Fairness - The Commentary

The recent release of that 300-page report of widespread sexual abuse and its cover-up by leaders and ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination) is only a surprise to people who’ve been in denial about the millennia-long history of the relationship of religions to sexual obsession.  Allegations of sexual abuse and this denomination’s handling of them in particular have been news for decades . Of course, the anti-Catholic stand of these Baptists and most Evangelicals has kept them condemning the same thing in Roman Catholicism for a century . And widespread sexual abuse is a factor in Evangelicalism beyond this denomination . But this is not about hypocrisy, which is actually not considered such a bad thing in right-wing religion. It’s about something inherent in its doctrinal structure.   As I wrote in the chapter “Not So Strange Bedfellows: Sexual Addiction* and Religious Addiction:” “The existence of widespread sexual abuse by...

Right-wing politicians so far this year have proposed over 325 anti-LGBTQ bills around the country, exceeding the previous record of 268 set last year. That’s no coincidence as if these proposals have just arisen spontaneously from the grassroots. This is a well-funded national , top-down strategy promoting fear-tested methods aiming to destroy not only any gains LGBTQ people have made in the larger public consciousness but also to end the threat of an open, historically and evidenced based public educational system. Florida is just the most widely talked about model because its governor is positioning himself to capture the cult-like allegiance of those who fall for it in order to become the next Republican messiah. But it’s played out all over the country even with Republican women representatives actually following transgender people into men’s bathrooms to gain political points as brazenly and cruelly as possible.   Right-wing strategists intentionally followed their quite suc...

It doesn’t take much awareness to notice that our Universe loves, really loves, diversity. Just imagine what our world would look like if it were all one color. From the bright red of the male cardinal to the subtle colorings of his female companion, from the blues of the sky to the greens of our plants and trees, from the deep shiny ebonies of the raven to the glowing yellows of the gold finch – nature revels in dazzling colors, shapes, and sounds. There’s diversity in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, the skin colorings and body types of humanity, the varieties of insects, the shapes of snowflakes or leaves, the colors and sizes of planets, and on and on. It’s clear that a dull sameness is not in the natural interest of the world around us. Such diversity doesn’t have to be, it seems to me. We could have evolved efficiently without it. But Nature doesn’t want to have that – it’s into flamboyance.   Equality, affirmation, and celebration, then, is not about ignor...

Back in 2015, as LGBTQ activists celebrated the victories of marriage equality and other progress, Michelangelo Signorile warned that given the right-wing, anti-LGBTQ religious strategies they were already setting in motion, It’s Not Over . Just as they were far into implementing a carefully planned process of chipping away slowly at a woman’s right of choice over her body, they were planning a similar backlash against LGBTQ people . Progressives were, Signorile wrote then, in danger of a “victory blindness” that would ignore what the right-wing was already preparing to do to LGBTQ rights in that similar manner that it had been using to slowly but surely gut Roe v. Wade . And now we see all that coming to fruition. Not only have the years since his warning seen regressive sectarian religious groups work at local and state levels to place their kind in office, but they've recently right-wing use of the previous administration and a Party leadership that is now beholden to them and t...

Before we put away the decorations and crèches used in the Christmas and Epiphany celebrations that are taking place around the world, there’s one more episode in the stories surrounding these holidays that’s often glossed over too quickly. Whether any or all of these stories is historical can’t be determined, but this final episode is there in the Gospel of Matthew to complete the saga that’s meant to teach its readers lessons that it considers important. The previous episode of those foreign Magi and other outsiders honoring the baby Jesus in Bethlehem that’s symbolically depicted in countless nativity scenes wasn’t the conclusion of the series. Matthew 2:12-18 instead goes on further to teach its readers one more thing: that the “Holy Family” are comrades with any who have had to flee their home or homeland for protection. The Magi, the Gospel previously said, had been to the capital city, Jerusalem on the way to Bethlehem. Their inquiries thereby alerted King Herod and his dutiful...