Mobius Chess

Many thanks to Robby Bensinger and Jesse Galef for the feedback loops of brilliant geekery without which this might not have happened.

I think actual game play would work best with felt and velcro.

Step one: three and a half pieces of paper. Fold.

Step two: color. And color. And color. Oh god so much coloring. Black should be opposite black.

Step three: mobify.

To be honest, my original motivation was my feeling that pawn promotion is a bit of a copout. This seemed the most interesting way to do away with it.

Final product:

P.S. This is basically what I'm envisioning for the diagonally looping bishop variant. Just imagine eight columns with the usual two color pattern.

Marriage Equality: You're Doing It Wrong

Guess what. I don't support gay marriage! Didn't expect that, did you?

Chill, this has nothing to do with hating gay people. I’m not straight myself. In fact, let's take a moment to mourn the death of sanity all of this Prop 8 nonsense proclaims. Ok, moving on.

Marriage itself is unconstitutional.

Before I argue for disestablishment, let's be clear that we're talking about civil marriage here, the mode of existence marriage takes in law. Most of the arguments for marriage the Right exudes pertain to either religious marriage or a fanciful idealization of historical marriage. Arguments from sanctity and tradition are plainly irrelevant to the governmental establishment of civil marriage, so I won't subject you to serious consideration of them. Arguments from the Left are a bit more diverse, but nearly all of them fall into the broad categories delineated univocally by the Right. By and large they are sanctity arguments presented sentimentally instead of religiously.

The only common argument for civil marriage worthy of refutation is the argument from reproduction. It goes like this. Government should be able to regulate marital relationships because the production of children is necessary for the continuation of the country. As Charles Cooper put it in his oral argument to the California Supreme Court, 

There is clearly a rational basis justifying the traditional definition of marriage. The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally produce children. Society has no particular interest in a platonic relationship between a man and a woman no matter how close, no matter how committed it may be.

But civil marriage is not about children and hasn’t been since 1964. Before that year, it was illegal in Connecticut for doctors to provide council to couples asking about contraception. Estelle Griswold, then director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, was convicted of violating this law when she and the League’s medical director were caught advising couples on methods of birth control. She appealed, and in the end the law was struck down by the US Supreme Court, ruling that it violated the right to privacy implicit in the Bill of Rights.

The case’s direct effect was to grant married couples the right to use contraceptives; but other results were far more profound. Griswold v Connecticut impacted marriage law in two giant ways. It first established that the first, third, fourth, and ninth amendments together create a right to privacy within marriage. Additionally, in protecting under that right the freedom to employ contraception, all legally recognized sexual relationships thereafter no longer existed in law for the purpose of bearing children, as the sexually active couple was free to choose indefinitely to not conceive. By legalizing contraception for married couples the case divorced civil marriage from the conception of children. Whatever the purpose of civil marriage, it is not that proposed by Carles Cooper and his compatriots.

So much for positive grounds for civil marriage. Onward to my own claim.

Civil marriage is not only groundless but positively unconstitutional. Specifically, it violates the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause with respect to the class of unmarried individuals. There is precedent supporting its lack of a rational basis, but I claim further that it fails every other step of the equal protection test as well.

Shortly after the Griswald case, a similar scene went down in Massachusetts. In 1971, pro-choice activist William Baird gave a lecture at Boston University on birth control and overpopulation. After the lecture he gave a spermicidal foam to a woman in the audience. In Massachusetts, contraceptives could be distributed legally only by registered medical professionals, and then only to married couples. As neither condition was met in this case, the state charged Baird with a felony. The defense argued that the Massachusetts law violated the right to privacy noted in the Griswold case seven years earlier.

In the end, the law was overthrown, but not because of the right to privacy. The pertinent question was re-framed like this: Rather than asking whether the right to privacy applied to the sex lives of singles as well, the court asked whether there ever were grounds for differentiating between married and unmarried people in the first place.

