Presentation by Toni Van Pelt: The Dangers of Freethinking Women
Time: 6:30 pm.Location: Jim Ward Community Center, 301 NW 46th Avenue, Plantation (map)
We will have refreshments at 6:30, and the presentation will begin at 7:00.
Toni Van Pelt is the director of the Center for Inquiry-Office of Public Policy centered in Washington DC. Prior to her reassignment to Washington, Toni was the first executive director for the Center for Inquiry-Florida. In her former role as the president of Florida National Organization for Women, she lobbied the Federal and Florida Legislature, helping to write and establish new law in the state. She is a veteran of Congressional and state political campaigns working for candidates as well as on issues. She has appeared on television, and has been interviewed by national and international media both press and broadcast. Her past career as the owner of a travel agency specializing in international travel has afforded her the opportunity to travel to many areas of the globe and has informed her worldview.
Presentation description: The Catholic Inquisition published the book that could be called the most blood-soaked publication in human history. Malleus Maleficarum-or the Witches’ Hammer-indoctrinated the world to the dangers of freethinking women” and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture and destroy them. Those deemed “witches” by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women “ suspiciously attuned to the natural world”. Midwives also were killed for their heretical practice of using medical knowledge to ease the pain of childbirth-a suffering, the Church claimed, that was God’s rightful punishment for Eve’s partaking of the Apple of Knowledge, thus giving birth to the idea of Original Sin. During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding number of women and the men who supported them
