In Holiday Season, Reminder That LGBT Folks Often Experience Exclusion and Isolation from Family: Derrick De Lise on How Homophobia Hurts

In this holiday season, I want to share with you a timely reminder from blogger Derrick De Lise, who publishes the journal Queer Voices and maintains a blog about Christian spirituality called The Inexorable Pilgrim. Yesterday, Derrick posted a valuable essay at Huffington Post reminding all of us that many LGBTQIA+ folks experience exclusion from their family circles at the very time of the year in which we're bombarded by images of happy families gathering around festive tables. 

Catholic Officials Explain Pope's Silence About LGBT People in Uganda: They Were "Included" in Pope's Comments Though Invisible, and Ugandans Are Concerned with "Real Problems"

More on the not surprising (but nonetheless scandalous) decision of Pope Francis to talk about human rights, social justice, tolerance, and respect in Uganda without ever uttering a single word about the LGBT human beings whose lives are made a living hell by social attitudes and laws targeting them in that largely Christian nation: 

Valuable New Resource from Ruth Krall: "A Thomas Doyle Cyber-Anthology: Studies in Religious Community Sexual Violence"

A note this morning to bring to your attention a valuable new resource Ruth Krall has just uploaded to her Enduring Space blog. Some of you may have seen a conversation in the comments thread here last week, in which Ruth and I and others talked about the need to gather together a list of work by Father Thomas Doyle, who has been a prophetic leader in urging the Catholic hierarchy to deal honestly and openly with the abuse situation in the Catholic church.

Reader Writes: "Francis Uttered Not a Word About the Plight of LGBT People in Uganda Because [the Catholic Hierarchy Have] . . . Decided We Simply Don't Exist"

Chris Morley's reply to my posting earlier today is so good — powerfully written, clear, and right to the point — that I want to share it with readers in a stand-alone posting. Chris writes,

Fruitcake Making, Home, and LGBT Folks in the Church: An Advent Meditation Noting the Total Silence of Pope Francis About LGBT People in Uganda

A brief report to all of you on a dreary post-U.S. Thanksgiving weekend in which we've had enough rain to warrant two arks instead of the single one that Noah built: I've made the weekend brighter by remaining true to my grandmother's tradition of baking her Christmas fruitcakes on or by Thanksgiving weekend. Her rule of thumb was that fruitcake for Christmas needed to be baked by the last week of November, since it required a month in a sealed tin in a dark closet, wrapped in cheesecloth and laved repeatedly with sherry or bourbon, to mature it for eating at Christmas time.

Two Thanksgiving Videos: Brothers and Sisters Under the Skin, and Our Chance to Atone for the Holocaust

God's Mercy and Hate Rhetoric in the U.S. Public Square: A Thanksgiving Meditation

A little (American) Thanksgiving day meditation I shared this morning on Facebook. Since a friend there told me she thought it was valuable, I now think to share it with all of you here, too — and with greetings to many readers of this blog who aren't celebrating the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving today, but whom I don't intend to exclude by framing this as a Thanksgiving meditation. Here's what I wrote on Facebook: