A First Step to Ending Harassment at Conferences

At the beginning of this month, I was appointed to the Humanists of Florida Association’s board of directors. It’s pretty awesome (and, yeah, I’m the youngest board member). This occurred just in time for me to take a major role in organizing our annual conference coming up this fall. We’ve got a great speakers list and I’m really excited about it.

Recently, as some of you may know, there has been a lot of talk about sexual harassment at conferences [see 1, 2, 3]. One of the ways suggested to make conferences safer and more comfortable for women is to introduce an anti-harassment policy at conferences. So, that’s what I’ve done for this upcoming HFA conference. This policy will be in every packet handed out to attendees and it will also be given to speakers. I cannot describe how happy I am to be in a position to effect some real change in our community and I hope that every participant at our conference feels safe and welcome.

LOL, Christian Privilege

Happy atheists standing under our billboard

As some of you might have read on The Friendly Atheist, the Tallahassee Atheists recently put up a billboard. Just last week we moved the sign to a new location in town (because the contract was up for the other location) and, well, we get email.
Here’s the exchange between this angry christian and Mark Palmer (founder of the group, the one who usually deals with PR, and also a lawyer).

Calling All Secular Floridians & Southerners

In Starke, Florida, some wingnuts put up a ten commandments monument at the Bradford County Courthouse on the “National Day of Prayer”. So now American Atheists and a bunch of other secular group in Florida (including Tallahassee Atheists) will be protesting this unconstitutional slab of granite.

Please join us if you’re free that day and you live in or near northeast Florida.

Here’s some information about the event from the American Atheists site (for those who don’t have a facebook):

Separation of church/state supporters will be meeting on May 19th, 2012 from 11 AM until about 2 PM at the Bradford County Courthouse. If you have any questions, please contact Bridget Gaudette at bgaudette@atheists.org or at 407.399.5808.

If you want to do a lot of face-palming, read this story about the dedication of this monument. (Warning, that link is to a Baptist news site. It’s extra derp.)

PS: Here’s a bonus quote full of stupid from that “news” article:

“Prayer is omnipotent – it can do anything that God can do,” [Dan Davis, pastor at Mandarin Baptist Church in Jacksonville] said.

Enjoy.

Help Teresa MacBain

Teresa MacBain recently came out as an atheist at the American Atheist convention. This was a pretty big deal for her because up until that point, she was a pastor for a Methodist church. As you can imagine, she’s no longer working for the church and they’re not helping her. You can read more about her story in this NPR article.

The Humanists of Florida Association (an organization that I’m a part of, but that’s another story) has decided to try to help Teresa out financially. They’ve started a ChipIn project to raise money for their new Ex-Clergy Fund, and the first recipient will be Teresa. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Teresa a bit over the past few weeks. She’s a wonderful person, so please help her out in any way you can.

If you would like to chip in, click this link (WordPress won’t allow me to embed the widget).