I wish there were more celebrities were open and honest about their atheism or agnosticism.Did you lose your faith or never have any?I used to believe in God. The Christian one, that is. (There are a few thousand to choose from. But I was born in a country where the dominant religion was Christianity so I believed in that one. Isn't it weird how that always happens?) Luckily I was also interested in science and nature. And reason and logic. And honesty and truth. And equality and fairness. By the age of eight I was an atheist. (That word shouldn’t even exist. It shouldn’t be needed. But it does. And it is.)You studied philosophy at university – which philosophical idea has turned out to be most useful?A few spring to mind. Bertrand Russell said, “No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.” That became more profound once I’d become famous. Ha Ha. And I love “There is no god higher than truth” – Mahatma Gandhi.
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| Ortegocactus, a genus with only one species: macdougallii |
Clade A [a group which appears to have evolved from a single population] includes sampled members of the genera Coryphantha, Escobaria, and Pelecyphora, which form sister lineages to sampled taxa of Hunt’s and Lu ?thy’s series Ancistracanthae and subgenus Cochemiea, respectively, thus clearly demonstrating paraphyly within Mammillaria. Furthermore, within the core group of series Ancistracanthae sensu Hunt and subgenus Cochemiea sensu Lu ?thy, our phylogeny places Ortegocactus macdougallii and Neolloydiaconoidea. Discovered by MacDougall in the early 1950s and described by Alexander (1961), Ortegocactus macdougallii has been contentious in its placement in relation to other members of tribe Cacteae. Bravo-Hollis and Sanchez-Mejorada (1991) sank this genus into Neobesseya, members of which are now commonly accepted as species of Escobaria (Hunt, 1992, 1999; Barthlott and Hunt, 1993). Hunt and Taylor (1986, 1990) suggested that Ortegocactus may be referable to the genus Mammillaria, although an official transfer to Mammillaria was not made. Barthlott and Hunt (1993) also commented on the similarities of Ortegocactus and Mammillaria, going so far as to suggest that Ortegocactus is reminiscent of M. schumannii. Butterworth et al. (2002) also suggested that Ortegocactus shared a greater affinity with members of Mammillaria than with Escobaria or Coryphantha. The data presented in this paper do indeed show that O. macdougallii is embedded within members of Mammillaria, its closest Mammillaria relatives including M. schumannii. However, at present the transfer of Ortegocactus to Mammillaria would be inappropriate because of the polyphyletic nature of Mammillaria as seen in our analyses.
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| Governor Rick Snyder (R) was elected in 2010 and used his
Republican majority in both houses to strip domestic partner benefits from all unmarried public employees |
Public employees, including state and local government workers and public school teachers, will no longer be allowed to extend their health care benefits to domestic partners.Governor Snyder vetoed a companion bill (HB 4771) which would have applied the domestic partnership ban (HB 4770) to state universities while he signed this bill into law.
It is unclear whether the bill applies to state universities, although Snyder asserts that it does not. House Republicans, meanwhile, say it does apply to university employees.The move is a blow to gay and lesbian activists throughout the state."We’re so very disappointed in the governor," Kary L. Moss, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union's Michigan chapter, said in an interview. "This was the moment for him to show real leadership, to rise above what I believe is petty politics, to tell the rest of the country that Michigan is not living in the dark ages and to create an open, inclusive Michigan."
That doesn’t mean these states aren’t served by LGBT elected officials, just that none have self-identified publicly either in speeches or in the media. But one group that supports out elected officials says there’s a reason this matters.
“It’s important that people know there are LGBT people serving in public office, especially in their own communities. That doesn’t mean that LGBT issues are front and center in their work. In some cases just being open and honest about that part of our lives has great potential to deepen understanding of our community, and that makes a huge difference,” said Tiffany Muller, Vice President for Programs at the Victory Institute.The Victory Institute maintains the most up-to-date database of out LGBT officials available, and in recent years elected officials in states like Kansas, South Carolina, West Virginia and North Dakota have been added. The group has a goal in 2012 of having identified at least one out elected official in every state in the U.S. ”That will mark a really significant milestone for LGBT Americans, and it will be a symbol of how far we’ve come as a country,” Muller said.
Thus New Mexico joins other Western states like Colorado and Nevada where other recent polls show plurality support for marriage equality. Unfortunately, unless and until polls start showing majority support for marriage equality (outside the margin of error, which in this case was +/-4.4 points) the LGBT community is unlikely to have a decent chance winning a ballot measure fight to end civil marriage discrimination against same-sex couples.Q7 Do you think same-sex marriage should be
legal or illegal?
Legal ...................... .45%
Illegal ..................... .43%
Not sure ................. .12%Q8 Which of the following best describes your
opinion on gay marriage: gay couples should
be allowed to legally marry, or gay couples
should be allowed to form civil unions but not
legally marry, or there should be no legal
recognition of a gay couple's relationship?
Gay couples should
be allowed to legally
marry.......................42%
Gay couples should
be allowed to form
civil unions but not
marry.......................25%
There should be no
legal recognition of
a gay couple's
relationship .............32%
Not sure ................. . 2%
Born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949, Hitchens studied at Oxford before launching his journalism career in the 1970s with the magazines International Socialism and the New Statesman. In the early 1980s, he emigrated to the United States, where he was a regular columnist at The Nation for two decades before parting ways with the liberal magazine after proudly disagreeing with its editors about the Iraq war.Hitchens won the National Magazine Award for commentary in 2007, the same year that he became an American citizen on his 58th birthday. Foreign Policy named him to its list of the top 100 public intellectuals the following year, and Forbes magazine labeled him one of the 25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media in 2009, a distinction that took some by surprise given Hitchens's vocal support of George W. Bush's war on terror.He was a frequent guest on news programs and at public debates, and rarely passed up the opportunity to defend his positions when given the opportunity to do so. He was the author of nearly 20 books, including God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitch-22: A Memoir, and Arguably, a collection of his more recent essays that was published earlier this year.Hitchens remained steadfast in his criticism of religion even in the face of his grim prognosis. In an August 2010 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, his colleague at The Atlantic, Hitchens made it known that even if he were to somehow recant his devout atheism on his deathbed, any apparent conversion would be a hollow gesture. "The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain," he said. "I can't guarantee that such an entity wouldn't make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognizable as myself would ever make such a ridiculous remark."
