All posts filed under: controversial topics

Why I Want to Stop Fearing the “offensive” Topics

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Originally posted on teenmusing:
Hullo, peoples! (Perhaps today should be a British day. It is quite rainy.) Today’s topic is one I’ve been mulling over for quite a while now, and I’d love to know your opinions on it. Everybody fears things. Fear is an emotion that aims to STOP! us. Being frightened can stop us from doing something hurtful to ourselves or others. Fear can hold us back as well. If we’re so afraid of the risk that we can’t see the good that will come out of it, then fear is detrimental. Sometimes there will be negative consequences, and we have to be prepared for those. But you can’t have a fulfilling life while you’re hiding behind the safety rails. There are rational and irrational fears, and fears that fall somewhere in between. I have all of them, but I can’t let the irrational ones control me. I want to be honest on this blog. In real life, I am very much a chameleon; “who I am” changes with my surroundings. Perhaps that’s not…

Pornography Is a Social Justice Issue

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Originally posted on Millennial:
Millennial Catholic Megan McCabe, who has written on hookup culture and rape culture at Millennial, has a new article at America. She writes: This process of desensitization and subsequent search for a new thrill is one way that male viewers find themselves aroused by acts of violence and degradation that they previously would have found horrifying. Through “Create in Me a Clean Heart,” the U.S.C.C.B. attempts to address these social concerns. But the statement mentions them only briefly and without much explanation. Despite addressing issues of violence, the overall framing of the document remains focused on lust and chastity. To take pornography seriously as a structure of sin would require moving violence to the fore, allowing it to frame how we ought to understand the ethical challenges posed by pornography. Through further exploration of the negative social effects of pornography, it becomes clear that the primary concern ought not be lustfulness. Rather, use of pornography entails complicity in a social structure that makes violence against women seem normal, even erotic. It…

Here’s What I Mean When I Say “Pro Black Doesn’t Mean Anti-White”

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Originally posted on Black Millennials:
To be pro-Black does not mean to be anti-white. To be pro-Black means to be anti-white supremacy. I wrote these words in a piece about interracial dating some months ago. The piece argues that being pro-Black means to affirm Black bodies, spirit, and culture while denouncing the evils of white supremacy as unnatural, deadly, and unsustainable. Pro-Blackness is a value system that demands the centering of Black people in a structural world designed by the white ruling corporatist class. Some elements of pro-Blackness posit the belief that white supremacy must be thoroughly destroyed for everlasting Black survival. Upon writing that piece, I’ve seen and heard many — mostly Black folk — similarly express that the pro-Black value system does not ultimately condemn “all” white people, just the omnipotent network of institutions, structures, systems, and constructs derived from white supremacist ideology, and the individual agents that empower them. From social media feeds to think pieces, I’ve seen these expressions manifested in digital space. In the physical realm, I’ve seen nonprofit professionals try to embed the sentiment in grant proposals.…

Four ways to Heal the Social Justice/Pro-life Divide

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Originally posted on Millennial:
Millennial writer  Mike Jordan Laskey has a new article at NCR. He writes: Accept “political homelessness” and live in the tension. John Carr, the former director of the U.S. bishops’ justice and peace department, uses the phrase “politically homeless” to describe where Catholicism’s consistent ethic of life leaves us. We might be “comfortable with neither Republican economic individualism, which measures everything by the market, nor with Democratic cultural individualism, which celebrates personal ‘choice’ above all else,” he wrote in America. “Neither form of libertarianism leaves enough room for the weak and vulnerable or the common good.” Political homelessness is hard! I’d love to feel content with either major party, and contribute to and vote for their candidates without thinking too much about it. I want to buy a t-shirt and go to a rally. I’d like to be a fan of the only presidential candidate to prominently feature a quote on economic injustice from Pope Francis on his website — Bernie Sanders — but the candidate’s perfect 100% rating from NARAL…

Why Advent Sucks this Year – Why We Need Advent

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Originally posted on The Millennial Pastor:
Advent is normally my favourite season of the church year. I don’t think that is uncommon for pastors. Christmas and Easter are of course the big celebrations, but Advent and Lent have a certain depth and richness, that allow Christmas and Easter to be what they are. Advent and Lent add the flavour to the meal. For me, the richness of Advent is found in the images – the way of Lord, valleys filled up, mountains made low, crooked made straight, broods of vipers, winnowing forks and chaff, angels and virgins, and promises and hints of Messiah. Advent’s beauty is in the blending of hints and promises of Messiah together with real life. With the messiness of people looking for something better. The people in the desert going to John the Baptist, looking for something different than what they knew. The hypocrisy of religious and political leaders, which is a true as death and taxes. A  teen girl dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the reality of impossible life…

Selective Outrage Won’t Get Us Free

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Originally posted on Black Millennials:
Jamar Clark was killed execution-style while handcuffed in Minneapolis. Black activists most notably affiliated with the local Black Lives Matter chapter and the local NAACP shut down highways and occupied the 4th police precinct. National media is starting to pick up on the local unrest, especially after white supremacist terrorists shot five Black Lives Matter protestors. In Chicago, video released shows LaQuan McDonald being shot some sixteen times by a white police officer. His murderer has been charged, and thousands are mobilizing. Traditional media is focusing on the clashes between protesters and police, while social media is aflame. The gruesome video (which I admittedly haven’t watched) lives on the pages of many. Heated debate about the discomfiting consumption of Black death and pain is — once again — underway. Not one to homogenize Black murder and resulting unrest, I can’t help but draw striking parallels to Ferguson and Baltimore. From the expansive number of mass mobilizations and frontline energies, to the tweets of solidarity, frenetic live-streaming, and the viciously heavy-handed responses…