I totally agree.

P.S. This also reminded me of elevator-gate. To me, that was totally different. In my opinion that was clearly an inappropriate advance that would make any woman uncomforable. I come from a place of never having been invited to a male's hotel room, (or home or car, or wherever) without being sexually propositioned. The intent is clear, to me. To make these sort of advances in dark alleys and in elevators, is highly inappropriate, but I think most rational males would *get* this. What adds to the creep factor when a male doesn't *get* it. I share because I don't think this translates into men having to be extra sensitive in broad daylight, wide open spaces, and doesn't mean men should never be alone with teenaged girls and children. Unfortunately, this is the road that irrational fear leads us down.

If the intent of the article was positive, it wouldn't be so extreme and "insane." I am not sold that the intent is actually positive - seems like the kind of thing to rile people up.

I have never seen this before. I think this is way extreme. As a woman I will admit I notice I live in a completely different world from my husband (more concerned about locked doors, and make it a point not to walk alone in the dark - stuff like that). BUT, as someone else mentioned, an overwhelming majority of sexual assaults are perpertrated by someone you know. This reminds me of two posts on Free Range Kids that I was absolutely appalled by. (Sexism goes both ways and the comments make me extremely sad for people like my spouse and my male children).
http://www.freerangekids.com/a-question-about-dad...

I can't find the other one, but it was about a Grandfather being asked to leave a bookstore when he was looking at books in the kids section. A similar incident happened near our house when someone called the polic on a Grandfather who took his grandchild to the park. *sigh*

I find that very interesting as Santa Clara is a religious University. Several of our relatives and friends attended the University. Anyway, I am going to suggest my spouse do an in-person interview with this guy. Thanks for the heads up!

Thanks for sharing. I guess. I find these both amusing and sad.

On or off topic, we have had a lot of jehova witness types in our neighborhood lately. My spouse actually loves this because he is a good debater, and enjoys toying with these people. In the past, the people have been generally respectful. BUT, lately the quantity has risen dramatically and the *dumbness* of the people has increased significantly. We are collecting pamphlets filled with typos and bad grammar. One of them said something like, "What does Jesus mean to you? Come to our service and we will tell you." We were not sure if this was lack of grasp of the english language, overt brainwashing, or both. (From past experience with really bad grammar). But the BEST is the poor sap who told my hubby that he was sorry as he was not aware that our household was atheist. He was unfamilar with the area. ????? Um, I don't know where to begin with this. So they aren't trying to convert non-believers? They only talk to Christians? They keep a map of atheists? Ha!

P.S. There is a catholic nun in the family, AND I worked with some nuns when I audited some religious institutions. A VERY liberal bunch in Northern California. I randomly came across some article a couple of years back about how the Diocese was having lots of troubles with their nuns (who apparently tend to be liberal, in general). They wanted to keep them more in line. I think a lot of it is they are out there working with the poor. They are educated. & they see what is going on. They seem to be diverging on some level, from the higher ups of the church. Especially with all this crazy conservative push with politics.

Anyway, my MIL told me over the years that working for the diocese, not having her birth control covered was absolutely ridiculous. Once the vatican was supportive of the molesting priests and all that (a few years ago?) my MIL told me she stopped giving *any* money to the church. I think it's just a lot of things that seem to add up over time.

I might have commented about this before, but both our families have Catholic roots, and a large number of them have left the church in recent years. On my side of the family my grandparents were poor and Catholic, but the more educated of my cousins are leaving the church. I Was shocked since they still live in the mid-west and in areas where that is a bigger leap of faith. My dad left the church before I was born. A couple of his poorer sisters and crazy-extreme evangelists. On my dh's side, his family is very intelligent and lives in a very liberal area. His mom, his aunts, his cousins, and everyone seems to be moving away from the church. Literally it was *the end of the world* we didn't get married in the church in 2000. Fast forward 10 years and we are not the only ones in the family that did not baptize. I am amazed how much things have changed in TEN years.

P.S.S. Sorry - my comments were apparently too much. We boycott Little League after a terrible experience there. At least with Boy Scouts you know what you are getting into. Frankly, living in liberal California, I Was shocked by the experience. Though clearly it could have been much worse.

So, just more on the *it depends.* If my kid was the next Babe Ruth, I might have put up with it more. But, we just have low tolerance for the religious BS. There are other places to play baseball.

The difference? We were told Little League is *obviously* a religious organization, and to put up with it. Obvious to who? I don't know. We had to sit through prayers, etc. They gave money to the church and the church heavily supported the League. So, basically every event was a commercial for some local church. NOT what I signed up for. My kid just wanted to play baseball.

I am done!

P.S. One side note: My kids went to a Christian Preschool. Is that a shocker??? What happened was I signed my kids up for an in-home daycare which was AWESOME and the woman became like family to us. It became clear to us pretty quickly that she was a Christian and the children prayed before meals, BUT, there was never any indication that religion was being pushed down our kids throats. I later saw her advertise as a Christian Preschool and thought that was a shame. She is one of my best friends to this day. We LOVE her. I referred another atheist friends to her and she loved her as much as we did. It's hard to explain. I think the point is if that every Christian I met was like *this* woman, the world would be a WONDERFUL place. So I have no problem with her. I suppose I never thought too much how I was giving her money and a lot of it probably went to the church. But, I couldn't have had a better experience for my kids. So, that trumps everything else. I might not have put up with all that religious exterior to simply buy a pizza, know what I mean?__So, yeah, it totally depends. Religion was never discussed between her and our kids or her and us. Just, NEVER. So I could deal with it. & um, it was pretty obvious we were not Christian, but she always respected that, so we respected her in turn. I am sure it was obvious our kids had never said grace before, for one. ;)

No, I do not support religious businesses. Just as much as I don't support religious non-profits. Do I want crazed religious extremist profiting from me? No. Do I want to support a company who contributes heavily to religious causes? No. That said, it just depends on the degree. If someone happens to be Christian or a Muslim or of any religion, I am sure I do business with many of these people. I don't really care about that. It's just if they really overtly mix business and religion OR are crazy extreme. Then I take my business elsewhere. There are a handful of local businesses (people I know personally) who mention their religion all over their businesses cards and web pages. It strikes me as extremely unprofessional. I am sure they don't understand how they are offending a huge pool of potential customers._