily prayers supporters are urged to make on each of the 40 days, like: Day 1: “Today we pray for women for whom pregnancy is not good news, that they know they have choices,” Day 11: “Today we pray for better access to all forms a birth control.” Day 22: “Today we pray for women in developing nations, that they may know the power of self-determination. May they have access to employment, education, birth control and abortion.”

Read more →

Ethics, Marketing, Women

Facebook Shuns Women in Advance of IPO

by  •  • 0 Comments

Facebook's Board of Directors

Fifty-eight percent of Facebook users are women, and women account for over 70 percent of daily fan activity on the site, but when Facebook goes public a few weeks from now, its board of directors will consist of only seven white men, and no women. To address this inequity, the women’s rights group Ultraviolet has started circulating a petition, and a group of women from across the world have started a campaign called “Face It” to pressure Facebook to include women — and expand the diversity — on its board. What’s raising eyebrows even more about the complete absence of women from the board is the extent to which Facebook depends on women, since women are known to be more avid users of Facebook than men and account for about 70 percent of Facebook’s fan activity.  Facebook’s estimated $100 billion public stock offering would not be anywhere as big as it is without massive participation from women — a fact that the demographics of its board fails to reflect.