Morales turns negative over Snowden false positive

President Evo Morales has threatened to close the US embassy in Bolivia after his official plane was banned from European airspace. The warning came as four other South American leaders offered him support at a special summit yesterday. His plane was forced to land in Austria on Tuesday after France, Portugal, Italy, and Spain apparently barred it from flying through their airspace. There were unfounded suspicions that US fugitive Edward Snowden was on board, when in actual fact, the former CIA contractor is believed to be holed up at the transit area of Moscow airport after leaking details of a vast US surveillance programme. But enough about that because transgender students in California would be able to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity under a measure approved this week by the California Legislature. The proposal now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, whose office has declined to comment on whether or not he will sign it. The proposal would be the first state law in the nation that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender identity, though some states have general policies to the same effect, said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of several groups backing the legislation. Also in need of backing is an atheist group who unveiled the nation’s first public monument to secularism outside a county courthouse in Florida last week. That's right, the courthouse is now home to a 1,500-pound gray granite bench engraved with quotations extolling the separation of church and state. The group American Atheists said it had decided to put up its own monument only after failing to force Bradford County to remove the six-ton statue of the Ten Commandments that a Christian group had put up nearby. The atheist group has vowed to erect 50 more such monuments around the country on public sites where the Ten Commandments now stand alone. It says that an anonymous donor will foot that bill — the monument in Florida cost about US$6,000 — and that it is hearing from atheists who are already offering to serve as plaintiffs in lawsuits if there is opposition and lead the charge in their communities. It's not a bad idea. In fact, they should build monuments to many other religions because true equality means all or none. Christian have had an unfair privilege for at least the last 150 years, so it's time that they be stripped of their privilege and brought to equality with other belief systems.