To understand the court’s ruling and its broader significance, you have to know about the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment employed in law. See, the actual wording of the amendment is,

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

But the broadest interpretation of the text would make most legislation impossible. If this actually meant that every law must apply to all citizens equally, there could not be, for instance, distinctions in legislation between eight-year-olds and fifty-year-olds, nor between billionaires and the poor. To prevent this stalemate, whenever a question arises regarding the validity of distinctions between groups, the group getting shafted undergoes an “equal protection test”.

Here's how the test works.

1. First we ask, “Is the characteristic defining the group immutable?” Skin color and gender, for instance, are immutable. Choice of vehicle is not. Obviously, not all defining characteristics are so unequivocal.
2. If the answer to the first question is yes, the distinction is subject to “strict scrutiny” which means asking, “Is there a compelling argument that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting one group and not the other?” If the answer to that is yes as well, then the law in question can be upheld. Otherwise it’s unconstitutional.
3. If the answer to the first question is “no”, then the second question becomes, “Does the group under review have a history of maltreatment?” If yes, the state may have an ulterior motive for legislating against them, which again triggers strict scrutiny.
4. If there is no immutable characteristic and no history of maltreatment, we move on to the question of whether or not a fundamental interest is at stake. Fundamental interests are a purposefully hazy class of which the most famous are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If an interest the court deems fundamental is at stake, strict scrutiny is triggered.
5. If not, the law can be upheld as long as there is some “rational basis” for the distinction. The rational basis test is a very easy one to pass, because any reasonable ground whatsoever applies. Very few cases involve distinctions that failed rational basis.

Eisenstaedt v. Baird is one of those few. Though the defense’s initial criticism of the Massachusetts law concerned an extension of the right to privacy, the case moved into equal protection law when singles were identified as an insular group against which the state legislated. An equal protection test was clearly in order.

Is it constitutional to uphold a law granting rights to married people that singles are denied?

In this case, singles made it all the way through the first three sections; according to the judges, the group was not defined by an immutable characteristic, did not have a history of maltreatment, and there were no fundamental interests at stake. Ultimately, though, there was simply no legitimate interest for the state, no “rational basis”, that warranted distinguishing between married and single people in awarding the right to use contraceptives.

The implications of that ruling are potentially much, much more extensive than anyone seems to realize. As far as I can tell, non-married people have delighted in their equal right to use contraceptives and have left it at that; efforts toward "marriage equality" remain overwhelmingly focused on extending marital benefits to same-sex couples, while attempts to secure further equality for single citizens barely exist. Though married people enjoy 1,049 federal rights and benefits denied to the unmarried, singles seem oblivious to their own marginalization.

Assuming, keeping with the Eisenstadt ruling, that the unmarried don’t warrant strict scrutiny, the tedious enterprise of examining every marital right and benefit for a rational basis may appear excessive. When running singles through the full equal protection test, however, I obtain very different results from those judged in 1971. If it happens that upon further consideration the unmarried fail every single step of the equal protection test, the process of awarding them far-reaching equality may be streamlined.

Conveniently, that’s exactly the case.

Let’s take it from the top: the first step is immutability. Is the class of unmarried people defined by an immutable characteristic? At first glance it doesn't look like it. After all, marriage is something you can opt into or out of. No one has to stay single, right? (Note: I’ve actually heard people argue that, “Even gay men can marry women.”)

It’s actually not quite that simple. It helps to keep in mind that the defining characteristic in question is that of the unmarried. The status of “married” certainly isn’t immutable, as anyone can say “no” to a proposal, and anyone can get a divorce. But “unmarried” is a default state that was never initially chosen by anyone, and it’s simply not true that every adult is totally free to opt out of the unmarried status. First of all, it isn’t something that can be done alone; unlike choosing a car or a career, it requires an equal commitment by another person. While individuals have full freedom regarding their own decision to remain in or resign from the single class, they have no direct reign over the decisions of potential marriage partners. Since “unmarried” is the default state, an individual can not actually choose freely to exit the class into which she was born, making it an immutable characteristic.

