Written by Josh M, News Team | 11 May 2012

(Image: Benjamin Wheelock, Salon.com)

On May 9, 2012, President Obama, who has for years said that his view of marriage equality is still “evolving,” told ABC news in an unanticipated move, “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that, for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married” (video may not stream for a few days, due to server-overload on their end).

Reactions, of course, vary.

Republicans and the religious right have taken a predictable stance on the issue.  Romney’s senior advisor, Ed Gillespie, spoke on MSNBC, detailing the position of the Romney campaign.  In short, they are still of the opinion that marriage is between “one man and one woman,” and Romney has gone so far as to threaten a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage for all states (which, it should be said, goes against their stated “states'-rights” agenda, wherein the government is supposed to not make decisions for individual states…see the short video linked at the end of this article).  Their conservative base is naturally behind their stance.

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Written by Richard Ponce, News Team | 25 April 2012

The First Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Convention was held in Manila on Saturday April 21^st by the Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Society (PATAS). This event is notable in that it came into being from a grassroots organization started on Facebook only just over a year ago. The ambitious work of its members, its chairperson Marissa Torres Langseth and president John Paraiso, drew a crowd of around 150 supporters and speakers from many organizations around the world. Don’t be fooled by the size of the turnout; this is truly a spark in a tinderbox.

The vast majority of people in the Philippines are fervently religious, the country being predominantly Roman Catholic with an Islamic population in the south, and it is also highly superstitious. At the convention we learned of the power of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, where voters are outright coerced into election choices under the threat of excommunication. Even more alarming is the church’s stance on birth control, abortion rights and, women’s rights. The church’s influence has led to overpopulation with a majority of Filipinos living in poverty, where AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase. Lack of basic education and the threat of damnation for rational family planning plague the population. Undue meddling in the government by the church has allowed it to maintain control since it was forced onto the Filipino population by the Spaniards.  But times are changing. As Marissa Torres Langseth wrote in the preamble to the convention, “No more hiding, no more lying—we are coming out…Our tools are logic, critical thinking, reason, science.”

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