Wednesday, July 27, 2011

You know it will happen.

There is a new study of human skulls that shows that humans living in higher latitudes, such as northern Europe, have larger eyes and brains than those living closer to the equator. This is believed to be due to the lower light levels there that require a little more umph in the visual processing areas.
How long will it take for white supremacists to use this as justification for saying that Caucasians are smarter?

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Special rights for the religious threatened by equal rights for gays.

This article by the Deseret News claims that religious actions have greater freedom than other actions. That is to say that someone is allowed to do things that their religion demands that people would not be allowed to do for other reasons. And to some extent this is true. During prohibition, churches were still allowed to serve communion wine, and religious organizations are allowed to discriminate against members of other religions in hiring.
Treating actions based on religious belief the same as actions based on other systems of belief should not be enough to satisfy the special place of religion in the United States Constitution.

The Mormon church seem to think that they are going to be forced to perform gay marriages. Now as far as I know, no church is forced to perform any marriage, and, under the New York law, religious organizations are specifically exempted. I assume churches can turn away anyone they want, perhaps simply for not being a member. Why a gay person would want to (or perhaps be allowed to) be a member of a Mormon church is beyond me.
However, it gives an interesting look into the religious mind. He basically says 'Their equal rights are threatening to take away my special rights."
At least some of the comments are fairly reasonable.