Buy This and You Too Can Be a Ritual Circumciser

I’m a really good shopper. Just this morning, I was reminiscing about the most holy circumcision practice called metzitzah b’peh, wherein babies get their tiny bloody penises sucked by a possibly herpes-carrying Jewish mohel, and I realized we ought to try a little Amazon.com therapy and help them.

Not the babies (well OK, them too). But I was thinking mostly of Brooklyn’s vital mohel industry. To clean up the Jewish-baby-hummer profession which has been so needlessly maligned, we ought to get rid of the mohels who bestow the gift of STDs on infants, and replace them with new practitioners.

So … Want an exciting new career? This is your chance if you’ve always wanted to slice into defenseless baby boys’ genitals and suck their dicks for a living.

Ready? Just go to Amazon and buy this infant circumcision trainer.

Infant Circumcision Trainer, White_ Amazon.com_ Industrial & Scientific

Then also add this to your cart

Soft-Grip Snap-Off Utility Knife with 6 Blades - Lifetime Warranty - Amazon.com

and don’t forget this,

bloodand Baruch’s yer uncle.

Now just pucker your lips and go to town. Practice, practice, practice. The salary isn’t great, but you’ll get plenty of tips.

[tip of the yarmulke to Balto Dash]

Toronto Pools Ban Dads After Muslims’ Demands

Every Saturday morning, I take my youngest daughter to the Y for swim class. While she’s in the water, I sit on the bleachers and watch her, and chat with other parents.

Apparently, that makes me a perv in the eyes of a lot of Muslims. And if I lived in Canada, and we went to a municipal pool, I might be told to leave the pool area while averting my gaze — because I’m a guy.

TORONTO – When a single dad signed his nine-year-old daughter up for female-only swim lessons, he didn’t realize he — as a man — was going to be banned from watching her practice.

[The father] was shocked when he had the blinds to the viewing area of the Dennis R. Timbrell Recreation Centre pool in Flemingdon Park shut on him, and then was told by staffers it was for “religious reasons.”

Would it help if my daughter wore a 'modestkini'?

Would it help if my daughter (below) wore a ‘modestkini’?

jolie

“I spoke to a staff member and she told me that it’s because of Muslim women, that we’re not allowed to look at them or whatever,” he told the Toronto Sun Friday. “I don’t think religion has a role to play in a public pool.”

The city aquatics department confirms the account. The public pool also has gender-segregated time slots for men-only and women-only swimming, with the opposite sex not allowed to watch. This is requested by followers of Allah, for the same “religious and cultural reasons” as the no-male-onlookers rule that’s in effect during girls’ swims. The newspaper discovered that the policy, and the accommodation of religious demands, is in effect all over Toronto:

There are currently nine pools across Toronto that run the female-only swim program. All pools follow the same policy of not allowing people of the other sex to watch practices,

said city aquatics manager Anne Jackson.

Though some Muslims may crow about these concessions from the kuffar, I doubt they’re doing themselves any favors. The mental image I’m stuck with is of men who are collectively so sexually repressed sensitive that they might feel or do something impure at the sight of females — even eight- and nine-year-olds! — in a swimming pool.

Is that how Muslims want other people to think of them?

[images from the catalog of modestkini.com]

Filthy Habit: Nun Gambles Away Stolen $130K

Sisters are doing it for themselves:

A Roman Catholic nun with a gambling addiction has pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $130,000 from two rural western New York parishes.

oopsnun

The Daily News of Batavia reports that 68-year-old Sister Mary Anne Rapp pleaded guilty Monday in Orleans County Court to grand larceny. She admits she stole the money from St. Mary’s Church in Holley and St. Mark’s Church in Kendall from March 2006 to April 2011.

[image via her.ie]

How African Witchcraft Courts Enrich Judges

Modern-day accusations of witchcraft often end in lynch mobs and terrible deaths. By contrast, accused witches in the Congo may be spared their lives, but not their meager savings.

