To be entirely honest I find the idea that queer people need spirituality at all quite insulting, and the unfortunately widespread insistence that there's some metaphysical spiritual element to queerness is rather counterproductive and (to put it bluntly) really fucking annoying.
It's called the Global Justice Report, it is here. This is an actionable plan which can be sent to legislators and demanded of political parties. We could save the world within our lifetimes.
It has always been possible. It is still possible.
Jewish baby named Edgardo Mortara is seemingly about to die in Bologna, 1851
Catholic nanny secretly baptises him to save his soul, which she’s not exactly the kind of authority who can do that, but w/e, it’s interpreted by the church as valid later
Kid survives
1857 her secret gets out, a baptising makes a kid a Catholic according to the Church and a Catholic can’t be raised in a non-Catholic household in the Papal States, so the church authorises the police to kidnap Edgardo from his family
Raised personally by Pope Pius IX, Jewish family not allowed to take him back due to Church doctrine, this action destroys the family with grief and despair
This case gets international infamy with the Pope not understanding why everyone’s shiting on him for doing this, including allies
Emperor Napoleon III shifts from opposing Italian unification to supporting it as a direct consequence
Bologna falls the next year, 1859
Kingdom of Italy forms 1861
By 1870 Rome is lost to the Italians and the Papal States are no more
(Edgardo Mortara goes on to become Father Mortara)
(He dies in Belgium in 1940 three months before the Nazis occupied the nation, which if he’d have lived he would’ve been persecuted as a Jew)
Fun fact: the Catholic Church did not stop doing this after Edgaro Mortara. During WW2, many Jewish children were put in convents or catholic-run orphanages for their own safety. Sounds nice right? Except after the war ended, when parents or surviving relative went back to claim their children, the church went, “uhhh, actually they’re catholic now, no take backs!”
The most infamous of these cases was the Finaly affair. Two Jewish children in France, Robert and Gerald Finaly, were placed in a Catholic nursery in 1944 in anticipation of their parents being deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. Their aunt, Marguerite Fischel, survived the war and went to find the boys so she could take them to live with her. However, the nun who had custody of the boys, Antoinette Brun, adamantly refused to give them up, reportedly saying that “The Jews are not grateful”
What followed was a years long custody battle where despite being repeatedly ordered by courts all over Europe to return the boys, Brun took them to many different countries and hid them, with the support and help of other nuns and priests. It was suspected at the time, and later confirmed by documents released in 2020, that Pope Pius XII had supported the effort to keep the boys away from their surviving family and have them be raised Catholic.
Thankfully, after negotiations between a sympathetic cardinal in France and the chief Rabbi of Paris, the boys were finally recovered and reunited with their aunt.
Documents reveal the private discussions behind both Pope Pius XII’s silence about the Nazi deportation of Rome’s Jews in 1943 and the Vatic
I wish I could say that the phenomenon of the Catholic Church kidnapping children and keeping them away from their families for the purposes of forcefully raising them Catholic is unique to Jews, but it’s not. From the mid nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century, the Church ran hundreds of residential schools in the US and Canada where indigenous children were kidnapped from their homes and forced into these cruel and inhumane “schools”. The children were forbidden from speaking their own languages or practicing their own cultures and religions, their hair was cut, and they were subject to emotional, verbal, spiritual, physical, and sexual abuse. Many of the children died due to malnutrition or medical neglect, their bodies buried like dogs beside the schools. The Catholic Church was not the only Church to participate in this, but they’ve been the most reluctant to fully acknowledge and apologize for it. It was only in 2022 that Pope Francis apologized on behalf of the Catholic Church for their part, but some people found the apology inadequate.
Idk what my point is here, just that there’s such a clean link between evangelizing, cultural/religious imperialism, and how damaging and horrifying a religion can be when it is thoroughly convinced of its own superiority. And that unless an institution is forced to change, it probably won’t change on its own.
was outside earlier and a bird Came Up, squatted down, fluttered it’s wings at me and opened its mouth like a hatchling begging for food (it was a grown female) so I went and checked the seed cube in the feeder and the thing was completely covered in mold. this is one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. how did she know im the one in charge of the birdseed. How Did She Know To Pantomime Hunger At Me. Hello.
i have spent my afternoon confusedly getting dressed, driving to the store, purchasing a new seed block, driving home, washing the cage, and getting the feeder set back up. i don’t take this much care for my Own nutrition. ive been bullied into a grocery store run by a tufted titmouse. i feel so loved
I do think the ability to emoji-react is a net win for human communication. not only does it give you an outlet for 'I see and acknowledge this but don't have a verbal response' but it also adds a pleasing alethiometer element to things
my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say
pro tip you can just grab a bunch of random parts from dumpsters and hardware stores and computer stores and just attach them together haphazardly and then put it in your suitcase and take it to the airport and get arrested pretty much 100% of the time
I think it’s important to be able to recognize the different between our emotional response, our moral response, and what we believe should be our legal response.
For example, emotionally, I genuinely think less of someone who buys into stupid conspiracies about organ donation. I think that morally, if you are unwilling (unwilling, not medically unable) to donate organs, you should not be an organ candidate. I don’t think you should be able to say ‘If I’m dead I want all of my organs to rot, even if they could save lives. But I also want to benefit from other people’s sacrifice.’ Fuck you.
But I do not believe it would be ethical (or practical) to legislate that. I think it would be a horrible ethical violation and medical coercion. I recognize that, even as I’m disgusted by people who would let someone die when saving lives would cost them nothing.
Legal codes and ethical guidelines shouldn’t be based around our feelings.
Not long ago, there was an attempt to pass a law where if a baby was born sick and addicted to drugs, the mother could face child abuse charges and have parental rights terminated. Stepping back from any emotional response—either to the criminalization of addiction or to the suffering of newborns—is extremely difficult. I don’t know if it’s a subject that I could have that level of clarity on because it’s such an emotional topic.
But what I want to highlight is the political bloc who were most effective against the law, and led to its defeat: community healthcare workers who were on the frontlines, whose careers very often were at that intersection of drug abuse and child suffering.
Their argument wasn’t primarily about the parental rights of the mothers, or about the criminalization of substance use disorders. Instead, it was about what public health policies work in the real world, and what policies cause more harm. They argued these women would be afraid to access resources for harm reduction during pregnancy. This would result in heavier drug usage during pregnancy than if they were able to access harm reduction strategies and resources. There would also be an increase in abandoned infants, babies who are very sick and need immediate medical help. Fear of punishment wouldn’t help anyone.
In a practical manner, this legislation would likely do more harm while not addressing the actual problems. Several different policies were instituted instead, ones that had been proven effective in practice. I think that there are some situations that we can only find solutions if we can step away from our immediate emotional response to think, or understand that we aren't the right person to try to fix this problem, and focus on where we can make a positive impact instead.