50+ Colorado Springs Clergy Issue Letter Calling for End to Religion-Based Homophobic Hate Speech — No Catholic Clergy Sign the Letter

Detail from Rogier van der Weyden's "Descent from the Cross," 15th century, Prado Museum, Madrid, at Wikimedia Commons

Mark Wingfield writes, "Colorado Springs clergy speak out against religious hate speech that leads to violence":

Another Mass Shooting in an LGBTQ Club: Stochastic Terrorism and Eliminationist Rhetoric

Detail from Rogier van der Weyden's "Descent from the Cross," 15th century, Prado Museum, Madrid, at Wikimedia Commons

Daniel Victor reports ("Drag events across the country have often faced threats in recent years") that Club Q in Colorado Springs, where the mass shooting has just occurred, was scheduled to host a drag lunch on Sunday in commemoration of Transgender Day of Remembrance. He writes, 

Chicago Priest Burns Rainbow Flag with Easter Fire: Dangerous Weaponization of Catholic Symbols to Attack Queer People

Lighting of Easter Fire by Benedictines in Morristown, NJ, in 2009 

The Catholic priest in Chicago who had announced his intent to burn a rainbow flag to "exorcise" his parish did carry through with his plans, as I think many of you will already know (and Chris Morley helpfully posted a report about this in a comment here several days ago). Though archdiocesan officials had told Father Paul Kalchik not to do so, he went ahead and burned the flag, with parishioners assisting him. Robert Shine reported about this for New Ways Ministry this past week.

Catholic Church and LGBTQ People: Clues, Hearsay, Spectacularly Failed Pastoral Leadership in Face of Oppression and Suffering

Jamie L. Manson, "For LGBTQ Catholics, there is little hope in hearsay":

As Neo-Nazis Celebrate Murder of Gay Jewish College Student, Where Are the Churches? (When They're Not Firing Queer Employees and Supporting Anti-Queer Discrimination, That Is)

Members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division have been linked to five murders—most recently the stabbing death of a gay Jewish college student in January. They also have a secret chatroom.

Here's our story: https://t.co/nZPTHUvNGP pic.twitter.com/cOUTqIZzNK

— ProPublica (@ProPublica) February 24, 2018

In an article entitled "Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student," A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston, and Jake Hanrahan report on behalf of ProPublica:

Kevin Ahern on the Failure of American Catholic Theologians to Defend Father James Martin: "A Crisis or Perhaps Even a Failure in Our Public Theology"

A Failure in Public Theology: The Non-Defense of James Martin, SJ by @kevin_ahern https://t.co/XX7Z9kmdRr via @wordpressdotcom

— Katie Grimes (@KatieMGrimes) February 4, 2018

Earlier today, I wrote about the hate being directed against Father James Martin online, and the astonishing silence of most of the intellectual leaders of the U.S. Catholic church — its journalists and academics — about this hate. I pointed you to an article by Frank Bruni in today's New York Times outlining how Father Martin is being relentlessly attacked, and I linked Bruni's account to the discussion of Father Martin that has been underway for several days now at Religion News Service following Jacob Lupfer's report of a lecture of Father Martin's that he attended recently. As I told you yesterday, the discussion of Lupfer's report at RNS has turned into a hate fest that is now all too predictable at religion news sites and religion blogs when LGBTQ lives are being examined.

Frank Bruni's Column on How Father James Martin Is Being Attacked Reads Like Commentary on RNS Discussion Thread About Martin

Pat Bagley on Twitter

As I said earlier today in the RNS discussion thread following Jacob Lupfer's account of Father James Martin's recent lecture at Georgetown, Frank Bruni's column in NY Times today about those hating on Father Martin and obsessed with attacking LGBTQ human beings: it's almost as if he read this thread at RNS before he wrote it. Bruni states,

In the News: "In Many Ways, Donald Trump Is 'White Jesus'" — And "Remarkable Upsurge of Hate-Based Killings of LGBTQ People," Etc.

I say anti-Semitic things, and then Jews criticize me. What is this conspiracy??? Anyway here’s a list of Jews pic.twitter.com/nOcZ8XoWpR

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) January 30, 2018

Another offering of articles, tweets, etc., that I've read in the past several days, which strike me as worth sharing with all of you:

On the Danger of Allowing Gay People to Be Public in Catholic Institutions: A Story from the Recent Past

Yesterday, I blogged about the recent statement of a bishop, Peter Jugis of Charlotte, North Carolina, that Catholic officials and institutions must have the right to punish gay employees who "go public" about their gay identities and relationships. During the night last night, as I lay awake thinking about these issues in the wee hours of the morning, a memory flashed back. It's from my years teaching at Xavier University, a Catholic university in New Orleans. The following events occurred around 1989 or 1990, as best as I can recall.

