Commentary on Respect for Marriage Act and How Religious Groups — Notably, U.S. Catholic Bishops — Are Dealing with This Issue

PRRI, "Support for Nondiscrimination Protections for LGBTQ People, by Religious Affiliation, 2015-2021"

An offering of interrelated articles commenting on the Senate vote to advance the Respect for Marriage Act and how religious groups — notably, the U.S. Catholic bishops — are dealing with this issue:

Ruth Krall, Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion (2)

Vasily Polenov, Le droit du Seigneur (1874), in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow

The essay below is the second part of Ruth Krall's essay entitled "Historical Meandering: Ideologies of Abuse and Exclusion." The first part was published on Bilgrimage several days ago. As the introduction to the essay at the link I have just provided explains, the essay is one of a series of essays Ruth has published on Bilgrimage, under the series title "Recapitulation: Affinity Sexual Violence in a Religious Voice." Links to the previous essays in this series appear at the link I've just given you above. The common theme binding these essays together is the endemic natural of religious and spiritual leader sexual abuse of followers. The current essay explores this theme by arguing that clergy sexual abuse is a global public health issue whose noxious presence can be found inside multiple language groups and national identities. The secong part of Ruth's essay, "Historical Meandering," follows (note that footnotes begin with xiii because this essay is a continuation of the first part published previously):

The Roseanne Débacle: Time to Talk About Roseanne's Roots in Salt Lake City and Mormon Culture?

Literally all that Roseanne had to do was NOT call a black woman a monkey and she... just.... couldn't 😂😂

White supremacy is a hell of a drug.

— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) May 29, 2018

"This Is Actually Happening, and It's Real, and It's Right Now": Christian Churches Responding (or Refusing to Respond) to Pastoral Needs of LGBTQ Human Beings

Gay (former) Mormon Tyler Glenn in a video he posted to Facebook on 5 July (the video above), about the suicide of LGBTQ Mormon youth after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints enacted its policy punishing same-sex couples and their children and excluding them from church participation:

This is actually happening, and it's real, and it's right now.

Reported Spike in Suicides of LGBT Mormon Youth After LDS Church Enacts New Gay-Excluding Policy: Some Links for You

As Chris Morley notes in a series of comments here yesterday (this is his initial comment in the thread), a story has made the rounds this weekend about the new policy the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints recently enacted punishing the children of same-sex couples (previous commentary on this story is here, here, and here). On 28th January, the Salt Lake Tribune published a report citing data from the group Mama Dragons, Mormon mothers supporting their gay children, which indicates that there have been 32 suicides of young LGBT Mormons following the church's adoption of its new gay-excluding policy.

LDS Church Dissociates Itself from Bundys: More on Mormon Connection to Oregon "White Privilege Performance Art"

Yesterday, I wrote about how one of the fascinating aspects of the way in which non-mainstream sources, at least, are reporting about the occupation of a federal building in Oregon by a ragtag band of white supremacists, Islamophobes, and right-wing Mormons is that — in contrast to the coverage of the Bundy standoff in 2014 — these sources are taking note of the right-wing Mormon connections of the Bundy family. I find this development heartening, for two reasons.

NY Times on Mormons "Leaving the Church in Droves" and the Alternative, Churches That "Embrace All People": A Message U.S. Catholic Bishops Refuse to Get

I shared the following with my circle of Facbook friends today, and thought I'd now post it here: 

Feedback from Mormon Experts About New Policy Targeting Children of Gay Parents: "Terrible Mistake" That Will Be Regretted Down the Line

In the Salt Lake Tribune today, Peggy Fletcher Stacks reports that, as some Mormon experts respond to the public demonstrations of anger at their church's new policy targeting gay couples by targeting their children, they're noting that the new policy is not doctrine: it's policy. And policy can change.

Mormons Organize Mass Protests to Push Back Against Abuse of Their LGBT Family Members and Friends: What's Wrong with Catholics?

My two-week fast from blogging is nearing its close, and I'll now break silence again to share some questions with you. They've risen in my mind and heart in the past few days, as we watch at close hand what's happening in the Mormon community in Salt Lake City as a result of the recent disclosure that LDS church leaders now want to attack same-sex couples by punishing their children.