Secondly, there are plenty of clear barriers indefinitely preventing some people from getting married. Some who desire marriage simply fail to find a partner, and others may not have access to marriage due to physical or mental illness. That alone is enough to trigger strict scrutiny (as opposed to the rational basis test, or “ordinary scrutiny”, applied in Eisenstadt v. Baird). But there’s more.

The second question is, “Does the group have a history of maltreatment?” The Supreme Court of 1971 must have experienced a temporary lapse in most cognitive faculties to have answered “no” to this question. The correct answer is unassailably “yes”, and especially for the subclass of unmarried women. Until fairly recently it was nearly impossible for an unmarried woman to support herself, because the entire structure of society was built around the bias toward patriarchal marriage. An adult woman without a husband underwent severe economic and social maltreatment, all the worse if she bore children. The economic maltreatment in particular continues today, largely as a result of the rights denied to the unmarried.

In summary thus far: the defining characteristic of the class in question is immutable and there is a clear history of maltreatment. Is there also a fundamental interest at stake? Does legislation against singles encroach upon some basic, fundamental human right?

Yes, it does. In the past, identifications of fundamental interests in Supreme Court cases have included the right to parent. There are many ways in which legislation against the unmarried encumbers parenting. Robin West enumerates:

All unmarried parents… both the truly single, and those in committed, but unmarried relationships, will find their parenting burdened by marriage laws, and by the scores of financial benefits withheld them by virtue of that status. Unmarried poor parents will not have a deceased marital partner’s Social Security or military pension on which to draw—nor will she have the possibility of drawing on that of a deceased companion, coparent, or intimate. She will not have the benefit of favorable tax treatment, or private health insurance provided to spouses, that are routinely accorded married persons. She will not have a partner with a virtual “power of attorney” to make decisions on her behalf or that of her children, should she become incapacitated. Either directly or indirectly, the law is deeply implicated in a regime that has an adverse impact upon a class of people trying to engage in a basic, fundamental life activity—bearing, nurturing, and raising children—and trying to do so outside the protective perimeters of marriage.

Obviously, government intervention or no, single parents face challenges to which couples are not subject. It is the fundamental right of an individual to confront those challenges and raise her children, with or without a co-parent. The problem is not that single parents have a tougher time overall. It’s that a prodigious portion of that hardship is caused by the denial of marital benefits to unmarried parents. Surely, if parents are receiving federal aid in caring for their children, single parents need it most. But that’s not the world we’re living in. Not yet.

Finally, does the state have any interest whatsoever in denying rights to single people it affords to married couples? Remember Griswald vs Connecticut. The many arguments founded on the state’s interest in procreation are void. Arguments for the stability life-long partnerships create in society are flimsy as well; no-fault divorce means a marriage can end at any time. There is no longer any legal obligation to remain married, and a third of US marriages last less than ten years.

The most legitimate interest the state might have in the institution of civil marriage is the care members of a marriage provide for each other. Whenever one individual supports another in a time of need, she removes that responsibility from the state. Ideally, married couples engage in this kind of support consistently, and they’re rewarded copiously for it through their many rights and benefits. It makes sense for the government to actively encourage and fortify such care-giving behavior.

But the exclusive identification of marriage with relationships of care-giving is transparently mistaken. Humans are social creatures, so when something goes wrong we look to the networks of support in which we find ourselves. Those networks are invaluable not only to individuals but to the state, and they are far more diverse than the traditional husband/wife family model. The enterprise of care-giving can take innumerable forms: a lesbian couple raising a child, a middle-aged man caring for his elderly mother, a woman and her male best friend together raising children from previous marriages, or a man supporting his chronically ill brother, to name a small handful.

Take another look at the words of Charles Cooper.

The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally produce children. Society has no particular interest in a platonic relationship between a man and a woman no matter how close, no matter how committed it may be.