“The Lucrative Business Driving Congo’s Witchcraft Courts,” via Worldcrunch:

In the Uvira highlands, the Bafuliru tribe holds Kihango court three or four times a month.

Men and women who are accused of practicing witchcraft are brought before the court to be tried. When a person is found guilty of being a witch, the typical sentence is forced exile, and at least three weeks doing forced labor for the Mwami – the tribal chief.

“The person must leave the community immediately. This saves them from being lynched,” explains tribal elder Edmond Simba.

In this remote Congolese region, many people still believe that sickness, death or accidents do not “just happen” – they are caused by individuals, that must be identified and neutralized. This is done through a tribal justice system based on traditional customs and superstition.

No kidding:

To detect signs of witchcraft, the “judge” uses a nylon thread that is “extraordinary and resistant,” explained the tribal elders that we spoke to. The thread is put on a metal plate, which is heated with fire. If the thread breaks, the person on trial is a witch.

Congo

It should be noted that the witchcraft trials are not free, and are an important source of revenue for the tribal chiefBefore the dispute can be brought to the court, each party has to pay a mandatory fee of $200 – the price of a cow – whether they can afford it or not.

The headmaster of a primary school situated in Rubanga, 10 kilometers from the village of Lemera, says the witchcraft trials are just a way to exploit the local poor farmers in order to generate revenue for the tribal chief. “It would be naïve to think this is a real test of witchcraft. The tribal judges, who are pawns of the Mwami, are bribed to hand out false verdicts,” he says.

In August 2012, one of the judges admitted that he faked the result of the nylon test so that the woman on trial, the granddaughter of a friend, could be spared.

Being extorted and exiled is still preferable over the alternative, I suppose. Consider the fate of one accused witch from Africa, 15-year-old Kristy Bamu. For days,

Kristy was attacked with knives, sticks, metal bars, ceramic floor tiles, bottles and a hammer and chisel by [perpetrators] Bikubi and Bamu, who also used a pair of pliers to twist his ear. He drowned after he was placed in a bath for ritual cleansing.

Where do you reckon that lovely scene took place? Kinshasa? Kigali?

Try London.

[tip of the miter to John Zipps; image via Worldcrunch]

Priest Collared; Robbed His Own Church

Father Couture’s going to have to do a lot of praying:

A two-year police investigation has ended with the arrest of a Windsor priest who allegedly spent almost a decade stealing more than $180,000 from his own church. Father Robert Couture, 49, who was the priest of St. Anne’s Parish in Tecumseh, is charged with one count of theft over $5,000.

1couture

The diocese realized something was wrong in 2010, when Couture was granted a personal leave of absence and left the parish. Diocese policy dictates that when a church has a change of pastors, there is an audit of the parish’s finances. Diocese auditors raised a number of questions, including a number of expenses charged to the church and a previously unknown bank account in the parish’s name.

[photo by Dan Janisse via the Windsor Star]

Man Loses Faith, So Porcelain Saint Cries Blood!

A miracle in the Philippines!

[A] statue of Our Lady of Fatima, made of porcelain, started weeping tears of “blood” on Monday night, said resident Joy Rayla. She told Sun.Star that her 14-year-old son was the one who first noticed the blood coming out of the statue’s eyes. Her son said the statue also wept blood last Good Friday, March 29.

Joy believes the incident has something to do with her husband’s losing faith in God, adding that her 41-year-old husband was once an active member of the church, but lost faith due to personal problems.

weepingstatue

We’e been down this road many times before.

In 1995, a Madonna statue appeared to weep blood in the town of Civitavecchia in Italy. About 60 witnesses testified to witnessing the miracle. The local bishop said that he himself had seen it weep. The blood on the statue was later found to be male. The statue’s owner, Fabio Gregori, refused to take a DNA test. After the Civitavecchia case, dozens of reputedly miraculous statues were reported. Almost all were shown to be hoaxes, where blood, red paint, or water was splashed on the faces of the statues.