Commentary on the Nashville Statement: "Strikingly Trumpian Brand of Redemption That Saves by Statements of Division"

This is what I think of #NashvileStatement: At precisely the moment their support of white supremacy was revealed--bash the gays. 1/

— Lisa Sharon Harper (@lisasharper) August 31, 2017

Commentary I have read about the Nashville Statement and found good. I hope you will, too:

Remembering the Pulse Massacre: "Less Talking about LGBT Catholics; More Listening to Them"

LGBT Catholics & the church need a "bridge" only bc the church first deported & exiled them. https://t.co/DQKK7Rqr0v

— Katie Grimes (@KatieMGrimes) June 15, 2017

Some things I've been reading (and conversations in which I've been involved on social media) in the past two or three days, about the Catholic community's response (or non-response, as the case may be) to the Pulse massacre last year and its commemoration this year:

Remembering the Pulse Massacre: Or Why I'm Still Not Feeling the Love from Christians in Donald Trump's America

IVANKA TRUMP: There's a level of viciousness in Washington I did not expect. pic.twitter.com/7kRsGAtisn

— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) June 12, 2017

From the day that the massacre of 49 LGBTQ people (most of them Hispanic and African-American) happened at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last year, I began blogging my heart out. I wrote, in particular, about the roots of violent homophobia in the attitudes of many people of faith. I wrote about the lethal tendency of people of faith to erase LGBTQ people and refuse to speak the names of LGBTQ people even as something like the Pulse massacre took place.

John Pavlovitz Commemorates Pulse Massacre: "49 LGBTQ Children Were Murdered in a Nightclub in Orlando"

On this eve of the two-month anniversary of the mass shooting of gay* people at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando — the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in American history, and the deadliest incident of violence against gay people in U.S. history — John Pavlovitz has re-posted this 13 June reflection from his blog on his Facebook page today:

"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.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Online Discussions of LGBTQ Lives at Catholic Blog/News Sites Following Orlando — "A Pastoral Failure of Monumental Proportion"

Three instructive comments by Catholics discussing the Orlando massacre at Catholic news and blog sites:

NCR and Commonweal Make Editorial Statements About Orlando: "Wrong to Downplay or Ignore the Fact That Mateen's Victims Were Murdered for Being Gay"

Two leading U.S. Catholic journals have now published editorial statements about the Orlando massacre — National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal. I'm recommending both of them to you with the following excerpts, and making a note of particular gratitude to Commonweal, which I had initially criticized for its anemic response to this anti-LGBTQ act of mass murder.

"All I Hear in These Conversations Now Is Death": Queer People Continue Engaging World Religious Leaders and Their Institutions in Light of Orlando

.@JamesMartinSJ on solidarity w/#LGBT community in wake of #Orlando shooting | https://t.co/k58PvyCGhL pic.twitter.com/Ny6Ye1Uaan

— Ignatian Solidarity (@IGsolidarityNET) June 13, 2016

In what I just posted about Garrard Conley's book Boy Erased, I noted that one of the important developments both in the U.S. and internationally following the Orlando atrocity is that a significant conversation has developed about the interplay between toxic conservative religious ideas and anti-LGBTQ violence. As Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry said several days ago (I discussed these comments here), 

Garrard Conley's Boy Erased: Template for Understanding Religion-Based Homophobia and Its Assault on Queer Humanity

I mentioned a few days back that I was reading Garrard Conley's book, Boy Erased (NY: Riverhead, 2016), which recounts his experiences growing up as the son of a Missionary Baptist minister in small-town Arkansas in the final decades of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century. As my previous reference to the book notes, it's primarily a memoir of his experiences at the "ex-gay" reparative therapy outfit Love in Action in Memphis, to which his parents sent him after he was outed to them as gay. Mama vomited on hearing this news, Papa threatened, and Conley had no choice except to go to LIA, if he expected his father to continue to claim him as a son and to help pay for his college education (he was in college when this happened).

"LGBT Experiences Have Been Erased and Nullified": More on Who's Erasing Queer People from Discussion of a Massacre of Queer People, and Why This Is Being Done

More observations on who's erasing queer people from the massacre of queer people in Orlando, and why they're doing this:

Ongoing Discussion of Possibility Omar Mateen Was Gay and Self-Hating: "Makes the Attack More About Homophobia, Not Less," "Nor Is This Unique to Islam"

Meditation point 1: we Americans now live in a political-religious-cultural context in which some citizens sincerely claim to believe that the children ripped to death by bullets at Sandy Hook did not die. That this was a big mock-up exercise arranged by the Obama administration to justify taking our guns away. The human lives of those murdered children and the suffering of their families do not matter. They take second place to the racist political need to demonize the nation's first African-American president and the party he represents.