In the January/February issue of The American Rationalist S.T. Joshi reviews the book Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion by Phil Zuckerman, just published by Oxford University Press. Pitzer is a professor of sociology at Pitzer College (located on the eastern edge of Los Angeles in Claremont CA). The book consists mainly of interviews with people who explain their diverse reasons for leaving their childhood religions, reasons that range from personal traumas to intellectual exploration. I haven’t read it myself, but it sounds like an interesting subject, not matter what one’s religious views.

However, I’m mentioning it here mainly because of a particular response from one of the interviews recounting an amusing failed effort. A conservative Christian father tried to change his gay son’s sexual orientation by sending the young man on a two-week vacation to Hawaii in the company of a high-class call girl. Asked how well that worked, the son replied, “Oh, she was great. A really nice woman. Very kind. We didn’t have sex together, but we partied a lot together — we went out to the bars at night and picked up men. It was a lot of fun.”

Wasn’t it Robert Burns who commented on the best-planned lays of mice and men?

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