Kristin Du Mez's Response to Jay Green on her "Illiberal" Positions: More Nonsense from the "High Priests of White Dude (Increasingly Reactionary) Centrism"

I am glad that Kristin Du Mez has responded con gusto to the charge of Jay Green of Covenant College that she, Jemar Tisby, Shane Claiborne, Danté Stewart, and Beth Allison Barr are illiberal religious thinkers who represent the left-wing equivalent of Rod Dreher, R. R. Reno, Eric Metaxas, Dinesh D'Souza, Charlie Kirk, and the crew at The Daily Wire. She writes,

Thomas Zimmer on the Scourge of "Both Sides" Commentary and the "High Priests of White Dude (Increasingly Reactionary) Centrism"

A pictorial commentary on bothsidesism at Merriam-Webster's "Looking at ‘Bothsidesing’"

In a posting today entitled "The Self-Important Arbiters of Reason and the Scourge of 'Both Sides,'" Parker Molloy features a thread that Thomas Zimmer recently posted on Twitter responding to a tweet by Nate Silver defending "both sides" journalism. Every word Zimmer writes in response to Silver, whom he rightly characterizes as "one of the high priests of white dude (increasingly reactionary) centrism," is just so on target and important that it's difficult to choose sections of his thread to highlight. 

Back from Trip, Thinking About American Catholicism, the "Both-Sides" False Equivalency Argument, and Ethics of Survival

I'm sorry to have been silent for a week. Steve and I spent last week in New Orleans visiting friends and family, and as we did so, I couldn't keep up with blogging — even, to any great degree, with following the news. I'm back now, and among all that I might talk about (the dire situation in Puerto Rico and the morally bankrupt response of the Trump administration to it; the event of mass murder in Las Vegas last evening), what is foremost in my mind today, for the purpose of this blog, is a discussion I read in the past day or so at the National Catholic Reporter site.

Andrew Sullivan Breaks Silence: Democracy Is the Problem! Political Correctness Is the Problem! Liberal Smugness Is the Problem! — An Apologia for White Working-Class Support for Trump

Andrew Sullivan has broken his long silence (after he discontinued his blog) with an essay published yesterday in New York Magazine. His thesis: democracy is problematic.

Commonweal Editorial Slams "Illiberalism" That Would Shut Down Free Speech of Trump Fans: Implications for Commonweal's Discussions of LGBTQ Lives?

As I noted yesterday, the leading "liberal" Catholic journal in the U.S., Commonweal, has just published an editorial statement which maintains that "illiberal" forces in American democracy are seeking to shut down the free speech of anyone who is not a member of a minority group. The editorial (which, unfortunately, came out only a day after a 15-year-old girl was pepper sprayed in the face by protesters at a rally in Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, as Trump supporters screamed "Nigger lover!" and "Bitch!" at her) points to the actions of anti-Trump protesters to combat racism and misogyny as evidence that "illiberal" groups are now working to suppress the free speech of those with whom they disagree.

As Trump Unmasks Catholic Republican Voters' Complicity in Racism, Catholic Centrists Continue to Declare Discussion of Complicity in Racism Off-Limits

A week ago, I drew readers' attention to a bold, clear statement by Anthony Annett at Commonweal which notes the many respects in which the Republican party line has not been, even pre-Donald Trump, in line with Catholic social teaching for some time now. Annett implicates Catholic neoconservatives like George Weigel and Robert P. George, who want to challenge Trump by claiming that he undermines Catholic moral teaching — Annett implicates these Catholic neocons in Trump's rise, as he notes,

Krzysztof Charamsa's Letter to the Pope in English Translation: "I’ve Made the Decision to Publicly Refuse the Violence of the Church with Regard to [LBTI] People"

Because Giova Gallagher has kindly pointed us in a comment here to an English translation of the full text of Monsignor  Krzysztof Charamsa's letter to Pope Francis at the Crux website, I'm going to leave a final note before I begin my two-week retreat, sharing that link with all of you, with much gratitude to Giova for finding it for us. The Crux article (by Gaia Pianigiani of New York Times) says that the translation is by Crux.

Ezra Klein on How New Online Media Technologies Shift U.S. Political Conversation: Implications for "Pope Messiahs" and Centrist Catholic Media Gatekeepers

This is what I mean when I keep saying repeatedly that new media made possible by online technology, as well as the tools of social networking, are changing the game for the centrists who have long sought to control public political and religious discourse in the U.S.: Ezra Klein explains what, in his view, is going on with the rapidly shifting terrain of American politics:

As Pope Francis Arrives in U.S., Centrist Catholic Media Continue to Harp on "Balance" and Holding the Center

As Pope Francis arrives in the U.S. to a church very bitterly divided on ideological and political grounds, the centrist Catholic publications are still talking "balance," as they've done for decades now. As if someone has appointed them divine overseers to stand in the middle and keep the quarreling children on either side in line. As if they themselves are omniscient and objective, and have no dogs in any frays. As if the pope himself is a model of "balance." As if "balance" and the "center" were what Jesus himself was about. As if anything really important in the world gets accomplished by "balance."

