Triple Reblog Score!

I have read a little brace of blog posts recently that I found quite excellent and should like to share with you all.

First, there is 10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew, from the recently minted blog A Queer Calling, by a celibate couple of my acquaintance. Side B relationships, as they have been nicknamed by the Gay Christian Network, are same-sex partnerships that don't include sex. If that idea breaks your brain, fascinates you, or whatever, read their blog!

Second, I have long been embarrassed by my more or less total ignorance of transgender issues. I don't know what to think, I don't know what the Church thinks, or whether she thinks anything specific as yet -- no formal definitive statements have been made on the subject (though it has been touched on, and naturally the soldiers of the kulturkampf have expressed their views in the strongest possible terms, because the internet). However, Aaron Taylor, a contributor to Spiritual Friendship and Ethika Politika, recently put up this blog post by a transgendered Catholic, discussing exactly the subject of what the Church thinks on this subject. Admittedly the answer is "We're not sure yet," but she puts it way better than that and deals intelligently with objections to that answer -- and, in a rare move for a blogger, cites her sources. Dang.

Third (one of these things is not like the others), there is this delightful rant from Cole Webb Harter, author of The Andalusian Peafowl. (No, I have no idea why it's called that.) He touches on a lot of my own pet peeves about contemporary Christian art, those pet peeves mostly being about how shitty it usually is, in pretty much every medium. When art has to be clean and nice, have a happy ending, have a respectable moral, &c., to be considered Christian, saccharine sentimentalism is more or less bound to trump not only honesty but even good craftsmanship.