The truth is, society has no legitimate interest in the private sexual lives of citizens, but it has every interest in close and committed relationships whether or not they be of a sexual nature as well. By indiscriminately distributing financial support to married couples who may not require it solely by virtue of their presumably sexual partnership, less funding remains for singles in selfless, draining, committed care-giving positions. There is no rational basis for providing financial benefits and other civil rights to married people while denying them to the unmarried.

The legal distinction between marital statuses fails the equal protection test many times over, serves no state interest, and harms society as a whole. Yes, it is horrible that, in the US, gay people can’t marry each other while straight people can. But if we’re serious about equality for all, we should be dissolving civil marriage. Not expanding it.

Werewolf

I recently discovered a party game called Werewolf. I'm utterly captivated by it. I understand that there are several variations, but I'll just explain the most basic and the two that I've played.

The basic narrative is this. You're in a medieval village, and there's a werewolf on the loose. The werewolf is killing people at night while the town sleeps. A sort of witch-hunt ensues, the villagers decide one among them is the wolf, and that person is lynched. But if they've chosen incorrectly, someone gets killed the following night, and another person is lynched the next day.

In the variations I played, the town also has a doctor, and a visiting professional werewolf hunter. The doctor knows how to make a special anti-werewolf potion, and he can make exactly one dose a day to protect a villager through the night. The hunter has a magic pendant that glows in the presence of a werewolf, but it can only be used on one person a night and must re-charge during the day.

1. Everyone gets a card. One card signifies "narrator", one "werewolf", and the rest "villagers". The narrator reveals himself, but the other players keep their cards secret.
2. The narrator says, "Goodnight villagers," and the other players close their eyes, beginning the night phase of the game. They all begin to tap their legs, making noise so no one can identify who is taking non-verbal actions by sound. The narrator says, "Werewolf, wake up." The werewolf opens her eyes. The doctor asks her who she wants to kill, and she points at a player who isn't the narrator. The narrator takes note and tells the werewolf to go back to sleep. The narrator then says, "Good morning villagers," and all players open their eyes, beginning the day phase.
3. During the day phase, the non-narrator players must vote on who they think the wolf is. The person with the most votes gets lynched--that is, she leaves the game and reveals her card. (Presumably they go through her belongings after the lynching and discover her true identity.) If she was indeed the werewolf, the villagers have won. If she wasn't, the game returns to the night phase. The goal of the villagers is to save as many villagers as possible, and the goal of the wolf is to kill as many as possible without getting lynched.

Now, during the day phase, the wolf does what he can to convince the villagers that he's not the wolf. Obviously, no one wants anyone else to think she's the wolf, innocent or not. In this most basic case, it's almost entirely a game of social dynamics, where you're either trying to lie convincingly or trying to find the liar. This can be fun, but it gets so much better.

Here's the first variation I played.

1. Start with five people and five cards. The cards can be from a poker deck or something else, provided one card signifies "werewolf", one "doctor", one "hunter", one "villager", and one "narrator". Each player looks at her card and keeps it secret, with the exception of the narrator, who reveals herself as such.
2. Upon the narrator's instruction, the other four players close their eyes. They all begin to tap their legs, making noise so no one can identify who is taking non-verbal actions by sound. The narrator says, "Doctor, wake up." The player with the doctor card opens her eyes. The narrator asks her, "Who do you want to protect?" The doctor points to a player who is not the narrator, and the narrator takes note of this. The narrator says, "Doctor, go back to sleep," and the doctor closes her eyes. The narrator says, "Werewolf, wake up." The werewolf opens her eyes. The doctor asks her who she wants to kill, and she points at a player who isn't the narrator. The narrator takes note and tells the werewolf to go back to sleep. The narrator has the hunter wake up, asks who she thinks the werewolf is, takes note, and has her go back to sleep. Then the narrator says, "Good morning villagers!" and everyone opens their eyes (and stops tapping).
3. If the doctor protected the same person the werewolf tried to kill, and the hunter failed to discover the werewolf, the narrator says, "No one died." If the doctor protected a different person than the werewolf tried to kill, the narrator says, "[Name of player] died." If the hunter discovered the werewolf, the village kills the werewolf and villagers still alive win. If the hunter failed to discover the werewolf and a non-werewolf character died, the dead player reveals her card to the other players. (Perhaps the villagers notice she's not at town council, go investigate at her house, discover she's dead, and learn her true identity by examining her belongings.)
4. The remaining villagers must now vote. By majority vote, they can either wait another night (and risk losing someone to the wolf), or lynch the person they vote is the wolf. If they lynch the wrong person, that person does not reveal her card (perhaps the lynchings take place in the evening and everyone goes directly to bed afterward), and the game returns to night phase.