In 2008, church custodian Vincenzo Di Costanzo went on trial in northern Italy for faking blood on a statue of the Virgin Mary when his own DNA was matched to the blood.

In some countries, though, it’s not the hoaxers who face legal consequences, but the skeptics who oppose them.

Late last year, an Indian rationalist and atheist, Sanal Edamaruku, disproved claims that a Jesus statue had spontaneously begun to produce tears. He traced the source of the liquid to a leaky sewage pipe, and demonstrated that the water-producing feat of the statue was easily explained by capillary action.

After India’s Catholic Christian Secular Forum filed a complaint, Indian prosecutors charged Edamaruku with blasphemy, claiming he deserved jailtime for “deliberately hurting religious feelings and attempting malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments.” Edamaruku went into hiding for two months and eventually fled to Finland.

Here’s a CNN video about the affair:

India’s prosecutors should probably consider putting Catholic clergy on trial too; after all, surprisingly enough, the Vatican is rather skeptical about these so-called miracles. According to Wikipedia,

Authorities of the Catholic Church … set very high barriers for their acceptance. … Even at the local level, Catholic priests have expelled people who claim weeping statues from their local church.

Monks Steal Movies

Via Gizmodo U.K.:

The suspicions of Limerick rental shop owner Paul Flynn were raised earlier this year, when a local priest expressed an opinion about Oscar-winning historical drama Lincoln. When questioned about how he had managed to watch it seeing as the film wasn’t yet in cinemas or out to rent, the priest said “…we have a film club once a week and we watched it up at the monastery.”

When pushed by the investigative local business owner, the priest also confessed to multiple additional counts of pirating films before their commercial release,

Abuser Priest Was in Charge of Victim Payouts

The Australian clergyman who shared responsibility for assessing claims by victims of church sex abuse now turns out to have been a serial abuser of little boys himself.

Monsignor Penn Jones, of the Melbourne archdiocese, was first a director and then the chairman of Catholic Church Insurance. CCI helps determine how much money claimants are entitled to.

The Church said it didn’t learn of Jones’ molestations until 2004, nine years after he died.

priestkid

The complaints against Msgr Jones included that he abused at least three young boys at summer camps in the 1960s, touching them in showers and raping at least one.

Msgr Jones was the school chaplain at Cathedral College in the ’60s, and had regular contact with choirboys when he was based at St Patrick’s Cathedral.

“Had there been knowledge of his abuse at the time of these appointments, they would not have been made,” CCI chief executive Peter Rush told the Herald Sun.

[cartoon by Adam Zyglis via tin-god.com]

Breaking: At 11th Hour, Oklahoma Joe’s Nixes Fundraiser For Kids; Doesn’t Serve Atheists

[UPDATES 1 AND 2 BELOW]

As best as I can piece together by following the web and Facebook trail, this happened tonight in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, about 20 miles from Tulsa.

A state chapter of Camp Quest, an organization that runs science camps where kids from secular and religious families mix, had planned a dinner and fundraiser at Oklahoma Joe’s, a local BBQ restaurant. The group communicated with the restaurant weeks ahead of time and made sure that all comers could be accommodated. Oklahoma Joe’s said sure, and even offered to donate 10 percent of the food and beverage proceeds.

Camp Quest Oklahoma then put up flyers and began promoting the dinner on social media, touting Joe’s as the place with the best ribs in the greater Tulsa area. The group was expecting about 50-60 diners/donors to show up.

Camp Quest Fund Raiser Dinner

Today, roughly an hour after the event started, owner Joe Davidson belatedly got wind of the fact that Camp Quest is run by secular people. That was enough to make him change his mind. On the spot, the restaurant canceled the fundraiser and put the following note on the door:

Camp Quest Fund Raiser Dinner-1

“Everyone except atheists?” asked Camp Quest supporter Nicole Cook on the group’s Facebook page, addressing Davidson and his note. “Is this legal? Do you kick out Jews?”

