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2017-11-08T10:49:20-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The One Question I Always Get

Last updated on: November 8, 2017 at 10:49 am By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-11-02T14:30:30-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Nightmare on Estrogen Street: Frequently Unanswered Questions about NFP Chapter 1

Last updated on: November 2, 2017 at 2:30 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

natural family planning

2017-10-27T09:53:48-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Traditional Marriage: A Cure For Rape Culture?

Last updated on: October 27, 2017 at 9:53 am By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-10-23T11:20:15-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Modest Proposal: On Rape Prevention

Last updated on: October 23, 2017 at 11:20 am By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-10-13T12:03:50-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Do We Really Need Another Book About NFP?

Last updated on: October 13, 2017 at 12:03 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-10-13T12:04:29-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Frequently Unanswered Questions About Natural Family Planning

Last updated on: October 13, 2017 at 12:04 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-10-11T14:50:17-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

That Long Awaited NFP Book

Last updated on: October 11, 2017 at 2:50 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

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2017-10-10T14:06:19-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Conservative Journalist, a Junior Hockey Star and an Otherkin Walk into a Talent Agent’s Office: I review ‘Amends’

Last updated on: October 10, 2017 at 2:06 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-09-16T19:56:59-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Frog Out of Water

Last updated on: September 16, 2017 at 7:56 pm By Melinda Selmys

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

2017-09-16T10:57:27-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Too Tired to Pray

Last updated on: September 16, 2017 at 10:57 am By Melinda Selmys

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

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