AHA Conference Report by Sena Havasy

72nd Annual AHA Conference Quotes

The AHA Conference was incredibly inspiring!

One group’s meeting that really struck a cord with me was the Business Meeting of the Feminist Caucus chaired by Zelda Gatuskin. Their main goals are removing the barrier to passing the Equal Rights Amendment  and promoting awareness of and adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Mary Wollstonecraft was the first woman to present a full-dress argument for female equality in ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’.

The Equal Rights Amendment, that radical notion that nothing can be denied on the grounds of being female, has passed the time limit for keeping the 38 states who have already signed and a law must be passed removing that limit or we will have to start all over.

Bumper sticker: ‘Are you living in a YES state, or a STATE OF DENIAL? Pass the Equal Rights Amendment!’

Annual Membership Meeting

  • AHA now has 33,890 members.
  • Humanist Network News, AHA weekly e-zine has 40,000 subscribers          

Humanist of the Year is Dan Savage :
for his long history of sex-positive writing, work for separation of church and state and work for LGBT youth as in  the ‘It Gets Better’ Project to help prevent suicide among the young . He is the author of several books, including: “The Kid:   What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant”

Isaac Asimov Science Award went to Richard Leakey. He was too ill to attend but recorded a video, looking very old and ill.  He used his meager store of strength to urge us to work to solve global warming which posed a deadly threat to the planet and to us.

Humanist Heroine of the Year, Katha Pollitt:
Her bimonthly column, “Subject to Debate,” appears in The Nation magazine, and won the National Magazine Award. Her essay “Why Do We Romanticize the Fetus?” also won an award.

“Like Broadway, the novel, and God, feminism has been declared dead many times.”

For me, to be a feminist is… not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. … It’s about justice, fairness and access to the broad range of human experience…It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as means to an end for others: fetuses, children, ‘the family,’ men.

She urged men to talk to other men about women’s issues because men listen to other men.

She mentioned the fact that the woman who replied, on camera, when asked if she thanked god for surviving a natural disaster, answered ‘Actually, I’m an atheist’, received donations of $100 thousand dollars from around the world from people who appreciated hearing someone with a sensible attitude answer that question.

“Purpose and the Universe”: Sean M. Carroll, Theoretical Physicist at Caltech, Keynote Speaker:
His latest book is called “The Particle at the End of the Universe” about the Higgs-Boson particle.

“Humanism and Spirituality” Dr. Leon Seltzer

  • David Elkins: “the word spirituality derives from the Latin ..spiritus meaning breath or  the breath of life.”
  • Robert C. Solomon   Spirituality is the subtle … awareness that surrounds virtually everything and anything that transcends our petty self -interest. Thus there is spirituality in nature, in art, in the bonds of love and fellow feeling that hold a community together, in the reverence for life (and not only human life) that is the key to a great many philosophies.
  • Our ideology, our code of ethics, our principles and practices—humanism is …a spiritual movement. So I’m hoping that … we can …reclaim a word that actually reflects the very heart of what we’re all about. Which is to say our aspiration to lead virtuous, morally responsible lives that are at once rational and—emotionally—passionate, exciting . . . and deeply fulfilling.

 

Honoring the Life of Thomas Paine, for children: Margaret Downey

Ignored and reviled in his own day, Paine is increasingly revered today as the sparkplug of the revolution. Many statues of him have been erected and important sites marked.

No one knows where his bones now lie, which circumstance is an interesting story in itself.

Margaret Downey, in gorgeous period gown, shared a song about him and danced with the children to it’s tune. Picture and words will be on the display table but I would like to read a bit of it:

Thom-Paine-Dance-pnkr-copy-400  “I only talked about freedom – And justice for everyone –
But since the very first words I spoke -I’ve been looking down the barrel of a gun.-
They say I preached revolution- Let me say in my defense-
That all I did wherever I went-Was to talk a lot of Common Sense.
He left me standing (where) I was , A piece of paper in my hand- ..
It said, “This is the Age of Reason, -These are the Rights of Man-
Kick off Religion and Monarchy.”-It was written there in Tom Paine’s plan.
Old Tom Paine,  there he lies- Nobody laughs and nobody cries
Where he’s gone or how he fares-Nobody knows and nobody cares.
But I will dance to Tom Paine’s bones- dance to Tom Paine’s bones
Dance in the oldest boots I own- To the rhythm of Tom Paine’s bones.

 

Kochhar Humanist Education Center – Humanist Education Panel

  • Guiding Principles for Teaching Values
  • AHA website ‘Kids Without God’ recently launched.

 

Church and State:
To a Congress woman quoting the bible: Madam, you put your hand on the bible and swore to uphold the Constitution, You did not put your hand on the constitution and swear to uphold the bible.

 

A few quotes I heard going around;

  • Charles Darwin had the best idea anybody ever had.  (Over 500 events in over25 countries were listed on the AHA Darwin Day website last year.)
  • ‘We can learn a lot from the LGBT movement but we have one unique advantage:   Coming out of the closet doesn’t cause straight people to turn gay, but coming out as atheists can cause people to consider atheism.’
  •  ‘Atheism: A personal relationship with reality’
  •  God is Santa Claus for adults. Aldous Huxley.
  •  Don’t use religion to settle economic issues.
  • Liberty does not make people happy, it makes them human.
  •  ‘Organize on the local and state level where you can make changes.’
  • Letters to the editor, even if not published, can have influence. More people read them than read any other section of the paper. Make them short and timely There is a talking points menu on the Huffington Post.

‘Church & State’ Edward Tabash:

  • Justice Scalia said ‘That government can’t favor one religion over another is patently false.’
  • Tabash said ‘Every presidential and senate election should be about the Supreme Court.’

Matt Harding’s Spontaneous Dancing around the world leads him to tell us that  ‘The world is safer and more open than it’s ever been.’

 

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