Those are good questions. I have a call in to both Mr. Davidson and to Camp Quest to try to get some answers, and will update this story if new and pertinent information becomes available.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

UPDATE, 11:45 p.m. EST: I just got off the phone with Cindy Cooper, Vice President of Camp Quest Oklahoma.

She confirmed the account above, and added that months ago, Camp Quest volunteers gave the restaurant camp literature and invited the management to visit the group’s website. Cooper also says that the flyer for the event was approved by Davidson’s wife; the flyer makes explicit mention of the organization’s humanist leanings.

That’s true, and that does make it unlikely that Joe Davidson was being completely truthful on Tulsa Fox23 News tonight, when he claimed that the group had misled him about its mission and background.

Though Cooper has already seen a backlash brewing against Oklahoma Joe’s since news of the conflict began filtering out in the early evening — with irate non-theists taking to sites as diverse as Reddit and Yelp to voice their displeasure — she predicts that the kerfuffle will benefit Oklahoma Joe’s.

“This is Oklahoma,” she says. “It’ll probably end up being played like ‘poor Christians being persecuted for their beliefs.’ It wouldn’t surprise me if Christians start visiting the restaurant just to take a stand, like they did with Chick-fil-A.”

The events of Monday night have left her and her colleagues a little rattled, but Camp Quest has no desire to become a pawn in the culture war, says Cooper. “We try to maintain a neutral image, because it’s not about us — it’s about the kids,” she says.

“By the way, we have plenty of Christian children as campers. It wouldn’t occur to us to discriminate against them. I wish it worked the same the other way around.”

Note: My call to Joe Davidson has not yet been returned.

UPDATE 2, 12:30 a.m.: Hemant Mehta has more, including quotes from Joe Davidson (via American Atheists) and, in the comments, an account by an eye witness — one of the Camp Quest diners.

Tortured and Beheaded For ‘Sorcery’

A belief in invisible creatures and all kinds of supernatural evil produces evil of a very earthly kind:

Two elderly women were beheaded in Papua New Guinea after being tortured for three days, a report said Monday, the latest in a string of sorcery-related crimes.

“The two women were rounded up and taken to Lopele village after they were suspected of practising sorcery and blamed for the death of the former teacher, who was from Lopele village,” said [a police source].

witchcraft beheading - Google Search

They were tortured for three days, suffering knife and axe wounds, before being beheaded in front of the police who had been sent to the village to mediate, the report said.

The killings come just days after another report that six women accused of sorcery were tortured with hot irons in an Easter “sacrifice” in the Southern Highlands. …

There have been several other cases of witchcraft and cannibalism in PNG in recent years, with a man reportedly found eating his screaming, newborn son during a sorcery initiation ceremony in 2011.

T-Shirt Wars: Mother Mary vs. Santa Muerte

Blogger Elie Fares gets all up in some clothing store’s grill about a T-shirt the store sells. This one:

bershka-shirt-lebanon-christianity-2

He’s terribly upset, because he claims that “not even with the most out-of-the-box approaches [can it] not be considered as a distortion of many Christian icons of Mary.” He says this “demonizes religious holy figures” and that it is “unacceptable,” “revolting,” and “offensive.”

Except that even your Moral Compass host knows, despite his atheism, that that’s a picture of Santa Muerte, the ever-more-popular Catholic folk saint venerated mostly in Mexico.

So can we all dial back the outrage now? Thanks.

Church of England Priest Accused of 18 Kid Rapes

From the Argus (U.K.):

A retired Church of England priest from East Sussex goes on trial today (April 9) after pleading not guilty to a string of sex attacks on 18 girls and boys dating back more than 50 years. Canon Gordon Rideout, 74, is accused of committing 38 offences over an 11-year period between January 1962 and January 1973. At Lewes Crown Court in October, he denied 36 counts of indecent assault and two counts of attempted rape.