Category Archives: Empathy

CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE: Rev. Emily C. Heath / “How to Determine If Your Religious Liberty Is Being Threatened in Just 10 Quick Questions”

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It seems like this election season “religious liberty” is a hot topic. Rumors of its demise are all around, as are politicians who want to make sure that you know they will never do anything to intrude upon it.

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Quick Questions.” Just pick “A” or “B” for each question.

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing.

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse.

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am being forced to use birth control.
B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control.

[…]

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:

A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

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EMPATHETIC MORALITY: “Dad Sports Skirt to Support Cross-dressing Son”

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Many fathers insist that their cross-dressing sons change clothes before stepping outside—especially if neighbors are starting to snicker. A German dad is quickly becoming an international hero for taking an entirely different approach.

When Nils Pickert moved his family from open-minded West Berlin to a more conservative small southern German town, locals rolled their eyes at his dress-wearing son. His 5-year-old boy became too embarrassed to put on his favorite frocks.

Pickert decided to teach his son a lesson in self-confidence and started wearing skirts around town himself.

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h/t: MoveOn.org

IN REMEMBRANCE: Anthony Arnove / “Howard Zinn Turns 90: The Great Legacy of the People’s Historian”

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Howard Zinn would have turned 90 this Friday if his seemingly boundless energy and youthfulness had not been cut short in January 2010.

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It’s worth remembering that A People’s History of the United States first came out in 1980 as a tide of reaction was seeking to bury the social movements that inspired Howard’s book and which he saw as the hope for the future.

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Howard challenged these ideas in a terrific speech he gave in 1970: “If you don’t think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified. So we have to start from that supposition—that things are really topsy-turvy.”

Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world right side up — to put people before profit, the environment before the interests of mining companies.

¡Howard Zinn presente!

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