Blogaround

1. Ukraine war: Shock and joy in newly liberated villages (September 11)

2. How to tell if you’re allosexual, if you’re a journalist (September 8) "It reads like it comes from a parallel universe where asexuality is the default, and questioning people wonder if just maybe they’re not asexual after all."

3. The tangled web of evangelical opposition to abortion while believing in original sin, eternal conscious torment and the mysterious age of accountability (May 10) "Would a blastocyst soul that dies three days after conception with no consciousness suddenly wake up with a fully developed human body burning in eternal conscious torment?"

4. Collections: War Elephants, Part I: Battle Pachyderms (2019) A blog series about war elephants, which were a real thing in history!

5. Zhengzhou Becomes First Big City to Scrap ‘Hukou’ Restrictions (September 15) "China’s hukou system has been in place since the 1950s and is tied to certain social welfare benefits, including access to health care, education, and the right to purchase properties. Recently, a Chinese province and cities with fewer than 3 million people have either scrapped or readjusted their hukou policies, with Shanghai becoming one major city offering the hukou to master’s students graduating from the city’s universities."

6. ‘Ask how the Americans did it’: How racial bias in US medicine inspired Hitler and persists today (September 10) [content note: descriptions of evil racist medical experiments] "My medical training had taught me that diseases common in Black people, like diabetes and high blood pressure, were the result of race itself—that Black people had a biological tendency toward certain conditions. There was no mention of the structural racism that creates the conditions for ill health to thrive."

7. Judge: HIV drug mandate violates religious freedom of anti-gay Christians (September 7) "If all of this holds up, and PrEP drugs become harder to access, it would have disastrous consequences"

8. Mainland China reports first imported monkeypox case (September 17)

Blogaround

Baby elephant. Image source.

1. #1130: “When I told you my marriage is over, it wasn’t an invitation for advice on how to fix it.” + Summer Pledge Drive continues (posted August 2) "'Oh, don’t rush into this; marriage takes work, you know, and divorce is bad for children' is a REALLY crappy thing to say."

2. True Love Waits: How “Saving Myself” Made Me Lose My Faith (posted August 2) "You had occasionally masturbated before, after discovering orgasms accidentally in a bathtub. You could rationalize the first accident. You could not rationalize each subsequent orgasm, not accidental at all."

3. ‘If Jesus had broken the law then he would have been sinful’ (posted July 11) "Even more astonishing, White says this specifically about Egyptian laws regarding migration. As it happens, such Egyptian laws are kind of a major theme in the Bible. There’s a whole book — called “Exodus” — about all of God’s people disobeying that law, with God’s help."

4. The female price of male pleasure  (posted January 25) "In a world where women are co-equal partners in sexual pleasure, of course it makes sense to expect that a woman would leave the moment something was done to her that she didn't like. That is not the world we live in."

Blogaround

Black-and-white kitty on a coffee table. Image source.

1. "Second Cousins," "Once Removed", and More Explained in Chart Form (posted November 22) So useful!

2. ‘Please, I am out of options’: inside the murky world of DIY abortions (posted November 21)

3. Harry Potter Theory: Ariana Dumbledore Was An Obscurial (posted November 24) [content note: spoilers for "Fantastic Beasts"]

4. African elephants are being born without tusks due to poaching, researchers say (posted November 27)

5. These Jarring Cards Combine Scenes of Middle East Conflict with the Christmas Story (posted November 29)

6. Texas Tea Party Lawmaker Pushes for Schools to Out Their Students to Parents (posted November 20) This is bad. Outing LGBT children could put them in serious danger. (And if anyone supports this bill and claims to be "pro-life", well, THEY'RE NOT.)

7. Study finds millions of China's 'missing girls' actually exist (posted December 1) A lot of misogny built in.

8. Press Release: Has Evangelist Ravi Zacharias Misrepresented His Academic Credentials? (posted 2015) (via) Wow. Back in the day, I really respected Ravi Zacharius and his ministry.

[content note: links below are all about he-who-must-not-be-named and the election]

1. NY Times: Proof Emerges That Vladimir Putin HEAVILY Altered 2016 Election (DETAILS) (posted November 21) This is not normal.

2. "We're His Problem Now" Calling Sheet. Here's a ton of information on how to call your Congresspeople.

3. White People Problems (posted November 21) "The next president of the United States has made it clear that he primarily views those of us who look like the Hamilton cast — that "diverse America" Dixon spoke of — as a threat."

4. The Trans People Who Are Detransitioning To Stay Safe In Trump’s America (posted November 20)

5. What If Trump Wanted More Illegal Immigration? Wait, He's On It! (posted November 22) "Let’s rebuild our roads, bridges and power grids, and put up some new infrastructure as well, including perhaps an unfinished border wall. That will require a lot of labor, and Mexican labor, including that of the illegal variety, is common in the construction business."

Blogaround

Image source.

1. On World Vision, gay marriage, and taking a stand on the backs of starving children (posted March 24) "It is unfathomable to me that people would choose to punish and drop the child they sponsor over a difference in doctrine."

2. Urban Church P̶l̶a̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ Plantations (posted March 18) "I’m amazed at how quickly majority-culture pastors with no urban ministry experience acquire a passion for urban ministry and then automatically assume that they are qualified for the job."

3. The Day Evangelicalism Died (posted March 26) "As a result, Evangelicalism as we knew it, died. Instead of affirming the trinity and the inspiration of scripture in order to be called an evangelical and leaving all other theological debates open for charitable disagreement, the New Evangelicals have now added neutrality on same sex marriage something that must be disavowed before signing on. When leaders wished World Vision “farewell” and declared this “apostasy“, they made the lines dark and clear: you can’t be an evangelical if you don’t agree with them."

4. This seems relevant... (posted March 27) Yeah.

5. There is no such thing as ‘holiness’ apart from love (posted March 26) "What, pray tell, is the content and substance of this loveless holiness? What are these other laws that Jesus and Paul forgot about when they both told us that love is the fulfillment of the law?"

6. In which this is for the ones leaving evangelicalism (posted March 29) "Evangelicalism doesn’t get our loyalty: that fidelity is for our Jesus." Amen, amen.

7. And this baby elephant:

Image source.

Have a good week!