Wrote a little post at Mind on Fire about a dustup at Gordon College over a LGBT support group that was voted down last week by student government.
The first thing that struck me was the way the article, glossing as a newspaper must over the hard theological issues, can only treat it as an emotional issue, tut-tutting the Student Association for not being more compassionate. The solution, one would suppose, would be for them to let their hearts grow a few sizes and hold a revote, and all would be well. But it’s not that easy, because it’s not just about homophobia in the emotional sense, like it would be at most schools. It’s also about a millennia-old intellectual system that denigrates queerness (at least in most versions). And someone who give serious assent to that system with their head cannot accept queerness even if their heart wants to. (more…)
The first thing that struck me was the way the article, glossing as a newspaper must over the hard theological issues, can only treat it as an emotional issue, tut-tutting the Student Association for not being more compassionate. The solution, one would suppose, would be for them to let their hearts grow a few sizes and hold a revote, and all would be well.
But it’s not that easy, because it’s not just about homophobia in the emotional sense, like it would be at most schools. It’s also about a millennia-old intellectual system that denigrates queerness (at least in most versions). And someone who give serious assent to that system with their head cannot accept queerness even if their heart wants to. (more…)
Years of blogging have made me forget how nice it is to see your work published somewhere other than your own blog.
But whom should I write for? The most well-known media are a bit out of reach for a heretofore unknown writer, so I’m on the lookout for magazines and sites that might be more open to that. Not counting HuffPo.
Motivations:
At Mind on Fire here.
“The stuff that really brings people together, and makes us happy to live together, originates from a caring and thoughtful mind that’s been exposed to many streams of education.” That was the key point I took away from a presentation — talk, acoustic concert, and Q&A — by Greg Graffin, frontman and co-songwriter for the seminal punk band Bad Religion, who was honored with an award the Saturday before last at Harvard’s Memorial Church. (more…)
“The stuff that really brings people together, and makes us happy to live together, originates from a caring and thoughtful mind that’s been exposed to many streams of education.”
That was the key point I took away from a presentation — talk, acoustic concert, and Q&A — by Greg Graffin, frontman and co-songwriter for the seminal punk band Bad Religion, who was honored with an award the Saturday before last at Harvard’s Memorial Church. (more…)
So in addition to the Leaving the Garden post, I’ll be covering for John the next few weeks at Mind on Fire by posting the next few Wednesdays.
Pending conversations with John, this Wednesday I’m planning to post about Greg Graffin’s talk and acoustic concert last night at the reception of the “Rushdie Award” given to him by Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy.
And next week I may post about an event at my college this week: a retrospective about a perfect storm of LGBT activism that took place on campus a year ago. Unless something else turns up between now and then.
(Now that I’ve gotten audio working again on my computer (h/t Elisa!) I hope to have more to post about music soon…)
One of my favorite bloggers, John Remy of Mind on Fire, asked me to write a post for MoF’s series Leaving the Garden, which asks people to reflect on their journey away from religious conviction in a narrative fashion. I heartily support this, since talking about religion/irreligion solely in terms of intellectual arguments can be tiresome. My post just went up here. The opening:
The first garden I remember was by our country house in Ohio, near Steubenville, a little town nine miles from the Pennsylvania border. We were there because my father wanted to attend Franciscan University, as it was a hotbed of charismatic Catholicism at the time. But by the time I was six, we moved from Ohio for the same reason we had moved there from Phoenix: my father’s all-consuming passion for finding the truth about God. It always took us to unexpected places. (More…)
The first garden I remember was by our country house in Ohio, near Steubenville, a little town nine miles from the Pennsylvania border. We were there because my father wanted to attend Franciscan University, as it was a hotbed of charismatic Catholicism at the time. But by the time I was six, we moved from Ohio for the same reason we had moved there from Phoenix: my father’s all-consuming passion for finding the truth about God.
It always took us to unexpected places. (More…)