Now this gets really interesting really quickly. For the moment, I'll leave you to think about why, and I'll describe some interesting scenarios in the near future.

I like this variation even more: everything is as above, but if there are n players, use (n+2)-4 villager cards. 2 cards are discarded, and no one knows what they are. This means there's probably a werewolf, but only the narrator (and the wolf, if there is one) is completely certain. This might be a true witch hunt. Similarly, there might be a doctor, and there might be a hunter, but it's not a guarantee. Did no one die last night because the doctor protected the right person, or because there's no wolf? Is the person claiming to be the hunter really the hunter, or has the wolf figured out that there isn't a hunter so he can safely pretend to hunt? Maybe if we're confident there's no wolf, we should lynch no one and have the doctor protect herself tonight to be certain. But this can't be a perfect test, because if the wolf is sly she'll target the doctor to produce a false negative. Not to mention, perhaps there's no doctor at all!

My Christmas Tree

The Story of My Journey into the Secular Community

I was raised Catholic.  My mother has been a devout (liberal) Catholic as long as I've known her.  Dad's been an atheist most of his life, but I guess my parents agreed to let Mom raise me and my brothers in the Church.

When I was little, I loved being Catholic.  I went to a Catholic school in the Midwest, where religion classes were mandatory beginning in preschool.  I guess "age of reason" was a pretty accurate description in my case, because by second grade I was very serious about understanding theology.  I considered preparing for first communion a grave responsibility.  It was, after all, the first sacrament I'd take of my own choice.  I was dedicated to understanding transubstantiation, why it matters, and what sacraments are really all about.  I remember struggling with the idea of symbols; I was never satisfied by the explanations of them my mother and teachers would give.

I was told that symbols are "outward signs of inward grace", and that they are there to help our small mortal minds comprehend God's infinite love and wisdom at least enough to let ourselves be transformed by them.  I was skeptical, even then.  I was worried that symbols might actually be distractions, or, worse yet, artificial barriers designed by the Church to control my relationship with God.  Why are priests the only ones who can ask God to turn bread into the Body of Christ? I wondered. If God is infinitely wise, what does He care for the infinitesimal wisdom accumulated through seminary?  I felt fairly certain that the only reason priests could serve as special conduits of God's grace was that their hearts were pure and fully devoted to Him when they made the request.  It seemed implausible that the sacrament of Ordination, really just a collection of very fancy symbols, could grant you magic powers in virtue of its role within the thoroughly human structure of the Church.

I called bullshit.  I decided to become a priest.  "The Church doesn't let girls become priests," my second grade teacher informed me.  I told her I didn't really intend to ask permission.

My teachers had no idea what to do with me.  They weren't trained in theology.  We didn't have that sort of funding.  Besides, no one expected that an eight-year-old might singlehandedly attempt the Protestant Reformation.  But I knew nothing of the other sects of Christianity, and I was comfortable with my personal interpretation of Catholicism, so I took my first communion happily in a white dress like all the other little girls, and that was that.

I encountered even greater challenges to my faith in third grade.  One day, while sitting with my classmates in a circle for story time, my teacher said something deeply puzzling.  I don't recall what story she was reading to us or what led her to say this, but she said, "Of course, I'm sure all your parents are good Catholics, or at least Christians."  I raised my hand.

"Actually," I corrected her, "my dad's an atheist."

