Stephen Fry to British Government and IOC: "An Absolute Ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi Is Simply Essential"

Not to be missed as this work week ends: Stephen Fry's impassioned, articulate open letter to David Cameron and the International Olympics Committee pleading for an absolute ban on the winter olympics in Russia, because "Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world" since "[h]e is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews." Fry writes:

John Fugelsang's Takedown of "Right Wing Insanely Fake Christian Hate-Monkey Trolls"

Struggle for Gay Welcome and Inclusion in United Methodist Churches: A Report from the Ground, Tampa, Florida

The struggle about justice and inclusion, about love and compassion for those who are made gay by God, is hardly confined to the Catholic church, by the way. For a gripping (and painful) report about this struggle within a single United Methodist congregation--Palma Ceia UMC in Tampa, Florida--read John Masters's recent posting at his Deep Something blog site. John has been a United Methodist for 54 years, and has been working patiently and assiduously in recent years to help his Palma Ceia church fashion a truly hospitable space for gay people seeking a church home.

Rhode Island Priest Attacks Gay-Friendly Legislators, Wisconsin Priest Boots Boy Scouts: Unfinished Story of Catholics and Gays

I said yesterday that some days, the news seems to come to us pre-packaged in novelistic form: headline links to headline, as if we're reading a single interesting narrative. Here's another of those narratives I noticed yesterday as I scanned the news sites I routinely read each morning:

A Reader Responds: "Church's Homophobia Is So Obsessive That They've Lowered the Bar . . to Basically, 'Don't Be Gay'"

Brian Gallagher responds (brilliantly) to my report last evening about the discussion thread now underway at Commonweal which exhibits--in spades--the glaring double standard that many Commonweal Catholics apply to their gay brothers and sisters, as they condemn them for violating church teaching about sexual morality while they excuse the very same violations if they're done by straight Catholics: 

Frank Cocozzelli's Critique of the Neo-Confederate Views of Thomas E. Woods: A New Installment in the Series

As a footnote to what I just posted about the seeming rise, in many places of the world, of overtly racist and homophobic movements that seem to hark back to political experiments many of us hoped the human community had put behind itself:

Reading Signs of Times: Race-Baiting and Gay-Bashing in America, Ruthless Repression of LGBT Citizens in Russia