Telling My Story as LDS Church Refuses Baptism to Children of Gay Couples, and Houston and Kentucky Demonstrate Continued Political Power of Gay-Baiting

Dear friends, I'm posting today, despite my fast from posting, because — well — there's something I'd like to say! And here it is:

End-of-Week Items: Utah, Arkansas, Religious Freedom and Anti-Gay Laws, and Fixations of Conservotrad Catholics

A miscellany of end-of-week news items or blog postings I've read, thought were good, and want to pass on to you as the week ends:

LDS Leaders Hold "Historic" Press Conference to Announce Support for Gay Rights, and Critics Suggest Mormons Are Punking the Media: My Response

As you may have read, this week top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints issued a statement saying the following:

Local "Religious Liberty" Conference Sponsored by LDS Church with Assistance of Catholic Bishop of Arkansas: Right-Wing Politics Disguised as Religion

Someone I know heard the presentations today at this interfaith program on religious liberty sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Little Rock. He did not attend, but happened to be at the LDS church as the presentations were broadcast over a loudspeaker for anyone in the church to hear while the conference took place. 

In Online Blog Conversations (Especially About Religion), Where Are the Women Commenters?

At her Flunking Sainthood site, Mormon blogger Jana Riess asks an interesting question yesterday: Where are all the Mormon women blog commenters? Riess notes that, though 46% of her readers are women and 54% men, 90% of the comments to her blog come from men.

Mormons Celebrating Pope Francis's Affirmation of Traditional Family Values: Wait, What?

Big headline in Salt Lake City's Deseret News yesterday:

EriKa Munson on Meeting of World Congress of Families in Salt Lake: "Attempt by the WCF to Divide One Family from Another and Promote Fear among Friends and Neighbors Is Sad and Dangerous"

In Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune, EriKa Munson, Mormon mother and co-founder of the group Mormons Building Bridges, which seeks to build dialogue between the Mormon community and the LGBT community, maintains that the World Congress of Families, which plans to meet in Salt Lake a year from now, should not meet in a city that houses the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because "[w]elcoming an organization to our state that has worked relentlessly to identify LGBT people as 'the other' is not in harmony with the Utah values I cherish."

More News: Updates to Stories about Archbishop Nienstedt, Rev. Frank Schaefer, David Gushee, and LDS Church

And finally this morning, some odds and ends providing updates on stories we've discussed here in the past: 

Church of England's Choice to Accept Female Bishops: What Will Be the Effect on the Roman Catholic Church? Some Musings

As the Church of England votes at long last to accept women bishops, Catholic News Service, the USCCB's Pravda, is already (and predictably) complaining that this decision will impede ecumenical relations between the Roman and the Anglican churches. Interestingly, the New York Times today carries both an article by Stephen Castle noting that the step the Church of England is now taking will help move society in the direction of gender equity, and a lament by Cadence Woodland noting that the decision of the top men in the LDS church to crack down on open conversation about women's issues has led to the closing of what had been called "the Mormon moment," a moment of seeming openness to free discussion of women's and gay issues.

More on Odd Confluence of Concern of LDS, Catholic, and Right-Wing Evangelical Leaders Today: Religious Politics and Strange Bedfellows

Yesterday, I wrote about how strange (but not strange in the least, as we think about it) it is that religious communities so wildly unlike as the LDS church, the Catholic church, and right-wing evangelicals are finding common ground around their shared determination to get women (and gay folks) under control. On the face of it, this collusion makes very little sense, when one considers the profound differences between the theological systems of these three religious groups — differences starkly evident in their various theologies of marriage, which would seem to be irreconcilable, when the Mormon theology of marriage was born in the practice of polygamy, Catholics maintain that marriage is a sacrament involving one man and one woman for life, and evangelicals historically reject all talk of sacraments beyond baptism and the Lord's supper. 

What Do the LDS Church and Catholic Church Have in Common These Days? Think Facebook, Job Dismissal, and Excommunication

What do the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Catholic church, and the churches of the right wing of American evangelicalism have in common? Well, there's this, it seems: