If reports about a new European study that questions the effectiveness of colonoscopies is causing you to question whether you should get one, don’t let it. I make the recommendation due to my own life-changing personal experience with that undignified cancer-detecting procedure more than a year ago. If the routine, every-5-years colonoscopy I underwent in […]
News
The latest breaking news and journalistic reporting from a secular perspective at OnlySky, a secular community for nonreligious Americans.
Posted inEducation, Law
Lawyer fined $400,000 for warning school about predator priest on staff
Earlier this year, attorney Richard Trahant discovered that a chaplain at (private Catholic) Brother Martin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana had previously been accused of sexual misconduct. Trahant contacted the school and informed them of what he had just learned. Within days, that chaplain, Paul Hart, announced his “retirement.” That lawyer has now been […]
Posted inLaw, Reproductive rights
Supreme Court declines fetal personhood case
Personhood is a notoriously tricky philosophical term to define, let alone argue about in court. Indeed, the argument that a fertilized human egg has personhood is an incredibly difficult claim to establish. Nonetheless, it is an argument that anti-choicers have been desperate to see debated within the hallowed confines of the highest US court. Unfortunately […]
Posted inLaw, News, Politics
Is the nearly $1B Alex Jones verdict enough to deter fake news?
In the second of three major trials against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the jury’s verdict was overwhelming: Jones has been ordered to pay $965 million to families of Sandy Hook victims. These are grieving people whose lives were further upended by years of harassment thanks in strong part to Jones’s insistence that the massacre of […]
Posted inDeep Dive, History, News, Philosophy, War and Peace
On the brink: How yesterday’s fears can help us move through today’s war
In 1919, a poet started drafting what would eventually become one of our most oft-quoted poems, especially in times of struggle and disaster. In its earlier forms, it referenced tensions on the Russian border, before being scrubbed of precise details and left with a more all-encompassing sense of dread. As the poet was writing it, […]
Posted inLGBTQ News, Religious News, Reproductive rights
On ’60 Minutes,’ Bart Barber revealed the cruelty of Southern Baptists
On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Bart Barber, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was a hell of a get, even for this particular show, considering all the reasons the head of an organization rife with sexual abuse might not want to speak on national television. Add to that […]
Posted inReligious News
‘God’s perfect timing’? Evangelists cancel Florida event after hurricane
On September 30, about a day after Hurricane Ian hit the coast of Florida, Christian evangelists (and right-wing activists) Mario Murillo and Lance Wallnau announced that their “Fire and Glory Tour” would still take place October 24-25 at Hertz Arena in Estero, Florida, just outside of Fort Myers. … So the answer is very clear. […]
Posted inCritical thinking, Healthcare, Law, Psychology, Sociology
What we don’t talk about when we talk about the Satanic Panic
Imagine yourself for a moment in a painfully far-too-common scenario. A loved one, suffering from a growing sense of insecurity and deepening depression, begins seeking a destructive and delusive sense of purpose in wildly improbable conspiracy theories. Day by day, this person that you once felt a strong common rapport with drifts further and further […]
Posted inReligious News, Reproductive rights
Catholic hospitals are wrecking reproductive health care
Among the many, many consequences of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade is the spotlight it has placed on Catholic hospitals across the country with regards to reproductive health care. In states where abortion rights are severely restricted—especially in those states—it’s more important than ever that women have access to healthcare when their […]
Posted inDrugs, Politics
Are Biden’s pot pardons a glimpse of reason in politics?
As a long time Californian, where marijuana has been legal since 2016, I still have to resist the urge to stuff my purchase down my pants on the way out of a legal dispensary. As silly as that sounds, it’s even sillier when you consider my demographic. As a white lady from the suburbs, I […]