(mostly for fixing my sound system. )

I will give you an example that you probably have more neutral feelings about. I will talk about Latino’s, hispanic people, I think there are very few of us in Canada. But we are all over the place in the U.S. and well, we make up the rest of the western hemisphere. But latinos are extremely poorly represented in the secularist movement, in fact I think I was the only one in the CFI conference this year.

Even in Latin America, the secularist and skeptical movements are no where near their potential.

Do I think that Latinos just dont want to be skeptical, and that it would be racist against aglos to promote skepticism among those Latinos who just don’t want it? I think that its actually more a matter of promoting and growing an idea.

Norm Allen does the same thing for CFI with black people. The black community hasn’t exactly embraced humanism with open arms, but yet we still make efforts to promote these ideas across a variety of demographics.

I don’t think everyone who could really get into these ideas has been well exposed to them, meaning that its not that whoever is going to respond has already responded, efforts beyond our current sphere of influence are still worth making.

But I do think you made excellent points.

Katiekish is awesome!!!

On the other hand, I think it’s useful, particularly for those of us who are older, nerdy white males with a reasonable income (I’m sure not rich!) to nevertheless keep in mind that active atheism can sometimes seem a bit boys-clubby, conscious or not.

It wasn’t “giving permission” … It’s stating the fact that we’re not closing the door on anyone who wants to be involved. How is saying that a movement is equal opportunity giving permission to anyone? Chris said it in her original post – secularism is anarchist as it is, there is no one making the rules about who gets to be involved. I just don’t see recruiting based on gender to be productive or effective.

In junior high I had a very idealistic view about feminism being the be all end all answer to women’s right – it wasn’t until I started thinking for myself and left junior high that I realized that feminism, affirmative action, and putting efforts towards eliminating number differences is a waste of time. Not to mention that we over look too many people when we try to start including a specific group.

We start overlooking a plethora of capable people simply to be more inclusive. ..
First we’ll include all the capable guys, ’cause we all know they are all up on math and science and stuff, and then we might start letting in the second-stringers like those gurlz. Maybe one of them might work out.

A social movement such as secularism is equal opportunity. If there are women out there pining to save the world from religion, teach other about science education or explore the paranormal they’re more than welcome to come on it. But I’m not going to waste my time convincing them that it’s okay to do that.
Glad to know we’ve got your permission to proceed on our own.

Rather disappointing to run across this kind of jr high attitude on the first visit to Edger.