Whenever I do a presentation, there is one old and familiar question that I can pretty much be assured of getting in one form or another: “Shouldn’t we use the term ‘same-sex attracted’ instead of a word like ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’.” It comes in slightly different flavours, like in the Q&A from the Webcast that I did for OSV today. But to be honest, the thing that weirds me out is that it is asked so frequently — that among... Read more
Why NFP and Why not ABC? I want to approach this in terms of my personal experience first, and then, in the next section, I’ll talk about how that experience relates to broader trends and to the ethical issues surrounding birth control. I’ve written in the past about my frustrations with natural family planning, my repeated failures to actually avoid pregnancy while using it, and the problems that I have with a lot of NFP culture. I’ve written less about... Read more
There’s been a lot of talk over the last week or so about the ethics of consent, and there’s a common refrain that I keep seeing in Christian contexts: “this is what comes of seeing consent as the only morally relevant thing in sex. If instead we just stuck to traditional marriage and objective sexual ethics, we wouldn’t be having these problems.” So, I want to point out that throughout a lot of the history of Christendom, giving women away... Read more
One of the most frustrating things about discussing rape prevention is that there is often a lot of equivocation going on. We’re told that rape isn’t really related to normal sexual behaviour: studies of convicted rapists show that these men are predators. They’re not ordinary guys who made a mistake, but rather a category of men who get off on holding women in their power. I believe this is probably true of convicted rapists – because the sad truth is... Read more
A little over a year ago, I posted on my blog that I was thinking of writing a book about natural family planning. I asked readers to post their questions about NFP, especially those questions that they felt hadn’t been answered (or hadn’t been adequately answered) elsewhere. My promise was that I would basically do a bunch of research and try my best to answer the questions that were posed. This series is the fruit of that project. One of... Read more
I’ve had various comments, here and on FaceBook, that basically involve folks asking questions or speculating about whether specific questions are going to be answered. So I figured that I would post the table of contents that I’m planning to work from. These are questions that I gathered probably between a year and six months ago and that I’ve organized thematically, to deal with the different types of situations that people face. So some of it is directed to those... Read more
I’ve been promising forever to write a book about NFP. It got massively derailed a couple of months back, basically because I hit major stumbling block: one of my major theses had, up to that point, been that the burdens that Catholic couples are often called upon to bear as a result of the Church’s teaching were justified by a set of larger concerns. Basically, that we were being asked to shoulder a heavy cross because of the magnitude of... Read more
Eve Tushnet’s first novel, Amends, is about a group of quirky alcoholics who get recruited to go through rehab on reality TV. It’s a great premise for a novel, and for most of the book it’s executed beautifully. There’s clearly a lot of research into addictions treatment underwriting the text, but it never feels like it’s being handled in a preachy or paint-by-numbers way. Tushnet has clearly thought deeply about her subject matter – and anyone who has read Gay... Read more
I was preparing to give a short talk on gender dysphoria, and was trying to figure out how to say something meaningful in nine minutes. My audience would be composed almost entirely of Christians who are cisgender (that is, they don’t experience a conflict between their gender identity and their sexual biology.) I needed to somehow quickly address whatever the biggest misunderstandings were. So I asked my husband, “What’s the hardest thing for you to understand about gender dysphoria?” “You... Read more
One thing that you quickly find if you’re trying to do ministry on the margins is that you encounter a lot of people who are having trouble with prayer. There’s the celibate gay guy who is completely exhausted with being the rope in the middle of a cultural game of tug-of-war. The person who has struggled with mental illness for decades and who is angry with a God who doesn’t seem to care. The survivor for whom the familiar words... Read more
Catholic Authenticity
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In