1. Weren’t we just talking about “faith-healing” televangelist Benny Hinn as a transparent huckster and goofball? Here he is interviewing an alleged “ex-gay therapist” on his TV show. This guy doesn’t use the discredited pseudo-science of “reparative therapy.” Instead, he says, his approach “is based on numbers, is based on studies, which is what you do when you’re a scientist.”
By this he means that he has his patients color with crayons, claiming that their choice of colors allows him to “see demonization in people’s brains.” He does not mean this as a metaphor.
2. You know that Gen-Xers are getting older when all we can do is stare in bewilderment at a younger generation’s idea of fashion. But I’m with Erik Loomis on this one: In the 1990s, anyone accused of going to a tanning salon would deny it out of sheer embarrassment. To admit to paying money for such a thing was mortifyingly uncool. But fake, unhealthy and expensive is apparently the new cool. (Also too: Get off my lawn and turn that music down.)
3. Religion News Service has a wonderful photo slideshow of the 1963 March on Washington.
4. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina.
5. I’m disappointed that TBogg is retiring and that David Roberts is taking a yearlong hiatus. But I’m thrilled that Sarah Masen is again recording music that the rest of us will get to hear.
6. “When you say you’re against it, you’re saying that you don’t want people like me to have health insurance.” The subject there is Obamacare. The writer is cancer survivor Clint Murphy, Republican of Georgia.
7. Speaking of … here’s Jo Hilder on “What to Say Instead of ‘One Day This Will All Make Sense to You’“:
Rather than using a cliche like “You don’t understand this now, but one day you’ll appreciate why it had to happen” perhaps simply say “No, it doesn’t make sense to me either” or “I wish I could say I know how you feel, but I don’t know how you feel. But I do care about how you feel.”
When it comes to the really hard stuff in life, when someone says “I don’t know either,” it doesn’t mean there are two stupid people in the room. It means there’s lots of love in the room. Knowing and understanding everything isn’t everything. But love helps, a lot.
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