Category: Speaker

Prof. Nancy C. Unger

June 12, 2016

Tremendous gains are being made in revealing the long, rich, colorful, heartbreaking, and inspiring history of LGBTQ people in the United States. Too often, however, that history is reduced to the Stonewall Riots of 1969 or (especially here in California) the life and martyrdom of Harvey Milk. This illustrated presentation highlights the documented presence of people acting on same-sex desires as early as the 1600s, actions surprisingly tolerated within their communities. We’ll follow the transformation of women’s “romantic friendships” into “Boston Marriages,” the roles of President Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. military, and McCarthism in promoting homophobia. The presentation concludes with the pre-Stonewall movements to eradicate internalized homophobia, and to remove the medical, legal, and social stigmas attached to same-sex love. Prof. Nancy C. Unger is a Professor of History at Santa Clara University, where her regular course offerings include “Lesbians and Gay Men in U.S. History.”

 

 

Humanist Community Forum (2016-06-12): Long Journey to Stonewall: An Illustrated History of LGBTQ America (Nancy C. Unger) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

AHA Conference Attendees

June 5, 2016

Members of our group who attended the 2016 American Humanist Association Annual Conference (http://conference.americanhumanist.org/chicago/) in Chicago will report on their experiences and impressions there, and will discuss their own views on the future of Humanism (with, of course, lots of questions and comments from the audience).

Featuring a video of a TED Talk by Sam Harris

May 29, 2016

In this Forum, we will show a “TED Talk” (see www.ted.com) with the above title (see http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right). The video features Sam Harris, who is the renowned author of “The End of Faith”, a Ph.D. neuroscientist, and a philosopher. After the video is shown, there will be a general audience discussion of the topics that Dr. Harris discusses in this 23 minute video.

Prof. Martin Carcieri

May 22, 2016

Martin Carcieri is Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. He will be discussing a chapter from his book, “Applying Rawls in the 21st Century: Race, Gender, the Drug War, and the Right to Die”, that discusses affirmative action and reparations.

Humanist Community Forum (2016-05-22): Rawls on Affirmative Action/Reparations (Prof. Martin Carcieri) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

 

Jason Spitzer

May 15, 2016

Jason Spitzer, from the California Clean Money Campaign (www.caclean.org), will discuss the California DISCLOSE Act, which the State Legislature is currently considering, along with other campaign finance reform and anti-corruption bills that have been introduced. The California DISCLOSE Act would require that political ads for California candidates and propositions prominently display the top three contributors to the ad.

Click here to see the slides that were shown during this Forum.

 

Humanist Community Forum (2016-05-15): The California DISCLOSE Act (Jason Spitzer) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.