Blogaround

Adorable soft gray cat sitting on a stool, with its head tilted slightly. Image source.

1. White man in the photo is the 'third hero' that night in 1968 (posted December 9) "They would receive their medals barefoot, representing the poverty facing people of color. They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers’ cause."

2. We talk like people who live in infamy (posted December 8) "Attacking non-combatants may, sometimes, be militarily effective. It may, sometimes, lead to military victory that ensures no one will have the power to punish or impose sanctions against such a “forbidden” act. And yet it remains impossible to violate this rule without becoming a violator of this rule. Which is to say, more bluntly, it remains impossible to attack non-combatants without defining oneself as a complete asshole, a coward, and a shameful murderer."

3. ‘If X is not wrong, then nothing is wrong’ (posted December 10) "That would be a radical step — a drastic and dramatic rewriting of what we had previously taught about the status of a fetus. But the implications of that rewriting were irresistible. What if we began to say that a fetus, an embryo, a zygote — even a fertilized egg — was a person, morally indistinguishable from any infant or adult? Abortion would no longer be a complicated question best left to women and their doctors, it would become a crude question of murder — a stark, blunt, obvious moral issue on a par with … oh, yes! oh god, yes! at last! … on a par with slavery."

4. Deck The Gals With Neon Duct Tape: Photographer Declares “Peace On Earth” By Silencing Women In Family’s Holiday Photo (posted December 15) OH GOD.

5. You Don’t Need a Date Night (posted December 16) I like this article because it says the opposite of all those Christian advice articles/books about how you NEED to do this this and this or else you can't have a good life/family/marriage/etc.

6. Why we, Wheaton College students, are condemning Jerry Falwell Jr.’s remarks on guns and Muslims (posted December 10) Preach it.

7. Nation’s Oppressed Christians Huddle Underground To Light Single Shriveled Christmas Shrub (posted December 10) "A number of the Christians recounted how they had secretly carried a brightly painted plastic nativity scene and an inflatable 7-foot-tall snowman to the secret site, the latter item having been trafficked across three states in a truck with a false bottom."

8. Creationists didn’t do all the reading (posted December 12)

9. No More Lying About Mary (posted December 3) "Her recitation of the Magnificat is a political manifesto, delivered fairly publicly, in the home of an official temple priest, who is married to her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, with John the Baptist."

10. An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar. "Speed was involved in a jumping-related incident with a lazy dog and a brown fox."

11. Pope Takes Sides Ahead Of Tomorrow's Marriage Equality Referendum In Slovenia (posted December 19) "When he was first chosen to lead the Catholic Church, Pope Francis sparked the hope of gay Catholics that they would be accepted by the Church, when he responded to a question about gays by asking "Who am I to judge?" Unfortunately, that rhetorical question has been followed by nothing but anti-LGBT actions, including this most recent attempt to influence the Slovenian marriage referendum."

12. My Amends to the LGBTQ Community (posted December 20) "Along with many of my friends and classmates, I teased him; I ostracized him; I “lovingly’ tried to explain to him how his “choices” made him an abomination in the eyes of God, and felt not only justified but completely vindicated in doing so."