As I "Rest," Thinking About Family: What We Say It Is, What It Often Really Is

In the U.S., we live in a culture super-saturated with sentimental rhetoric about “the family” and how “the family” is the ultimate solution to all social ills. American culture is also notably hypocritical about moral and religious issues, and the hypocrisy extends to what we think about “the family.” While pretending to live some ideal, religion-based version of the family, a large number of us have the kind of complicated, messy family lives that real-world people as opposed to hypocritical religious idealists always have. Our rhetoric and our reality don’t match, and this impoverishes our understanding of what family is really all about, and of so much else that takes place around us.

"Pro-Life" White U.S. Christians Don't "Risk" Being Implicated in the Horrors Unfolding on the Nation's Borders: They Are Directly Responsible for Those Horrors

Huffington Post lead headline, morning of 15 June 2018.

Charles Camosy, "You Can't Be Pro-Life and Against Immigrant Children":

Given their support of the administration, and an unwillingness to speak critically about immigration policy, "pro-life, pro-family" organizations now risk being tied to these and other horrific practices.

The Long and Short of It: Evangelical Mulligans and Idiot Winds — Religion in the News

“Family Research Council head says that evangelical conservatives are willing to overlook Trump’s past behavior so long as he delivers for them on policy” https://t.co/4I5tGy4WcZ

— Jonathan Merritt (@JonathanMerritt) January 23, 2018 

"We don't care how many women he has abused, cheated on, or objectified. We don't care how many black people he insults. We don't care how many refugees he turns away or non-American Christians he sends back to persecution, as long he helps US." US = white, American, men. https://t.co/h7HS0Drp1A

— Rachel Held Evans (@rachelheldevans) January 23, 2018

Charles Pierce on Roy Moore as Exactly What Republicans Are All About Now: "Wake Up and Smell the White Supremacist Theocracy"

I'd rather have a pedophile in office rather than a democrat any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Pedophiles only screw kids while democrats screw everyone.

— Carroll Bryant (@CarrollBryant) November 10, 2017

This quote should be hung in museums of American history 50 years from now so people can remember why the Republican Party collapsed. https://t.co/P70omazXeD

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) November 10, 2017

Charles Pierce hits the nail squarely on the head:

Trending on Twitter: #RoyMooreChildMolester — "I Never Thought I’d See the Day When Pedophilia Became a Divisive Issue Within the GOP"

Democrats are divided on single payer healthcare. Republicans are divided on pedophilia. #RoyMooreChildMolester

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) November 10, 2017

Trending today on Twitter: #RoyMooreChildMolester. At the New Civil Rights Movement website right now, David Badash has a good assortment of tweets from this hashtag. The tweet above by Dave Zirin is one featured in David's article.

Two Obituaries, Two Very Different Stories of What Family Is About: Who Counts, Who Doesn't, and the Role Churches Play

Two obituaries, two very different stories about what family is about — who counts, who doesn't, who is included, who may be excluded, looked down on, denigrated, told that he/she is worthless when family gathers:

A Family Story: When "Pro-Life" Catholic Trump Voters Confront Sexual Abuse of Minors by a Priest — In Their Own Family Circle

I have a story to tell you this morning. It's a story with a question embedded in it. The question is one with which I am personally struggling. This story is about a specific family and family situation, but it also seems to me a parabolic story, in that this specific family in some ways mirrors many white Christian (to be specific: white Catholic) "pro-life" families who voted for Donald Trump, claiming that he is "pro-life," and who continue stoutly to defend him even as he wishes to rip healthcare coverage from millions of economically challenged citizens.

Brock Thompson's The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South: Book Notes — Repudiating GLBT Family Members As an Old Arkansas Story

Perhaps my biggest takeaway from Brock Thompson's The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South (Fayetteville: U. of AR 2010): the heart-breaking tragedy of how Arkansas families have, for so long now, treated their queer family members.

