In defense of my Muslim friends

| joshsabey

 

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A picture of me and many of my Muslim (and Christian) friends

This is my defense of Islam (and Christianity for that matter). I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who suggested that religion produces extremism. This may be the case, but to no greater extent than any paradigm produces extremism.

Marx saw all history as reducible to class struggles. Many feminists see the world as simply the saga of gender roles. We all have that friend who has internalized the platitudes of a self-help book and with a knowing look, uses them to explain everything. Religions are not all that unique. Continue reading →

Helicopter Spousing

| alizabethworley
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Image from: marriagehelper.com/my-wife-says-im-controlling-how-can-i-change/

Michael, my husband, has Cerebral Palsy. While he is able to walk, all of his muscles are contracted, and his movements tend to be broad and imprecise. At a glance, he looks pretty disabled: he is difficult to understand by most who do not know him and some who know him well; his walk leaves his torso rocking from side to side, and his fingers fumble to achieve a solid grasp on whatever he is holding or trying to manipulate Continue reading →

Resolving gun violence with passionate polemics wont work

| davidsabey

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I am sobered and frustrated by the news of recent shootings, and headlines cacophonic to the carols we sing at this time of year. And although I believe there are conversations to be had about gun control, I am also frustrated with the rhetoric from both sides of the debate because they so often employ alienation. Arguments laced with othering terms like “stupid liberals” and “clueless conservatives” may seem benign, but perpetuate the alienation that is epidemic in our politics and communities, which fertilizes seeds of hatred that eventually sprout in blossoms of bullets. Continue reading →

Freedom to force the artist’s hand

| Adam Balinski

***Adam Balinski is a guest contributor and a friend of Brian’s from BYU Law School. This article was first posted on his blog, rethbo.org. Please visit his blog for more respectful, insightful commentary.***

Some people have jumped on what I think is an incoherent bandwagon that creates crazy consumer rights.

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An uncontroversial wedding cake that the baker could’ve declined to decorate for dislike of flowers or the color pink. photo by tracyhunter

Under federal law, public accommodations are places where consumers go to receive a service. Consumers can’t be kept out of or denied services at public accommodations because of their sex or other protected attributes. (It’s true that under many anti-discrimination laws, sexual orientation is not a protected attribute. But it should be. It’s fair to allow people to go and buy regardless of how they self-identify.) Continue reading →

Simplistic Sexuality and the Decline of Discourse

| davidsabey

Discourse with Laptops

As a Mormon alumnus of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, two recent events happened to coincide on my Facebook wall, flooding my feed with passionate rhetoric about sexuality and gender normativity: 1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) has been the target of much vitriol because of their policy change that explicitly declares members of same-sex marriages to be apostates. Journalists happily report on the thousands of Mormons who have resigned from the church in protest of this policy change. 2. Landon Patterson, the first transgender (from male to female) homecoming queen from a school in Kansas City, spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is being heralded for these cliché, but culturally resonant words: “Be You. Life is too short, and you’ve just got to embrace who you are.”

Here’s my beef: Issues of sexuality and culturally normative practices are complex, but the rhetoric around them is simplistic. Simplistic and passionate. There is nothing wrong with passion or simplicity per se; the problem is that the rhetoric does not correspond with the complexity of the issue itself. Continue reading →

The privatization of privacy

| joshsabey

coed

In Illinois there has been a much publicized court case regarding a transgender female (physically male) student who is suing the school for limiting her access to the women’s dressing room. I have no doubt that many more cases like this one will soon be appearing in courts across the country. As I considered the case, I began Continue reading →