TOMORROW… WILL IT REALLY COME? Okay, so when I said “tomorrow” yesterday, I actually meant tomorrow today. Real posting on Sunday, or at the very worst Monday just after midnight. On deck: more on gay marriage, sex difference, and utilitarian universalism; more on gay marriage, in which I tell you what I think the best (or at least the most beautiful) argument is in its favor; and a review of (REC) and (REC)2 (sorry, one of my bracket keys is... Read more

BISY BACKSON. Sorry! Back tomorrow with substantive posting. Read more

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS OF RUSSIA AND SURROUNDING, from a century ago. Via the Rattus. Read more

THROUGH BLUE-TINTED GLASSES: My review of Red Families vs. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture is in the 8/30 issue of the Weekly Standard. The online version is subscribers-only for now, but I’ll let you know if that changes. I’m not thrilled with this review. I don’t think I quite nailed the problem(s) with the book. I don’t like doing negative reviews as a rule, and especially not negative reviews of work by people who have done... Read more

THE SURVIVOR’S-GUILT GUIDE TO COLLEGE: My column for Inside Catholic. It’s that time of year again: Sultry heat punctuated by thunderstorms, back-to-school charity drives at church . . . and the publication of endless “college survival guides” for incoming freshmen. At first glance, this clichéd phrase might seem a bit overstated. College isn’t exactly the ascent of Everest, is it? And advice like, “Don’t sleep through your classes” and, “Pack a selection of warm- and cold-weather clothes” does not really... Read more

I’VE GOT MY OWN IDEAS ABOUT THE RIGHTEOUS KICK: A couple lightly-sketched points about the exchanges between Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan on marriage, in which my Busted Halo interview was quoted and discussed. I’ve only read the one post of Sullivan’s, so if he has already replied to the points made below, I apologize and would love to be pointed to the relevant posts–I’ve been out of town and he posts so much that I have a hard time... Read more

DEAL OR NO DEAL: Just finished The Second Mark, Joy Goodwin’s terrific book ostensibly about the Salt Lake City Olympics pairs skating scandal. Its actual subjects include, among many other things, the rocky transition from the Soviet Union to the “new Russia”; a brief history of modern China, as told by small children in a cold climate; the ways culture and politics affect our aesthetic judgments; the messiness of skating judging at the best of times; and the ways–good, bad,... Read more

Camp is to my mind extremely valuable as a specifically queer mode of expression, a potentially subversive mode of humor but also a backhanded mode of worship. Camp is not the same as parody. Even Susan Sontag, in her famous essay on the subject, recognized in camp a paradoxically genuine devotion for the institution that is ostensibly ridiculed. Just as drag queens adore the tragic divas that they travesty, so ecclesiastical camp springs to the defense of the one true... Read more

WHO KNEW THE SUBSPECIES THEME WAS SO GREAT? A very fun collection of horror soundtracks and clips, via Fascination with Fear. And Arbogast on Film does that “Images of Film” thing: shadowplay. Awesome. Read more

JESUS CAMP: So, a few scattered thoughts on Decadence and Catholicism, now that I’ve finally finished it. If you’re interested in its subject, you should read it! I enjoyed Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture more, partly b/c Roden quotes more than Hanson does and therefore gets out of the way more, and partly b/c I just think e.g. Gerard Hopkins and Eliza Kearney are more talented than John Gray and–yeah, I’ll say it–Verlaine. Although I do want to read... Read more