Talk About Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy Not Working: Update on John Smid Story

I've blogged about John Smid and his remarkable story a few times in the past — here and here. As these postings note, Smid previously headed a faith-based "ex-gay" program in Memphis called Love in Action. He and the program came on the radar screen of many folks in 2005 when Zach Stark, a young teen, was sent to the program by his parents against his will, and cried out for help online. 

Pigs Seen Flying: Mississippi Judge Knocks Down Ban on Same-Sex Marriage (Arkansas, Too)

Josh Marshall spotted flocks of pigs flying over Mississippi yesterday. I didn't see them in my neighboring state of Arkansas (and,  unless I'm mistaken, a collective of swine isn't called a flock, but a herd — as in Luke 8:32-3, when the KJV of the gospels tells us that Jesus sends a legion of demons into a herd of Gadarene swine. Or it appears that one may speak of a "gang of hogs," a term I've just met in an 1801 estate sale in North Carolina, in which an ancestor of mine bought a "gang of hogs" from the estate of his deceased relative. We know things like what to call collectives of pigs in places like Mississippi and Arkansas and North Carolina. But I digress.)

Quote for Day: Chris Hedges on the "Sacrifice Zones" Required by Unfettered Capitalism (with Application to Ferguson)

After Ferguson Verdict, I Remember My City's Last Lynching in 1927: Rioting Mobs, Destruction of Property, Failure of Grand Jury to Return Indictment

As furor ensues following the Missouri grand jury verdict, I'm astounded to be told on Facebook by a fellow citizen of my state that "we" have the "best legal system man has ever created." When I read that statement, my mind immediately scrolls back to the last lynching that occurred in my city of Little Rock. It happened in 1927. In my mother's lifetime. She was a girl of five years old living 20 miles downriver from the city. This happened in my mother's lifetime . . . . I remember being told stories about all of this in my own childhood

Commentary on Ferguson Verdict: "The Message That the Missouri Grand Jury Has Now Sent to Young African Americans . . . Is That Black Lives Do Not Matter"

Syreeta McFadden, The Guardian: 

A Reader Writes: "In History, This Sort of Gender Binary Essentialism Has Been an Important Support to Nazism, the Taliban, and Various Theocracies in the West"

In response to my posting on Thursday about the lack of socioeconomic analysis of family and what it takes to sustain family at the Vatican colloquium on gender complementarity this week, Mark writes an eloquent, profound essay, to which I can add nothing at all, since it speaks so powerfully for itself: 

Archbishop Chaput's Forecast for the 2015 Synod on the Family: Gays Out of Sight, Out of Mind

For Religion News Service, Josephine McKenna reports that Archbishop Charles Chaput told the Vatican colloquium on gender issues this week that, at its final meeting next year, the synod on the family will not focus on "neuralgic sexual issues." As David Gibson reported recently, at their meeting in mid-November, the U.S. Catholic bishops elected Chaput a member of the delegation of bishops they'll send to the synod on the family, though — or because? (as Gibson also notes) — his record as a "culture warrior" is well-known.