She gasped.  Then, with shock on her face, she responded, "Oh, I'm so sorry!"  As I write this, it occurs to me for the first time that she probably meant to apologize for expressing offhandedly to a fragile group of children her rude presumption.  I've always thought, as I did when it happened, that she felt sorry for me because I was in the awful position of having an atheist for a father.

I didn't understand her concern.  I'd never talked to either of my parents about Dad's atheism, or about whether there are other people who aren't Catholics.  I didn't know it was supposed to be a bad thing.  I just considered it one of the many ways in which he differed from the other people I knew, like his being a biology teacher or keeping lizards as pets.

I talked to Dad about this incident.  I don't remember the content of that conversation, but I know it resulted in his recommendation that I read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.  He lent me a copy.  Over the next year I read that and several other Sagan books.  Needless to say, I became even more of a nuisance during religion class.

I think I was more upset that the adults in my life were satisfied with ignorance when they understood my questions and criticisms but couldn't answer than I was by the discovery that God isn't real.  It caused me to lose respect for them.  I even lost respect for my mother, to some extent.

From mid fourth grade on, school was a horribly painful experience for me.  I kept pretending to be Catholic.  What skepticism I couldn't contain during class and my feeling that no one else cared about what was true created enough of a rift between me and my peers, my mother, and my teachers that I was not about to give up plausible denyability, thereby formalizing my isolation and rendering it impenetrable.  I became deeply depressed.  I refused to turn in homework or study for tests.  I paid as little attention to class as possible, spending all of my time absorbed in science fiction, fantasy, and pop physics books.  I remember telling my mother that I wanted to drop out of school forever, that I'd make a living by playing my saxophone on street corners.  Fortunately, I discovered early in seventh grade that I could get straight A's with minimal effort, thereby keeping my teachers and my mom off my back, at least as long as I stayed quiet.

But I couldn't stay quiet in religion class, which, by this point, was being taught by a priest.  His name was Fr. McCarthy.  Fr. McCarthy was The Enemy.  Not only was he a particularly conservative Catholic who'd apparently slept through Vatican Two, but he was the most wretched, underhanded debater I've encountered to this day.  He knew I disagreed with everything he taught, and he'd purposefully pick fights with me so the other students could watch him trample the heathen.

He never trampled me fairly, though, even when I was in fact wrong.  True, in eighth grade I was already a more advanced philosopher and theologian than he was, but I was still a kid and had most of my cognitive developing yet to do.  I was quite a bit more wrong then.  He often could have won fairly.  But he didn't.  Instead, he would use insults, snide and disparaging remarks, and often outright lies to undermine my credibility in the eyes of my classmates.  He could win merely by exploiting his authority.  Occasionally, I'd even catch him misrepresenting or outright misquoting scripture, the Catechism, or Aquinas.  But I'd catch him, of course, well after the fact while researching his more dubious claims.  By then it was always too late.

The school was very small--seventeen people in my graduating class--so everyone in every year got a play-by-play of these skirmishes.  Obviously, this did not help my social situation.  I was unbearably lonely.  I tried to defend myself by being arrogant, by thinking that no one was worthy of my friendship anyway, and that everyone else was, after all, boring.  It was a terribly dark saga.

One day during Mass, there was only one line for Communion.  Usually, there were two.  But this day, taking Eucharist from Fr. McCarthy was unavoidable.  I stood before him, holding out my hands to receive the now empty sacrament.  "Body of Christ," he said to me, raising the stale wafer in offering.

"Amen," I responded quietly.  But his hand didn't lower immediately.  He held still, staring at me quizzically.  There was a sickeningly long moment of tension, and then, quietly so that only I could hear, he said,

"Really?"

I was mortified.  Frozen.  I don't remember how I responded, but I know that soon after I ran from the church and hid from my teachers behind a bush, crying.  At some point I told my mom, who told the (far more liberal) main priest of our parish, who was furious.

