Blogaround

1. How to Love the Sinner & Hate the Sin: 5 Easy Steps by Emily Joy (posted June 1) [content note: suicide is mentioned] "Structure your entire relationship around opportunities to ask them to change."


2. How I convinced the world you can be raped by your date (posted June 2) [trigger warning: rape, victim-blaming, etc] "On talk shows I was always asked why I didn't try to fight him off, why I couldn't do something better. It was never, 'Why did he presume that he could have sex with you?'"

3. The Heartfelt Letters That Reveal How the Original Roots Haunted America (posted June 1) "It’s the first time the Middle Passage was represented on TV, and it’s the first time slavery was represented with that kind of brutality on television."

4. Christian rock star comes out as gay. Here’s the letter he wrote to the world (posted May 31)

5. 5 Reasons Why More Christians Are Becoming LGBTQ Affirming (posted May 27) "It happened one night when a non-affirming friend asked me quite sincerely, “How can I hold a non-affirming stance in such a way that kids won’t want to go out and kill themselves?” I thought long and hard about the question... I realized that I didn’t have a single answer for him"

6. To Conservative Parents of Daughters: Don’t Raise a Victim (posted 2013) Linking to this because it talks about the book "Boundaries" by Dr. Cloud and Dr. Townsend, and I'm reading "Boundaries in Dating" now. I totally relate to how this blogger (April) finds the entire concept of "boundaries" to be bizarre, foreign, and completely counter to everything the church taught her.

7. How We Marginalize Abuse Survivors: Valuing Forgiveness Over Protection (posted May 23) Wow, this is an interpretation of the biblical story of Joseph I've never heard before. Joseph was abused by his brothers, and he does not forgive them until he is in a position of power and has tested them to confirm that they are truly repentant.

8. ‘Game of Thrones’ and the Bible (posted May 30) "The suggestion that this text includes any simple errors and mistakes is an idea they find appalling, but they’re nearly as adamantly opposed to the suggestion that the Bible might also include deliberate inconsistencies, disagreements, or differences of perspective that should rightly be read as meaningful."

9. The Serious Problems With Using Ecclesiastes 3 To Justify Christian Support of War & Violence (posted May 19) "The act of rebutting Jesus using other passages of Scripture should be a major red flag in the mind of any believer." Not for the type of Christian who believes [ie claims to believe] every word in the bible is equally valid, and whichever side gathers the most bible verses wins.

10. This dog, who is setting a good example for safety in the science lab:

Image description: A science classroom with a sign that says "Proper 'lab' attire includes goggles" with a drawing of a dog in safety goggles. Next to the sign, there is a real live labrador wearing safety goggles and a vest.

11. Why The Anti-Trafficking Movement Ignores The Voices Of Sex Workers (posted June 3) "What is happening today in the anti-trafficking/anti-sex industry movement would be offensive in any other context. It’s a form of moral colonialism: 'Oh, hey– I’m here, I have moral objections to how you’re living, and I know exactly how your life needs to change without even listening to your story.'"

And another post from the same blog: Is Pornography What’s Fueling Human Trafficking? (posted May 26) "To be true, the facts would need to flow like this: If pornography is the causation behind sex trafficking, and if the wide-spread existence of pornography is relatively new in history, one would also find that the phenomenon of forced sexual labor is new as well."

12. Let the World Change You: A Commencement Address Do-Over (posted May 21) "I thought the world needed my answers, but as it turns out, I needed the world’s questions."

13. The kingdom of God is like John Oliver forgiving $15 million of medical debt.

14. The Gospel Coalition and how (not) to engage culture (posted June 6) "Basically, you have to be a conservative Calvinist protestant who holds particular views about gender roles, reads the Bible in a certain way, understands human sexuality like they do, etc. If you don’t agree to these positions, you’re out."

15. BuzzFeed Terminates Ad Deal With Republican Party Over Trump (posted June 6) "The Trump campaign is directly opposed to the freedoms of our employees in the United States and around the world and in some cases, such as his proposed ban on international travel for Muslims, would make it impossible for our employees to do their jobs."

16. How Bernie Sanders Exposed the Democrats’ Racial Rift (posted June 8)

17. Suicidal Ideation (posted June 9) [trigger warning, obviously]

18. Why Some People Are Hurt More by Break-Ups Than Others (posted January 28) Oooooh highly recommend this article to anyone who grew up in purity culture.