When a Story About Chewing Gum Is Not About Chewing Gum: Transgender Teen Denied Communion in Charlotte, North Carolina, Catholic Church

Was she denied Communion because she’d been chewing gum — or because she’s transgender? https://t.co/cm8rjukgYx

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2018

 

With all the really challenging things going on in the world around us right now, my choice to focus on this story might appear baffling. It's a "little" story, perhaps, compared with ones like the raging fire gobbling up a big portion of California, or the (shocking but unsurprising) revelation that the parents of many children snatched from their parents by the U.S. government at the nation's borders cannot be located and there are reports that some of these children are being sexually abused. 

Twitter Chews Over Election Results: "Thoughts and Prayers to all the Republican Politicians Who Lost Their Seats Today"

Thoughts and prayers to all the Republican politicians who lost their seats today. We won't do anything to prevent it from happening again.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 8, 2017

Attack on LGBTQ People Coupled with Attack on Healthcare Coverage: Double-Whammy Attack Emanating from "Pro-Life" White Christians

THREAD: 1. People choose to end their lives for all sorts of reasons.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2017

The "Debate" About Transgender People: Don't Buy Framing That It's About Gender

THREAD: 1. Those pushing anti-trans discrimination with religious warrants would like you to think this is all about gender.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) July 27, 2017

In the News: Conservatives Respond Differently to Kathy Griffin's Tasteless Stunt Than to Online Pictures Showing Obama Hanged in Effigy — Why?

Items I've read online this morning, which catch my attention as important — and, for that reason, I want to share them with you. The unifying thread here is "this morning":

The Strongman Does What Bullies Do — Picks on the Least Among Us; People of Faith Speak Back

ICE detains, removes a Salvadoran woman with a brain tumor from a Texas hospital https://t.co/BkhG6LudFU h/t @PGourevitch cc: @ACLU pic.twitter.com/Y4bBEq66Mv

— David Beard (@dabeard) February 23, 2017

The Big Man, the Strongman elected by "pro-life" white Christians to reChristianize our nation and promote an ethic of life, targets vulnerable transgender children, immigrants frightened for their safety and the security of their families, and Muslims. People of faith speak out in response:

My Reflections on Pope Francis' Recent Remarks About Gender Theory: There's the Real World, and Then There's . . . .

I have tried to formulate some reflections on Pope Francis' recent statements about gender issues. Since I have been silent a number of days, you'd be right to deduce that I have not been successful in doing so. The primary problem is that I live here, in Universe Q, and Pope Francis speaks from that far-away universe somewhere in a distant galaxy of whose name I am not even entirely sure.

Francis Effect for Gay* Folks? Still Elusive, As Bishops Around Globe Throw His Harsh Words in Faces of Gay* People

Yesterday, I drew your attention to a just-published essay by Patricia Miller which suggests that the U.S. Catholic bishops have done less saber-rattling this election cycle than in previous election cycles, in part, "due to the influence of Pope Francis, who has let it be known that such blatant politicking is no longer welcome." And so, Patti Miller proposes, there's a discernible trend of church-going John-Paul-II-type white Catholics away from the GOP ticket this election cycle, since the bishops are behaving differently in a church now led by Pope Francis.

Jennifer Finney Boylan on Moral Imagination and the Anti-Trans Agenda of the GOP: Once Again, What Good Does Church Do?

Jennifer Finney Boylan argues that developing "moral imagination" — the ability to imagine the lives of those different from ourselves, and to empathize with those different from ourselves — is an essential human task. We become fully human precisely by developing this ability in ourselves. We are not fully human when we have not developed it.

Commentary on the Bathroom Wars (and the Role of Religious Folks in Them): "Fighting Over Bathrooms Is the Oldest Move in the Prejudice Playbook"

More commentary for you from the last several days, as a new work week begins: these pieces focus, for the most part, on the current "bathroom wars" in the U.S., and the role being played by church people in those wars — a considerable role, in fact,  since, as Bill Berkowitz has just noted, the Christian right's distress over transgender youth hit fever pitch last week when President Obama reminded public schools that they have an obligation to adhere to already established non-discrimination guidelines as they deal with transgender students.