I hear that Fr. McCarthy was harshly reprimanded.  But I would like to thank him.  If I'd not felt that moment of intense discomfort at my years of deception, I don't know how long it might have taken me to learn to be true to myself.  I don't know that I'd ever have found the courage to stand up, to speak out, and to be counted.  I certainly would not have found myself announcing to every other non-Christian in my brand new public school junior year, "You are not alone."

I was tired of hiding.  I wasn't any good at it anyway.  Mine had always been an awfully noisy closet, and people were listening.  I cared about the truth, and I was angry at the world for systematically neglecting it.  So I resolved one morning to give it a voice.

The school secretary was in charge of making announcements over the intercom at the beginning of each day, after which she led the school in the Pledge of Allegiance.  That morning--a Friday, I think--I skipped class for the first time.  I went to the secretary's office, introduced myself, and requested the honor of leading the Pledge.  She seemed delighted that a student was taking interest, and obliged me.

As she read the announcements for Friday morning, my heart pounded.  My hands trembled.  I was worried I might not be able to speak.  Then she handed me the intercom, and I became calm, focused, and clear.  I spoke:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The static of a silent intercom hung in the air for several seconds.  I was trying to hand back the receiver, but no one in the office--not the assistants, not the principal, and not the secretary--was moving.  They all just stood petrified, staring at me, their mouths hanging open.  I turned off the intercom myself, and walked, confidently but as quickly as possible, to my first period class.

A few minutes later, I was called to the principal's office.  The secretary was sitting in a corner.  She'd clearly been crying.  The principal folded his arms and gave me a Very Stern Talking To.  "Do you understand the significance of what you've done?"

I felt awful.  I'd never wanted to hurt anyone.  I'd just wanted to defend the First Amendment and to try telling everyone the truth on for size.  I certainly didn't want to make the friendly school secretary cry.  I apologized, but I did insist that including God in the pledge every morning is unconstitutional, and that it marginalizes people who don't believe in God.  He told me that I'd offended many more people than that, because I was probably the only non-Christian in the school.  I thought he was probably right.  I left his office in tears.

The truth is, I didn't understand the full significance of what I'd done.  And neither did he.

But someone did.  I don't know his name, but he was a small mousey freshman whose voice I'd never heard before, and he came to me as I was rummaging in my locker.  "Hey," he said.  His voice was shaking, and he spoke so quietly it was nearly a whisper.  "That was really cool, what you did.  I've always been too scared to tell anybody I'm an atheist.  I thought I was the only one.  It means a lot to me, what you said.  Or didn't say, I guess.  Thank you."  He ran off before I could even say you're welcome.

He wasn't the only one.  More people thanked me that day.  And more the next week.  And the next month.  And they weren't just telling me.  I overheard people talking constitutional philosophy in the halls, saying it's not fair to Hindus or Buddhists either, and saying they'd just found out some of their friends don't believe in God.  A few weeks later I found out someone had pulled the same stunt in a neighboring town, and then, to my great astonishment, that it had even happened at my old Catholic school.

I thought coming out as an atheist was mostly just about me.  I was wrong.

By coming out publicly, I did not further ostracize myself.  There was a lot of retaliation from those who felt threatened by the challenge to Christian authority, but I was not standing up to them alone.  None of us was.  In a matter of seconds, I founded a community that had been waiting the whole time and needed only to be given a voice.  They all just needed to see one person stand up and say, "It's ok to be an atheist."

"Get your ass out of that closet!"

James Corft talks to closeted atheists through the We Are Atheism campaign.

It's definitely time for me to make one of these.  You have my word it'll happen as soon as I run into a decent camera.  Stay tuned.

By the way, I'm about 90% sure that James recorded this at Skepticon 5.  WAA had a table, and they were recording interviews... in a tiny closet.  This probably amuses me more than is strictly warranted.

Hexaflexagation: Holiday Edition

Step one: learn to make a six sided snow flake.  Step two: learn to make a hexaflexagon.  Step three:  paper kaleidosnowflake.