What Interests (Religious) Conservatives Most?

"What a person reads says something about them — about their interests, personality, and attitudes. What a group or movement reads also surely says something about both the group generally and the individual members.

[...]

According to the Conservapedia Statistics page on November 26, 2007, the "most viewed pages" on Conservapedia are:

1. Main Page? [1,949,393]
2. Homosexuality? [1,773,481]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis? [518,380]
4. Homosexuality and Parasites? [453,027]
5. Homosexuality and Promiscuity? [422,571]
6. Gay Bowel Syndrome? [404,480]
7. Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence? [374,426]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea? [332,257]
9. Homosexuality and Anal Cancer? [294,820]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health? [294,197] "

About Atheism, November 29, 2007

No wonder they weren't satisfied with Wikipedia.

The New Atheism (and the left)

"If someone tells you that Islamic extremists are part of a “liberating” multitude because they are against imperialism, remind them that some folks in an earlier generation of leftists were quite able to be anti-imperialist and also to be against the Stalin-Hitler pact. They didn’t need hundreds of pages of theoretical delirium to figure it out. And remember that there were leftists whose theoretical hallucinations led them to imagine that the Second World War was little more than a reprise of conflicts among imperialists.[...]

Nonetheless, I am struck at how parts of the extreme left apologize for Islamic extremism in ways reminiscent of how an earlier generation found ways to apologize for Stalinism. The objects excused are different but the patterns of apologetics are sadly similar. It shows that there really is something I once called ‘the left that doesn’t learn.’"

Mitchell Cohen (professor of political science), Dissent Magazine, Fall 2007

An interesting article that has insights both on religion in USA as well as the Left.
It is no doubt a problem today that parts of the left do not follow up on their ideals when it comes to Islam. That is sad, because some good old idealism and activism for human rights is a lot better now than a relativistic fight for "the right to conform to your culture". I'm not sure it's the stalinist types that are currently defending Islam though. It seems to me it's the all too liberal left that does so. I hope the left can get more active, because a lot of the debate is hampered by the fact that Christians are more eager to fight for universal feminism and whatnot than the left itself.
It's going to be another black spot on leftist history unless they pull themselves together.

[Human rights] Do women and girls have human rights?

"at the 1995 conference in Beijing there were already signs of backlash, among them an evident increase in coordination efforts by the religious conservative opposition. An alliance of Muslim and Christian (mainly Catholic) delegations made sexuality - sexual orientation, women's control of their bodies and abortion - a topic of major debate, and strongly objected to the term "women's and girls' sexual rights". Yet the bulk of the progress on sexual rights had come - contrary to assertions in the press and by opposition delegations - not from northern feminists, but from women of the south"

Opendemocracy.net 26 / 2 / 2007

Sweet Reason: Promoting Humanism Among Religious Conservatives

"In February, Sweet Reason published a letter from Yalcyn Bican, a student who wanted advice on how to promote humanism in Turkey. His question was so important and complex that I invited two guest columnists to add their advice to mine."

Humaniststudies.org, Apr. 4, 2007