Weekend Coffee: October 21

Some links from the last week:

• As you may have heard, my good friend and awesome secular activist Greta Christina was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. It’s fully treatable, but she needed some help to cover her living expenses while she recovers, and the atheist community came through in spades, meeting and exceeding what she had hoped to raise in barely 24 hours.

• Dinesh D’Souza, the well-known Christian apologist, showed up at a conference last week with a much younger woman whom he introduced as his fiancée, despite the small fact that he’s still legally married to someone else. J.T. Eberhard digs up the requisite hilariously hypocritical quotes from D’Souza’s past writing on the sanctity of marriage.

• On Twitter, some bigots tried to start a hashtag, #SignsYoSonIsGay, with the kind of ignorant homophobia you’d expect. I’m pleased to say that supporters of equality took it back. Here’s my contribution.

• I’d heard of Chris Kluwe, the Minnesota football player who became an unlikely advocate for marriage equality, but until now I hadn’t known just how brilliant and badass he is. And I don’t even watch football!

• Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting to go to school, is making an impressive recovery.

• A second federal appeals court, this one in my home state of New York, rules that DOMA is unconstitutional.

• Anti-free-speech religions stick together, as Pope Benedict supports the Russian Orthodox church’s decision to have the punk band Pussy Riot charged and imprisoned for blasphemy.

• The famously irreverent comic George Carlin will have a New York street named after him, despite opposition from the church.

• In the midst of the European financial crisis, the church in Italy is losing some of its property tax exemptions.

• A Missouri preacher’s seemingly anti-gay rights sermon has a surprising twist.