Toni Van Pelt, CFI Office of Public Policy, to tour Florida in October
Toni Van Pelt is touring CFI Communities throughout Florida in October:
10 -- Fort Lauderdale - 5 PM
11 -- Miami - 8 PM
13 -- Naples - 7 PM
15 -- Radio Interview, WELE-AM 1380, Orlando/Daytona Beach 4:15-5:45 PM
16 -- Daytona Beach - Noon
16 -- Winter Park, Rollins College - 7 PM
18 -- Radio Interview, WMNF-FM 88.5 (NPR), Tampa 10-11 AM
18 -- Tampa - 11:30 AM
21 -- Tallahassee - 5 PM
22 -- Gainesville, University of Florida, 7 PM
24 -- Tampa, University of South Florida, 5 PM
Toni Van Pelt is well known to humanists throughout Florida. Toni was responsible for having inaugurated most of the Center for Inquiry Communities in Florida. Toni will tour our communities in October. With her wealth of experience in politics and public advocacy of human rights and secular values, Toni will be well able to guide our members in the best ways to individually and as communities promote our values, and the use of science and reason in politics, government, and education.
Toni's main talk is entitled, "The Dangers of Free Thinking Women". 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.As part of the presentation, learn what CFI is doing locally and nationally in promoting equal rights, palnetary ethics, and progressive secular humanist values.
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.
From the Office of Public Policy Web site, http://www.cfidc.org/opp/: Because the Center for Inquiry is the only organization broadly defending and promoting science, reason, and secular humanism, with an agenda entirely built upon the success of scientific naturalism, we are well positioned to enter the public policy arena. Washington, D.C., is now the central arena where these debates are occurring, and we must be at front and center, defending science, reason, and secularism where the debate is most charged. We have been leading advocates in these areas and have assembled a wide network of experts who can address the public-policy issues related to our agenda. We plan to bring that network and expertise to the nation's capital. We are the world's foremost think tank of scientific naturalism and must address its defense where attacks have been most destructive and visible: in U.S. law and public policy.