Those Gotcha Planned Parenthood Videos Again: Where There's No Novum, There's No Spirit — On the Dead Thinking, Rhetoric, and Tactics of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Three days ago, Colleen left a powerful comment here. She writes, 

The Doctored Gotcha Planned Parenthood Video and Catholic Responses to It: Some Critical Questions

I haven't talked about that doctored gotcha video made by David Daleiden, who is in cahoots with the odious right-wing gotcha activist James O'Keefe. I haven't discussed it since I knew I could count on various centrist Catholic publications, whose métier is, after all, to give intellectual respectability to the ideas of the hard right no matter how disreputable, to do that job for Catholics. I knew I could count on centrist Catholic publications to clothe the video and those promoting it in "objective" newspapers like the New York Times — can anyone say Ross Douthat? — in respectable garb, even as those publications claim to stand in some mythic, objective "middle" space devoid of commitments to the agenda of either left or right.

A Reminder from Think Progress of What Women and Others Put Up with Online, and Ta-Nehisi Coates on How the Internet Has Opened up Cultural Conversations

Douglas Laycock on U.S. Catholic Bishops and Marriage Equality: "Being on the Losing Side of a Revolution Can Be Very Dangerous for Churches" (the Continuing Ruse of U.S. Catholic Centrism)

Father Thomas Reese reports today at National Catholic Reporter that University of Virginia professor Douglas Laycock thinks "being on the losing side of a revolution can be very dangerous for churches." Reese is summarizing points Laycock made recently in a presentation at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and in an article in the University of Illinois Law Review.

"Just Who Do We Think We Are?": Real People with Real Lives Affected (Really!) by Marriage Equality

Every time something like this happens, somebody says we have to have a conversation about race. We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. And we don’t need more talk.  (Loud applause.)

~ President Obama eulogizing Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 26 June 2015  

Patricia Miller on Who Was Not at Georgetown Confab on Poverty, and William Greider on Recent IMF Banking Conference: Difference Women's Voices Make

Everywhere I turn online today the news at religion and religion-and-politics websites is the recent panel discussion at Georgetown on the theme of poverty, at which President Obama made an appearance. Commonweal is featuring a statement today from E.J. Dionne, who was a contributor to the discussion, and in his "Morning Briefing" column at National Catholic Reporter this morning, Tom Roberts points readers to a version of Dionne's statement that has just appeared in the Washington Post.

Quote for Day: Odd That No One Ever Asks Rubio and Others Employing a States'-Rights Argument about Marriage Equality, Was Loving v. Virginia Wrongly Decided?

In several postings in the past several days, I've zeroed in on the, well, odd tendency of many centrist religious commentators about religious freedom and gay rights to draw a sharp dividing line around the issue of gay rights, and treat it as entirely separate from other struggles of marginalized minority groups for rights. As I stated last week, for instance, though you can find many centrist Catholic commentators arguing that denying goods and services to LGBT folks under the rubric of religion is thinkable and should remain discussable, you don't find these same people defending the practice of denying goods and services to people on racial grounds, while claiming religious warrant for the discrimination.

Ten Questions I Might Ask Centrist Religion Journalists Defending Anti-Gay "Religious Freedom" Bills

With a nod to Mary Oliver and her poem "Some Questions You Might Ask," some questions I'd like to ask the centrist religion commentators who keep finding every reason in the world to defend bogus "religious freedom" legislation attacking LGBT people, while they rule those being so attacked out of their centrist conversation and declare them the opposite of what it means to be religious:

Disreputable Racist Genealogy of Anti-Gay "Religious Liberty" Arguments and Abdication of Pastoral Responsibility by U.S. Catholic Leaders: So Much for Healing the World

Ed Kilgore, who grew up in Georgia and knows whereof he speaks, points out that the current battle over "religious freedom" and the belief-based right to discriminate is déjà vu all over again: we Americans have been here before. We were here during the Civil Rights kerfuffle of the 1950s and 1960s — though anti-gay activists foam at the mouth when one suggests that they're carrying on today, vis-a-vis gay rights, the same gesture of religion-grounded defiance of civil rights for a minority group that energized the political and religious right in the mid-20th century.

Quote for Day: Naomi Klein on Why We're Stuck with Climate Change — It's about the Economic Elite, Stranglehold, and the Fetish of Centrism

Naomi Klein is incisive — and powerful — as she explains why the human community is unable to address climate crisis that is now threatening the whole planet and therefore all of our existences:

Maureen Mullarkey Strikes Again (and a Reminder About Commonweal Catholic Centrism)

Remember Maureen Mullarkey? Sure you do! Back in 2009, when it became public that she had contributed to the prop 8 campaign to strip gay citizens of California of the right to civil marriage, though she had made a name for herself as an artist painting drag queens, I posted commentary about her. And then I noted her cozy connections to, well, see my conclusion below.*