Blogaround

Cute duck with tiny flowers on its head. Image source.

1. Bank of America freezing accounts of customers suspected of not being US citizens (posted August 30) "Saeed Moshfegh woke up earlier this month to discover the strangest thing: though he had plenty of money in his Bank of America account, he couldn’t access it. An Iranian getting his Ph.D in physics at the University of Miami, Moshfegh used the account for everyday transactions." Whoa whoa whoa not cool.

2. We still have time to repent for American racism (posted 2017) "Our country has never done tshuvah for its many racist wrongs — particularly those committed against black and indigenous people. There has been no real introspection by those who hold institutional power, no formal apologies made to those enslaved or their descendants. There has been, on an official level, no display of curiosity about whether restitution is needed and what that might possibly look like."

3. redemption for rapists: a how-to guide for predators, abusers, and churches (posted August 30) [content note: sexual assault] "A teenage girl trusted you because you were her spiritual guide, her youth pastor? You must never serve in that role, ever again."

4. U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question (posted August 29) "The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown." WHOAAAAAAA not cool.

5. On Sensual Attraction: Yes, sometimes people do "just want to cuddle." (posted August 19) "We live in a society in which sex and ideas of what constitutes romantic gestures have been marked as the most meaningful or “deepest” manners to express attraction and be passionately intimate with one another. Other forms of expressing human attraction and intimacy beyond sex, such as sensuality, are frequently already socially marked as precursors to sex or otherwise dependent on an expected “deeper” presence of sexual attraction or desire to obtain sex."

And 2 articles about LGB rights in Asia. Good news and bad news...

1. India's top court decriminalizes gay sex in landmark ruling (posted September 6)

2. 'People are afraid': Gay caning stokes fear in Malaysia's LGBT community (posted September 3)