Harlan Ellison talks about LRH

"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion"

So what does an anti-choice woman do when she experiences an unwanted pregnancy herself? Often, she will grin and bear it, so to speak, but frequently, she opts for the solution she would deny to other women -- abortion.

More HERE.

Jordanian honor killing

A Jordanian man was charged on Sunday with premeditated murder after allegedly stabbing to death his 22-year-old daughter because she became pregnant outside wedlock, police said.

"The father and his brother took the girl on Saturday to a doctor because she suffered stomach pains, and everybody was surprised to learn that she was six months pregnant," a police spokesman said.

"On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy."

More HERE.

How to make 'Stigmata'

Oklahoma abortion law ‘like undressing women in public’

A new Oklahoma law that forces women who have had abortions to post details of the procedure online is being sharply criticized by women's rights groups, and is now being challenged in court by two Oklahoma women.

As of November 1, doctors in Oklahoma will be compelled -- under penalty of criminal prosecution -- to post the details of each abortion they perform online. Among the details to be posted for every abortion is the patient's age, marital status and race; her financial condition; her education; and the total number of her previous pregnancies.

More HERE.

African Children Denounced As "Witches" By Christian Pastors

EKET, Nigeria — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him – Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/18/african-children-denounce_n_324943.html

Texas man faces execution after jurors consult Bible to decide fate

Amnesty International has appealed to the state to commute the sentence on Khristian Oliver, 32, who is due to die on November 5.

He was sentenced to death in 1999 for murdering a man whose home Oliver was burgling. The victim was shot in the face and beaten with his own rifle.

It later emerged that while deciding whether he should be given the death penalty, jurors consulted the Bible. Four jury members admitted that several copies had been in the jury room and that highlighted passages were passed around.

At one point, a juror reportedly read aloud from a copy, including the passage: "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death."

More HERE.

Why GOP Leader Opposes Hate Crimes Protections for Gays

In an email, Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Boehner "supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc) based on immutable characteristics."

"He does not support adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes," Smith continued.

Boehner's position, then, appears to be grounded in the notion that immutable characteristics should be protected under hate crimes laws. And while religion is an immutable characteristic, his office suggests, sexual orientation is not.

More HERE.

HUMOR: If God Had Wanted Me To Be Accepting Of Gays, He Would Have Given Me The Warmth And Compassion To Do So

From The Onion:

I don't question God. The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall put none above Him. Which is why I know that if it were part of God's plan for me to stop viciously condemning others based solely on their sexual preference, He would have seen fit—in His infinite wisdom and all—to have given me the tiniest bit of human empathy necessary to do so.

It's a simple matter of logic, really. God made me who I am, and who I am is a cold, anti-gay zealot. Thus, I abhor gay people because God made me that way. Why is that so hard to understand?

More HERE.

Richard Dawkins: Keep Libel Laws OUT of Science