Claim That the Culture Wars are Over and Religious Right Is Obsolescent Links to Claim That Political Left and Identity Politics Are Responsible for Trump: My Take

One thing I suppose many of us can agree on about the current U.S. presidential election cycle is that it has been full of surprises. Not the least of those has been the surprising way in which Mr. Trump has risen to the top of the GOP heap, when one media guru and statistician after another — most of these folks living in media bubbles and elite enclaves set apart from the rest of the nation — smugly assured us as the campaign began that we could safely laugh at him, since he had a snowball's chance in hell of being the Republican presidential candidate.

Quote for Day: The Current Trans-Panic and "A Process Which, If Followed to the End, Will Make Us Into Devils"

Fred Clark at Slacktivist, commenting on a lurid fantasy being peddled by conservative Christian commentator Rod Dreher, about gangs of "transgendered" thugs who are, we're told, terrorizing upstanding theater-going Texas suburbanites:

Loretta Lynch's Historic Speech Connects Dots Between LGBT and Black Struggles for Rights: "Not the First Time That We Have Seen Discriminatory Responses to Historic Moments of Progress for Our Nation"

"Liberal Redneck" Trae Crowder Back in Video About How He Became Liberal: Did Not Appreciate How Church Treated His Gay Uncle

Several days back, I shared with you a video by Tennessee comedian and self-styled "liberal redneck" Trae Crowder offering devastating (and devastatingly funny) commentary on the stupidity of what Charles Pierce calls "the Urinal Cooties Protection Act" of the now consistently insane state of North Carolina, Tennessee's mother state. The video at the head of the posting is an interview Trae Crowder did two days ago with Lawrence O'Donnell's "Last Word" program.

"Just Dyin' to Punch Sump'n Different": Trae Crowder on Anti-Trans Hysteria Gripping Southern Evangelical Culture Now

Well, it's Sunday, and why not? Why not a bit of fun (mixed with NSFW language) on Sunday?

In the News: Attacks on Transgender Community, with Commentary on Catholic Bishops' Support of Discriminatory Laws

Another in-the-news posting to follow the one I just posted about the ongoing story of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church in the U.S.:

New Ways Ministry on Belmont Abbey College's Discrimination Against Transgender Individuals: "Undermining Catholic Education and an Approach to Gender That Is Rooted in the Gospel "

As wild hair reports in a comment here this morning, New Ways Ministry's Bondings 2.0 blog has now published a statement about Belmont Abbey College's request to receive Title IX funds while discriminating against transgender folks. Writing for Bondings, Bob Shine notes that Belmont Abbey has attracted the negative attention of various LGBT groups that combat discrimination against LGBT people.

Belmont Abbey College in National News Again: Claims Catholic "Right-to-Discriminate" Title IX Exemption Targeting Transgender Students and Staff

I have shared with you the story of how a Catholic college in North Carolina owned by a Benedictine community destroyed my career as a Catholic theologian and that of my now husband Steve in the early 1990s, though we were abiding by the unwritten rules of the Catholic academy that required us to be closeted and to keep our relationship hidden as we taught at this college. In a series of postings here this past October (here, here, here, here, here, and here), I shared with you a detailed document I compiled and circulated in October 1993 recounting the story of what Belmont Abbey College and monastery did to end my career as a Catholic theologian.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: What Would the Arguments about Gay and Trans Folks Look Like If Real People Were Part of the Evidence?

What would the arguments look like if real people were part of the evidence?, Maryknoll Father William Grimm asks, as he looks at the typical responses of many Catholics to gay people and same-sex marriage.

The Catholic Sensibility and Trans People: Another Perspective

At the Catholic Sensibility site, Todd Flowerday provides his own riff on the discussion of how Catholics should respond to trans people that I discussed yesterday. As I noted, Commonweal now has a discussion thread chewing over this question, and I find that thread frustrating to read because of the we-vs.-them way in which the discussion is framed from the outset — we Catholics vs. those trans people.