Mike Tidmus

“People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in [...]

“I didn’t anticipate at the beginning that the U.S. bishops were going to come out against same-sex marriage. That they were actually going to donate money to defeat the civil rights of homosexuals in the secular society. … When that broke in the news, I felt an intense pressure. And I am a person who [...]

You have to figure that if a person suddenly welcomed Santa Claus and garden fairies into their life and proceeded to shape their life around these charming tales, it might be difficult for that person to give them up. Author Anne Rice has taken a step in the right direction, and for all the right [...]

“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten …years, [...]

“I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away. Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it’s because he’s ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they’re responsible [...]

“There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is — in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree — it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime — the invention of [...]

“Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor — but they have few followers now.” — Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, British science fiction author, inventor and futurist, from Childhood’s End – 1953

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that [...]

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to [...]

“Yes. I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as ‘Atheist,’ some people will say, ‘Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?’ I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god – in fact I am convinced that there [...]

HOMOVISION: Will Self talks about Dorian at Polari (video: HOMOVISION at YouTube) Jonathan Heawood, writing at The Guardian: In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde set the gold standard for chroniclers of decadence. The story of a man who remains eternally young while his portrait ages provided the framework for Wilde’s whimsical but vicious [...]

People who died, Jim Carroll Band (video: YouTube) James Dennis “Jim” Carroll, poet & punk rocker August 1, 1950 – September 11, 2009

Oh. My. Dog! Look who’s got a book deal! The recently dethroned Carrie Prejean has signed on with the right-wing Regnery Publishing for a November release — just in time for Christmas pulping. Prejean joins Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and a handful of other dim-bulbs of the conservative movement in the Regnery stable. The book is [...]

Stephen Fry (photo: Steve Forrest/Rex Features) My friend Andy Harley, at UK Gay News, points to this must-read (there I go again!) essay by noted British humorist, author, actor, director, television presenter, non-believer, openly gay man and revered polymath Stephen Fry: Stephen Fry’s letter to himself: Dearest absurd child Just who was the young, arrogant [...]

The controversy over the deranking of GLBT and feminist titles at Amazon.com came to a full boil earlier this morning with wild accusations, confessing hackers, and a vow from the Lambda Literary Foundation to get an appropriate response from the online retail giant. Said LLF Board President Christopher Rice: Lambda Literary Foundation applauds the diligent work of writers, bloggers [...]