Archbishop Charles Chaput Attacks Joe Biden and Tim Kaine, Shills for GOP with Call for "Silent Apostates" to Leave Catholic Church

David Gibson writes, 

"The Donald Took Evangelicals to a Very High, Huge, Really, Just the Best Vantage Point on Trump Tower and Showed Them All the Riches": Commentary on the Wreckage That is White American Christianity After Trump

Evangelical crypt keeper Pat Robertson excuses the misogynistic talk in Trump tapes as "macho" https://t.co/u1jIiDChpQ

— Jonathan Merritt (@JonathanMerritt) October 10, 2016

At Heart of "Odd Bedfellow of Trump and Christian America Is the Fear of the Loss of Privilege — Privilege of a 'White America', Privilege of a 'Christian America', Privilege of a 'Straight America', . . .Privilege of a 'Male America' "

Mark Silk at Religion News Service 

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush writing last evening in Huffington Post:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Great That . . . a Hot Immigrant Model Can Come to This Country with Nothing But the Clothes on Her Back (and Occasionally Without Them) and Land a Sugar Daddy Bazillionaire"

Lovin' me some Catholic birdcage as yesterday's . . . well, there's not a polite term to name it, is there? . . . thing transpired in Cleveland, and as that thing is being dissected in some online Catholic discussion spaces: here's rockchalkwombat talking about the Cleveland thing at National Catholic Reporter this morning:

As Easter Nears, I'm Pondering Kaya Oakes's Question, "Is the Catholic Church in America Getting Worse for LGBTQ People and Women?" (My Answer: Yes)

An open thread for Holy Week: is the Catholic church in America getting worse for LGBTQ people and women? https://t.co/q0KR9LKpfU

— kaya oakes (@kayaoakes) March 24, 2016

I've replied to Kaya Oakes's tweet (and Facebook posting) above. Here's my reply: Yes.

Josh Duggar and Ashley Madison Revelations: Commentary I Find Worth Reading

A selection for you this morning (blossoms or weeds? — you please decide) from things I've been reading about the revelation that, while employed by Family Research Council and attacking gay folks as premier threats to the sanctity of marriage, Josh Duggar had two accounts at the Ashley Madison cheat-on-your-spouse site: 

Brittmarie Janson Perez, "On False Prophets and Parallel Churches: Kiko Arguello and His Neocatechumenal Way"

Today, another exhaustively researched essay by Brittmarie Janson Perez, which I'm happy to share with you here. This one focuses on the role of Kiko Arguello and his group the Neocatechumenal Way in organizing the massive "pro-family," anti-gay demonstration held in Rome on 20th June. As Colleen Baker noted several years ago on her Enlightened Catholicism blog, Arguello's Neocatechumenal Way is yet another example of the influential fascist strand of Spanish Catholicism (Opus Dei being another) that seemed to capture the imagination of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI — and which has done much to try to identify Catholicism at this point in history with macho-heterosexist, misogynistic, and homophobic ideas resistant to the rights of women and gay people. Here's Brittie's outstanding essay:

Duggar Saga: End-of-Week Wrap Up (with 10 Links to Valuable Commentary)

As this work week ends, I thought I'd update you on the ever-unfolding Duggar family saga, and provide you with some links to commentary on this story that, in my view, is well worth reading:

Duggar Saga: From Curioser and Curioser to Sleazier and Sleazier — Police Reports Ordered Destroyed by Huckabee-Allied Judge, Female Police Chief Under Fire, SNAP Weighs In

News about the model Christian family in my home state of Arkansas, the Duggars, continues to pop so fast and furious that it's hard to keep up with. I appreciate links a number of you good readers have provided to previous threads about the Duggars, who are attracting much attention now that the story of Josh Duggar has become public, because of the way in which they have represented themselves for years now as the model Christian family, and the way in which they have viciously attacked the LGBT community as a threat to children — when Josh Duggar and his parents knew of his molestation of minor girls who appear to have included his own sisters.

Revisiting Michelle Duggar's Remarks About LGBT People as Child Predators Who Endanger the Daughters of Others

Valuable commentary from Out in Arkansas (on its Facebook page), linking to Joanna Rothkopf's Salon article revisiting Michelle Duggar's remarks attacking LGBT citizens of Fayetteville, Arkansas, last year — as potential child molesters . . . . 

Quote for Day: "Brand of Gay Equality That’s Developing in Ireland Right Now Deserves Broader Attention" for Its Emphasis on Family and Catholic Social Teaching

Mo Moulton, lecturer in history and literature at Harvard, writing in The Atlantic about the Irish campaign for marriage equality: 

The Curious Saga of Josh Duggar, Anti-Gay "Family Values" Champion, Or, Aristotle Was Onto Something When He Said That Hubris Courts a Big Fall

Big news in my own state of Arkansas as this week ends, which has implications that reach far beyond the borders of the state, since this news involves a family with a national presence and following in the religious right and the Republican party: as In Touch Weekly reported several days ago (and here), anti-gay family-values religious-right superstar Josh Duggar, executive director of Family Research Council's FRC Action arm, was reported to the police in 2004 by his father for molesting underage girls.